She rushed into his arms. She felt his lips move in her hair, and then press tight against her skull.
“I never knew what had happened to Regina until I was eighteen,” he said hoarsely. “Then I saw her one night, coming out of Clint’s bedroom. She’d been beaten. There’d been hints before that Clint was rough with women during sex, but I hadn’t really gotten the depth of how twisted he was until that night. I already knew he was regularly unfaithful to his wife and had a penchant for call girls. Young ones,” he added bitterly. “I was young, still, as well. He tried to keep me at a distance when it came to his more severe proclivities. I didn’t really get the extent of his sickness until Regina walked out of his bedroom that night, and I recognized her as being the girl Emmitt had kidnapped years before.
“Emmitt’d sold her into a sex slave ring. They’d hooked her on drugs. Raped her repeatedly. Starved her. Beat her. Eventually, she began to prostitute willingly. Who wouldn’t, given the alternative? When I saw her that night, she was twenty years old, but she might as well have been fifty, for all she’d seen and done since Emmitt had first gotten ahold of her when she was thirteen years old.”
Harper shook her head against his chest and squeezed him tighter. “That’s what Emmitt would have done to me, if you hadn’t saved me. How horrible for Regina,” she said shakily. She sent up a silent prayer for the other woman. Regina’s life could so easily have been hers, if it weren’t for the man she held in her arms.
“It was at a big party at Jefferies’s lake house that it happened, wasn’t it?” she asked against his chest. “You called 9-1-1 and an ambulance came for Regina?”
He moved back slightly. She looked up to see him peering at her face.
“How did you know that?”
She sniffed. “I’ve told you I had a reporter, Burt, who was angling for a story on you in addition to Ruth. He has a friend who is a detective at the Charleston PD who looked up any incidents associated with Jefferies or his property during the time period before you showed up at MIT with a different name—”
“Before I bought and sold the Markham stock,” Jacob interrupted grimly.
She nodded. “Anyway, his friend sent him an incident report regarding the 9-1-1 call regarding a Gina Morrow. It was called in by a Jacob Sinclair.”
“And you realized that Gina Morrow was Regina and that Jacob Sinclair was me. Is that when you started to suspect I was Jake Tharp, as well?”
She tried to read his expression, and couldn’t. Was he mad at her for her revelation that a reporter under her watch had been investigating a past he guarded so closely?
“I actually didn’t start to suspect that in any solid sense until I realized the police report was from Charleston, West Virginia. Before that, it was just the occasional sense of déjà vu, intense dreams . . . unbelievable suspicions.” She swallowed thickly. “You told me you were from South Carolina. You kept West Virginia secret from me, because you were covering any associations between you and Jake Tharp.”
His brow quirked. “And you’re still mad at me for that, aren’t you?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but found she couldn’t.
“I’ll never agree to you making that little boy disappear, Jacob,” she said softly. “I’ve fallen in love with you. But I’ve always loved Jake Tharp. I’ll always be loyal to that brave, incredible kid.”
He just stared down at her, his eyes alight with emotion.
“You believe you love me?” he asked her thickly.
“I don’t believe it. I do.”
“Despite what everyone says about me?”
“Yes. And even if some of the lies hold a grain of truth.”
“Is that reporter at the Gazette going to continue to dig for a story?”
“No. Sangar has quashed it. He’s forbidden both Burt and Ruth to pursue a story. It so happens that he agreed with me. There’s nothing solid to print. You’ve buried your secrets well, Jacob. I know your soul,” she whispered. “I understand you, I think. Finally. And your secrets are safe with me.”
He flinched slightly at that. “Are you sure? I’m no saint. What if I told you that a lot of the rumors are true about how I made my first fortune?” he asked bitterly. “I am guilty of colluding for gain when I was eighteen years old. I’d have done almost anything to make myself powerful.”
“It’s not too surprising, giving how helpless Emmitt and even Jefferies must have made you feel. You blackmailed Jefferies, didn’t you? You threatened to expose his violent, illegal sex practices and love of young prostitutes to the press, his wife, or both. He offered you inside information on that breakthrough diabetes drug, and you took the information in exchange for your silence. You did it in one desperate last-ditch effort to climb above all the chaos, evil, dysfunction, and helplessness that you couldn’t seem to escape, even when you’d thought you had by gaining Jefferies’s patronage and friendship. And you succeeded because of your own brilliance and savvy. Afterward, you did everything in your power to wipe the taint of your one sin clean. You washed your hands of Jefferies. Then you sought out Regina Morrow—and any other victims of greed and sadism that you could reach—and you tried to save as many of them as you could.”
She noticed his incredulous glance at the evenness and calmness of her tone.
“Did you really think I’d be shocked, Jake?” she asked, shaking her head. She reached up and touched his face, tracing the miracle in every chiseled line. He reached up and covered her hand with his. Her breath hitched. “I told you I know you, in and out. I’m starting to get just why it was so important to you to rise above your past. Like I said before, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Unless you or Clint Jefferies comes forward and confesses about why he gave you insider information, I don’t see how a case could ever be reopened by the SEC. And I’m starting to really get just how hard you’ve worked to make up for the way you rose to power. All the charities, and the job fairs . . . the way you helped women like Elizabeth and Ellie and Regina. Especially Regina. I get it now. I realize how guilty you felt as a boy, for not being able to save her from Emmitt, like you saved me.”
His expression turned stony at that, but his eyes shone with emotion. She touched his jaw and then his brow, pouring so much love in every caress. He was so big, and so strong, and so powerful . . . and he didn’t fully get that.
Still.
“Do you remember what I told you about Mrs. Roundabout?” she whispered.