No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) by Evelyn Glass Page B

reached the point he’d been at when he’d been forced to marry Olivia to keep himself solvent. Maybe, in some twisted way, all the work he’d done was about building a better life for his wife and children.
     
    Alex could almost convince himself it was true if he didn’t think about any of the conversations he’d witnessed between his parents.
     
    Rage rose up within him, boiling and bubbling up, and he found himself pulling on the pages of the desk planner until they started to come loose in fistfuls, yanked free from the binding, tearing in places, and he didn’t care—
     
    And then one piece of paper, smaller and narrower than the pages of the planner itself, fluttered down to the desk. He stared at it for a moment, then stared back at the planner. There was a pocket, tucked into the back cover, craftily hidden; it had only popped open when the pages tore and unstuck the glue that had tacked it down. It was a code referencing the different colored dots and dashes on each meeting that he hadn’t been able to figure out.
     
    The code was titled at the top, with the year that matched the planner. It had a list of names, topics, and discussions, all indicated by different dashes and marks. How had he remembered all of this?
     
    His mother’s name was on every single meeting that Zhu and Tanaka had attended. Every single one. There were codes for the kinds of arrangements they’d described, codes indicating that Philip had agreed to their plans.
     
    His stomach flipped with a heavy, sick anger.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    “Okay,” Zoey said, still working at blinking the sleep away from her eyes. She was sitting up in bed, the sheet tucked under her armpits. Alex had tried to sit, but found too much stress centered in his quads to allow it. He paced. It didn’t help, but it kept the muscles from itching from inactivity and tightness. “I don’t get it. Even if they did do all of that, you said it was done. Everyone who could threaten her control is, in effect, silenced. It’s you and her controlling the board until she kicks off, end of story.”
     
    Alex nodded slowly. “There’s an ‘unless’ there.”
     
    There was a long, slow moment, as Zoey brushed her hair off her forehead, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Unless? I’m really sorry if I sound impatient, Alex, but I’m really kind of sick of ‘unless.’”
     
    “If we were to have kids.”
     
    He tried not to think too much of the blush that colored her cheeks and lit her eyes up with a smile she pushed away. “What if we did?”
     
    “Olivia was holding shares in trust for Claire because she was one of my father’s heirs. Olivia herself has some right to them as well, of course, as my father’s widow. So yes, things are just even between us now. But if you and I were to have children—”
     
    “They would also be heirs of Philip Blankenship, potentially.” She buried her head in her hands for a moment, and he waited to see what she would say, what she would do.
     
    He let the silence go as long as he possibly could and then forced out a breath. “If you need to go, if you need some time, I understand,” he said. He was pretty sure he could hear the audible crack of his heart falling to pieces as he spoke the words.
     
    Her response was quick. “No,” she said. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I love you. I meant it when I said that. I just need this to stop. I can’t live my life in fear of what they could do to us.”
     
    Alex nodded. The course of action seemed incredibly clear to him now. “I’m going to go talk to her,” he said. Zoey was already shaking her head, and he spoke over her protests. “I get it, I know. You’re afraid. So am I. My mother and I need to come to some sort of peace, some sort of clarity about where we are and what will happen moving forward. We can’t live under this shadow of misery.” He reached out and took her hand, squeezing hard.
     
    She squeezed back, focusing on him