Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. I hope you've had a lovely day. Before we get to our latest chapter, let's take a moment to recognize this week's featured troll! Naughtymonsterx, pointed out in a long, rambling and rather repetitive diatribe, that Tris and Tobias only see each other once a month…why, it's almost like they are engaged in a secret relationship and indulging in a series of rendezvous…huh, who've thunk it? I mean it's not like the title is Rendezvous or anything! Wow, can't get anything past these trolls, can you?

xXx

Nita paced around the hotel room, her beautiful face a mask of fury as she glanced at the clock. Sarah was nearly fifteen minutes late. At this rate, she could very well still be here when Fernando arrived. Part of her wanted to cancel the meeting; hell, part of her wanted to just drop Sarah as a source completely. But the bits of gossip she got about Prior-Eaton's customers, some of the best-known businesspeople and celebrities in New York, were just too good.

Just as she was about to call Sarah and tell her not to bother showing up, there was a slight knock on the door. Wrenching it open, Nita glared at Sarah. "You're late," she snarled.

Sarah breezed past her with a casual smile on her face. "Good evening to you too, Nita," she greeted glibly while dropping her bag on one of the chairs. Spying a bottle of wine chilling in an ice bucket, she turned and regarded Nita thoughtfully. As she'd thought before, Nita looked more like one of her wealthy prey rather than the gossip hunter she was. Sarah didn't think she'd ever seen Nita without her hair and make-up done to perfection to complement her clothes and heels, which today was a gorgeous electric blue suit and black Louboutins, of course. Sarah suspected that Nita hunted the designer discounts in the Fashion District and online, though, because she sincerely doubted Nita made enough to afford her expensive tastes.

"So, Nita," she stated calmly, helping herself to a glass of wine. "You don't mind if I have a glass, do you?" Without waiting for a response she took a sip and sighed happily. Giving Nita a deceptively innocent smile, she dropped onto one of the chairs and asked, "Would you care for one?"

"Don't you sit there and play the hostess with me," Nita snapped back, consciously pushing her Coach bag to the side of the desk so wine wouldn't accidentally spill on it. Sarah smirked a little when she realized the bag was a couple of seasons old, furthering her suspicions about how Nita shopped. "I got scooped!" Nita raged, infuriated that the society pages of the Chicago Tribune actually had a write up of Natalie Prior's birthday, complete with photos. The Priors had allowed one reporter from the Tribune to attend part of the celebration as a way to control the media around it. "Not only didn't you have any information about the party but you didn't warn me official press would be there! I had no time to even try to get something out before the official story!"

Sarah shrugged, swinging her leg idly as she sipped. "I told you at the beginning, I wouldn't have the same access to information in Chicago as I would in New York."

"You didn't even give me a heads-up so I could have tried to get someone in place. Did you even attempt to get an invitation or to get any information from someone who was there? No, of course not," Nita sneered. "I swear; I don't know what the hell I pay you for!"

"You pay me because I can now confirm for you that Tobias Eaton is seeing someone."

"Are you sure you about that? Is it Beatrice Prior?"

Fury shot through Sarah like fire at Nita's condescending tone. She was ten times smarter than Nita and she was getting awfully tired of Nita thinking she had the power in this arrangement. She had asked her friend at the Chicago office the very same question but her friend hadn't been sure. She hadn't been at the Prior's party but she could confirm that Tobias had worked out of the Chicago office for a couple of days afterward and was seen with Tris and her family. It wouldn't surprise Sarah at all if Nita's increased media focus would finally prompt the Priors and Eatons to actually try and put their children together.

"I can't be sure but it is a strong possibility. They were seen together around the Prior-Eaton offices for the two days Tobias was working there after Natalie's birthday. He also had dinner with the Prior family at least once and lunch with Tris and her father both days he was there. I can say something is definitely up. Andrew and Tobias had two meetings together while Tobias was there, and they were both after Marcus and Evelyn had already left Chicago." There had been a lot of talk about those meetings, with most of the speculation about whether Tobias was going to take a larger role in the company or was going to still run the charity.

"Do you know what these meetings were about?" Business gossip wasn't her forte but if there was a lucrative deal in the works, Nita did know enough business reporters that she could make that information work for her.

"No," Sarah said casually as she finished the glass of wine.

"Were Tobias and Tris seen alone?"

"I'm not sure."

"Were you at least able to confirm he and Beatrice were together in London?" Nita asked through clenched teeth, her patience with Sarah nearing the end.

Sarah hesitated then said, "Beatrice was staying in the company condo, which is on the same floor as Tobias' condo in London, and they did ride to and from his party together in a company car." She would have dismissed Nita's speculative story but her sister at least partially confirmed some of the rumors. "And he did go to one of our offices in Liverpool with a blonde woman to make travel arrangements for her to return to New York."

Now, Nita regarded Sarah with a bit more interest. "Who was the woman?"

Sarah shrugged. "The clerk I know was pretty sure it was Beatrice at first but when I emailed her pictures of both Myra and Beatrice, she couldn't be 100% sure." Nita sighed, annoyed, but Sarah continued. "I do know he spent the night with this woman at Gladstone's and Beatrice did fly back to New York from Manchester." She put down her wineglass. "I've got contacts in many of our offices and I'll find out definitively who the woman was." Fixing Nita with a glare, Sarah said, "But if you find out who she is first, I want you to tell me."

Laughing, Nita finally dropped lightly onto the edge of the queen-sized bed and crossed her legs. "And why would I possibly want to tell you that?"

"Because I want to use it. I deserve a much higher position than I have in the company and Tobias can secure that for me."

This time, Nita's laugh was vicious. "Do you really think blackmail will work? There is no way Tobias Eaton would do anything for you! He's brushed you off often enough before."

Sarah's eyes narrowed and her fist clenched on her lap. "All I need is a chance. Once I get in position, I won't need him. I'll have access to everything I want." She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "You need to do this for me."

"I don't 'need' to do anything for you." Nita leaned forward. "That is not how this works. You give me information I can use and I pay you. If I don't like what you give me, I drop you. Simple as that."

"Oh, I don't think so." Sarah finally smiled; her eyes glinting as she casually poured herself another glass of wine. "I think you'll do exactly as I ask."

Nita snorted. "I don't know what the hell you think you're playing at, but let me assure you, I sincerely doubt Tobias Eaton will succumb to blackmail."

"Ah, but will you?" Sarah sipped, smiling into her glass of wine.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Nita frowned.

Sarah reached into her briefcase and pulled out a copy of a travel itinerary, which she placed on the table next to her. "Next time you want a secret getaway, don't use Prior-Eaton for your travel plans." She sat calmly while Nita snatched the paper off the table, her eyes narrowing before recognition set in when she saw both her name and Fernando's at the top of the schedule detailing their travel itinerary for their weekend away to Canada back in March.

Nita looked up at her, her face going pale beneath her flawless make-up. "Where the hell did you get this?"

"Fernando has a personal account at Prior-Eaton and uses us for his travel needs when he doesn't want to alert his father by using the company account." Sarah shrugged nonchalantly. "I happened to recently inherit this account. Once I saw it, well, I knew you would want it to be in good hands. My hands."

"You little bitch," Nita snapped.

"You're punching above your weight and we both know it." Sarah snapped back, gesturing to Nita with her glass, venom dripping from her words. "With your last season purse, and I'm willing to bet cash that Tom Ford suit you're wearing is a knock off." Sarah had taken a shot in the dark with that comment because she herself had looked at it and had decided not to buy it even if it was a good reproduction.

Nita's eyes narrowed as an angry flush worked its way up her cheeks. "You don't know who you're playing with," she warned.

Sarah laughed and drained her glass—triumph flooding her veins like a drug. Standing, she picked up her briefcase and slung it over her shoulder before she brushed past Nita, pausing at the door. "Oh, I think I do. You and Fernando have a nice night now." She glanced over her shoulder and nearly burst out laughing as fury, fear and incredulity warred across Nita's face. "Ciao, darling," Sarah purred as she closed the door behind her.

xXx

Tris taped up a box and looked around what had been her bedroom for the last twenty-seven years of her life. This was it. She was leaving the only real home she'd ever known to strike out on her own. Finally. She ran her fingers lightly over the padded chair to her desk as memories of all the hours she'd spent at it ran through her mind. The room had seen a lot of changes, she mused. From bright pink and yellow walls with stuffed animals as a young girl to the bold, brash neon colors and rock posters of her teenage years, to now—the elegant pale pinks and pearl grays of her adult years—this room had reflected her personality at every stage. Leaving it was harder than she thought it would be.

Shaking off her slightly melancholy mood, Tris opened the desk drawers and began carefully packing away the notebooks with all of her story ideas since she was ten. She'd had help with packing until this point but didn't trust anyone with her notebooks.

"I can't remember the last time I saw this room so empty."

Tris looked up at the sound of her father's voice. He stood in the doorway, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his gray slacks, looking as uncomfortable as Tris had ever seen him. "Yes," she said, "it's a little unusual, I guess."

Andrew shifted a little. "You don't have to leave, you know."

She gave a little laugh and turned her attention back to her packing. "Yes, I do." At her father's negative sound, Tris sighed deeply. "Dad," she said, facing him, "I have to. I have to go my own way, make my own decisions, and you can't seem to accept that."

"Beatrice, there are things you just don't know, don't understand…"

"And how am I going to learn them here?" she challenged. "Caleb left without a word, Dad, because he was too scared to face you, to tell you what he wanted. Well, I'm not going to do that." Turning back, she began packing again, hoping her father didn't notice her hands were shaking slightly. The last thing she wanted was yet another confrontation with her father on this. It had taken them almost two weeks to speak to each other again after their last blow up.

"I'm just trying to protect you."

"And you don't need to!" she exclaimed, exasperated. "Dad, you have people scouring the Internet for any word about me and you're making decisions about who and what I am based on that! It's ridiculous!" They stared at each other for a moment, their identical blue-gray eyes clashing. Tris finally sighed and turned back to her packing. It was clear Andrew wasn't going to budge and neither was Tris.

"My brother was eleven years older than me." Andrew's voice was soft and Tris' head snapped up. Andrew rarely talked about the uncle who died years before she was born. "But I worshiped him. James was everything I wasn't—bold, brash, full of life, of energy. I've always been a serious person, even when I was a kid."

"Grandmother said you were a young-old person."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Andrew's face. "She got that from James. He was the one who would take me outside, throw the baseball with me. When he wasn't here, I spent a lot of time in my room." Sighing, Andrew entered the room and perched on the edge of Tris' bed. "When he was away at college, it was really quiet around here. I used to love when he'd come home for the summer. When I was eleven, he was twenty-two; I didn't know it at the time but he'd just barely graduated. He'd become way more interested in parties and girls than school. My father did everything he could—tutors, threats, cutting off his spending money—to get James to buckle down that last year. He did…barely. My father gave him the summer to play around, to get it all out of his system, before he forced him to buckle down at the company." Andrew leaned forward, his arms on his knees, fingers laced together.

Tris turned and leaned back against her desk as her father talked. He'd never mentioned any of this before and she was loath to stop him. She watched as the emotions played over his face and knew whatever was coming next wasn't going to be good.

"James went to stay with a friend out in LA." Andrew's gaze dropped down, staring at his hands. "It was a disaster. They partied every night, alcohol and drugs flowed like water. It was one story after another in the gossip columns. My parents were infuriated—embarrassed—and they ordered James home. The night before he was going to leave, his friend decided they needed one last blow-out. They were out late that night—drinking, hitting club after club. The best we can figure is that he and his friend, and the two women with them, decided to take the party from the club back to his friend's house in the Hollywood Hills. James was driving, way too fast. His car veered slightly out of his lane going around a curve and he apparently over-corrected. The car went off the road and rolled down the hill. All of them were killed."

Tris gasped a little. She knew her uncle had died in a car accident, but she'd never heard the story around it. Andrew looked up at her with a grim smile. "It only got worse from there. The media hounded us day and night. It turned out the two girls in the car were prostitutes. They were all high and drunk. James' blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit. It was a disaster." Andrew took a deep breath and looked up at her, his blue-gray eyes devastated. It had been years and the pain of that time could still rub him just as raw as it had then. "The press were camped out in front of the house. We rarely left the house. When we did, the press would be there, trying to take pictures inside the car. My mother took to her room, Dad buried himself in work."

"What about you?" Tris asked quietly, her heart aching for her father. She was finally beginning to understand some of the demons that drove him.

Andrew shrugged. "I grew up even more. I knew I could never do that to my parents. I had to keep it together for them." He smiled slightly. "Marcus stepped in and helped. Even though he was three years younger than James, they were close, like brothers. He became my big brother, another son for my father. And I learned some very valuable lessons." He looked up at Tris, his face impassive. "You remind me of him."

Even though Tris suspected her father felt that way, it was still an arrow in the heart to hear him say it. She took a deep breath, taking a moment to push past the pain of her father thinking she was careless enough, reckless enough, to throw away her life and the lives of others. "You know, Dad, just because I want to chart my own path, doesn't mean I'm going to wind up some strung-out drunk. And, frankly, it is insulting as hell that you think that."

"You don't think before you do things," he challenged. "You just flit around, refusing to accept responsibility. You show up a few days a week at Prior-Eaton then you go off, disappear. You've been flying all around doing God knows what, with God knows who! Your mother set you up with a perfectly good man, a man you've known for years, and you push him away like he's got the plague. Even when you were in England, you were ready to go off half-cocked. If Tobias hadn't been willing to go with you, who knows what trouble you'd have found. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for me to look up one day and see some scandal you've caused splashed on the pages of every newspaper in the country. Hell, all over the world with the Internet these days. You need discipline and guidance to make something of your life. What have you done with yourself? What are you going to do with yourself?"

"That's none of your damn business!" she burst out, anguish and outrage infusing every word with power. "I can't believe you think so little of me. That you're convinced I'm going to just fuck everything up and you're going to have to sit idly by, humiliated, while I bring down the entire family."

Andrew's head snapped back as though Tris had hit him. "Beatrice—"

"No," she interrupted, feeling the heat rise, staining her cheeks pink. "I've never been involved with drugs. I've only been drunk twice in my entire life because, guess what, I don't like to lose control! You've never bailed me out. You've never had to! I've never done anything as remotely reckless and irresponsible as what you just told me. So, for you to sit here and accuse me of doing…" she trailed off, so upset she could barely think of the words to describe her outrage. "Whatever shit you think I'm doing, it sounds like the most horrible thing I could ever think of!" Tris stopped, taking a few deep breaths in order to slow her racing heart. She lowered the tone of her voice, trying to calm herself. "You're taking out your childhood issues on me and it is not fair. Just because I'm not happy to work the job you choose for me, marry the man you choose for me, and have kids when you want me to, doesn't mean I'm going to screw up my life and everyone else's along with me. I'm sorry, Dad, but no. No, I won't live the way you want me to just because you can't get past your brother's mistakes."

Shaking his head, Andrew rose to his feet. "I only want what is best for you."

"And only you know what that is, I suppose?" Tris said, bitterness tingeing her tone. She pushed up from the desk and turned back to her packing, her head down, hoping her father wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. Her disappointment in her father was palpable and at the moment, she didn't think she could look at him.

"I do know what's best for you," Andrew said quietly. "I wish you would just trust me."

Tris looked up as a tear tracked down her cheek. "Yeah, I wish you'd do the same for me."

Andrew shook his head again and without a word, left her room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Hurt and rage sustained Tris through the remainder of her packing. As she was taping up the last box, a quiet knock sounded at her door. Steeling herself for another confrontation with her father, she sighed with relief when she saw Penny standing in the doorway.

"The moving people are here," Penny said, her voice slightly watery with unshed tears.

"Oh, Penny, I'm not moving to Alaska," Tris laughed, seeing her longtime housekeeper's distress. "I'll be just across town." She walked over and hugged her tightly.

"I know. With you and Caleb gone, the house will be awfully quiet." Penny swayed with Tris for a moment, squeezing her one last time before she pulled back. "But it's time for this to happen." Penny ran a hand across Tris' blonde ponytail. "You need to spread your wings, away from your parents. Your parents mean well and they love you, but you need more freedom than they want to give you."

Tris nodded, grateful that Penny could see that she was slowly suffocating under her parents' desires. "Thank you, Penny. If I stay here, they'll just keep wearing me down until I do what they want." She gestured helplessly. "I won't marry Al. We'd make each other miserable."

"Oh, I agree. Besides, I'd pick Tobias over Al any day of the week." Penny's brown eyes twinkled at Tris' barely concealed surprise.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you?" Penny let out a full-throated laugh. "Oh, sweetie, you should know by now nothing happens in this house that I don't know about. You saw the movie, The Help, didn't you?" She winked and brushed a kiss across Tris' cheek. "You'll be just fine on your own, I know it." With another wink, Penny gave Tris one last squeeze before exiting the room, leaving Tris shaking her head in bemusement.