ENTANGLED: A McCarthy Love Story

CHAPTER 018

Joanna James was twenty-five when Richard McCarthy hired her, his wife had been having post -partum depression because she didn't feel any connection with the child she just popped out.
Joanna was great with children and it helped a great deal that Luca was a sweet boy and she couldn't help but to fall in love with him.
June, their mother never formed any connections with her kid but she went ahead to pop out four more but that was only because her husband had paid her a stated sum every time she had a baby and promised to double it if it turned out to be a girl. He called it 'the child birth allowance' but he knew and she knew that it was just plain and simple payment for allowing him use her body as an incubator for nine months – well Chase had stayed for eight but that was beside the point.
Richard had once told Joanna that his wife felt like a surrogate with no emotional connection to her children. So Joanna had done her best to love and care for them the best she could.
And it didn't come as a surprise to anyone when June had asked her husband for a settlement to sign over her parental rights to him, Luca was thirteen and Alex three when she left and never looked back.
At first, Richard had said it was just a phase and that she'd come back and when a month turned into two and two into a year, it became obvious that June had moved on with her life. And then Richard resented his children, they had caused him the love of his life. He didn't need them and having them was a mistake. When that was over, he then began to throw money at them, keeping his distance but still making sure they had everything they wanted.
Joanna had watched him spoil his children because that was the only way he knew to love. Some of his children had leaned into it and the other two, Luca and Nick. Luca forced himself to take charge where his father couldn't, he was the only reason his siblings didn't get buried in their father's wealth. Richard had expected them to know right from wrong, rewarding them when they did right and icing them out when they didn't but Luca had actually taken the time to teach them, even when he wasn't sure what it was, he tried to make sure his siblings were raised right. Even if that meant beating the crap out of Chase the time he found out he was using cocaine in high school or tracking Alex down and dragging her home by the hair the year she ran away with her boyfriend at fifteen, Luca did his best to make sure everything turned out alright and Joanna did her best to guide and teach him.
And Nick, Nick just leaned away from everyone and everything. Joanna suspected he didn't know he did that but the more his father threw money at him the more he withdrew into himself. And that hadn't entirely been a bad thing, he didn't wait to be raised or taught by anyone he just did that himself. It made him smarter, wiser and more resourceful than the rest of his siblings. So, no one had worried when he decided at sixteen that he wanted to go and explore the world, no one actually understood what he meant by 'explore the world' but everyone had supported him. Even Richard had waited two full years before putting him in charge of his oversee estates, which gave him the flexibility to travel how he wanted.
'if he wants to travel, he should at least make himself useful while at it' Richard had told Joanna.
So when his peers were being children, still learning and growing, Nick was forced to become an adult. To grow apart from his siblings and family.
It did break Joanna's heart but she reminded herself that that was what the child wanted.

He did come home for Christmas, thanksgiving and most special occasions but it wasn't enough time to be as close to his siblings as they were with one another. So it came as no surprise when his brother had brought Sophia Jamieson, the only woman he had ever had a committed relationship with home and his siblings didn't think it was a problem.
"It's been a whole year since you two broke up" Luca had said and Chase had made a joke about it.
Alex had come to him begging and crying, it was something she always did to put her brothers on the spot and it had worked that time too.
So Nick had let his brother marry his ex, whom apparently his entire family had known he was dating and then kept it from him.
It wasn't like Nick had wanted to marry Sophia or anything like that, he didn't love her or care about her like he knew he should but they had understood each other- at least he thought they had until the day she had called him an emotionally crippled person who didn't have the ability to love anyone but himself. She packed up and left him in Brazil that evening and he didn't see her again until the next Christmas in his father's house.
So Nick had skipped out on his brother's wedding and didn't come home again until his father had asked him for help on a project he was working on. And the minor problem that was supposed to keep him in Texas for a week or two turned into a night mere when Sophia had decided she didn't like the way her bipolar meds made her feel, she stopped taking them and no one noticed until she began to act a bit crazy.
That was why she decided she was ready to take Nick back even when he wasn't asking. So, on one Sunday afternoon she had jumped into his car just as he was about to leave and had asked him to tell her he loved her. Nick could not because he didn't feel it when they were together and he certainly didn't feel it then. So she had started to physically assault him because her scrambled brain had told her that he came back for her- he didn't.
Nick was still trying to calm her down when the car swerved off the road and before he could do anything about it they were headed down a cliff.
It ended with major broken bones for him and a crushed windpipe for her. She died and his family blamed him for it, his brother hated him for it.