She glances at me from over her shoulder. “It must be good to know you have so much power.”
“Hey.” I grip her shoulders and turn her back to me. “I’m going to make this good.”
“If I tell you I love you, will you give me my freedom?”
I drag in a breath, playing for time. I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m not going to lie to her. “You know better than to ask me that.”
“I’m not asking you to set me free. I’m only asking for my right to make independent decisions back. Make me a competent human being again, Damian. Please.”
Cupping her face, I brush the wind-blow hair from her cheeks. “I can’t do that.”
“Why?” she exclaims softly. “If I love you, why would I run? Why won’t you trust me?”
Love isn’t always enough. Because she’ll wake up one day and realize she deserves better. I told myself if I have her heart, I’d feel safe, but I don’t. I own her body and heart, and the fear of losing her won’t let me go. I can’t answer her. I can only stand there and look at her while her face twists into a mask of pain as I break her heart.
“Tell me, Lina.”
She’s carried enough secrets to bog her down for a lifetime. It’s time to snip that final cord that anchors her to the little island she’s created in the sea of her confusing emotions. It’s time for us to go into this as one. No more islands. No more she and I. From now on, it’s us.
“Tell me,” I urge with a small shake when she purses her lips.
A battle passes through her eyes. She wrestles with it, fights with her last strength, but we both know it’s a losing battle.
“Tell me.”
The confession gushes from her lips, broken and perfect. “I love you.”
As if the admittance has taken all her energy, she sags in my arms. Her breath catches on a hitch. Warm tears wet my shirt. All I can do while she cries for the last piece of herself she’s lost, is hold her in my arms and tell her over and over I’ll make it good for her. I won’t let her sacrifice her freedom and love for nothing. I’ll give her the love I’ve been carrying in my heart for so long. I’ll give her everything money can buy, anything she wants.
“Anything at all in my power,” I whisper in her ear, cradling her frail body. Anything but freedom. “Your love isn’t one-sided. I feel the same.”
What was supposed to be a love declaration sounded more like a weak consolation.
Ellis, who rounds the corner with a pink hardhat and safety jacket, stops in his tracks. He shoots me a panicked look.
“She’s fine,” I say. “Just a little weak spell.”
Lina wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, fighting to regain her composure.
“Say, isn’t that…?” Ellis walks closer and peers at her shoulder where her jacket has slipped away. “Holy macaroni, Lina. You take loyalty to new extremes.” He whistles. “I’m impressed.”
Wrong thing to say at the wrong time.
“I have to visit the ladies. Excuse me.”
Lina runs off toward the sign for the toilets, not sparing either of us a glance.
Ellis scratches his head. “Was it something I said?”
“No.” I watch the door close behind my wife with a burning sensation of regret. “It’s me.”
Damian
Our marriage will never be normal, but we fall into the closest thing to a normal routine. Lina tends to the garden and cooking when she’s not house hunting while I throw all my energy back into the business of mining. Well, almost all my energy. I’m still gathering evidence against the Willowbrook staff and looking for Dalton. The latter has disappeared from the face of the earth. I underestimated him. There is one sliver of light in the midst of my failed attempts to smoke Dalton out. The jail connection I employed to gather information on the late Jack Clarke’s household staff traced Clarke’s former housekeeper to an obscure little village in Switzerland. Dora Riley immigrated around the time of Clarke’s death. At the age of sixty-seven, without any Swiss family, it seems off. She has no telephone number or email listed. All I have is an address.
I don’t tell Lina the reason for my so-called business trip. It could be a false lead. I put more guards on duty around the house and give Brink strict orders to call me if Lina needs anything. Then I honor my feisty wife’s wish by kissing her goodbye before boarding the plane.
Lina
I find a house. The minute I walk through the door, I know it’s the right place. It’s a Tudor style cottage on the banks of the Vaal River with a small jetty and a wooden deck. It’s much smaller than the house in Erasmuskloof, but it’s cozy. The big windows let in lots of sunlight. It’s a house in which I can breathe and relax, a house made for living. I make an appointment for Damian to visit it as soon as his schedule allows and ask Brink to drive us home. We make it back with enough time to spare for grocery shopping at one of my favorite malls.
We head straight for Food Lover’s Emporium, but a window display pulls my attention. Slowing my steps, I come to a stop in front of a toy store. My heart clenches painfully. A wooden train with blue and red wagons passes under a yellow bridge. The scene is static, like a snapshot. I’m hurled back in time to a different snapshot when Dora served my meal on a tray lined with an old supermarket sales brochure. It was just before Christmas. When I’d eaten like an animal with my hands tied behind my back so Jack could laugh and call me a dog, the soiled brochure was left on the floor. Later, after I’d earned my scar, I picked up the brochure. Not having had access to reading material, I read anything I could get my hands on. The train was on the second page. It was black and electric with an infinity track. There were hills and pine trees and bridges. It was so pretty. So perfect. A boy knelt next to the track, his eyes bright and his hands clasped together. I’d put my hand over the place where my baby was growing, already knowing I’d skipped two periods, but still able to conceal it from Jack. I wanted the promise in that brochure so badly, the happy train with its lucky boy. I wanted the white paper world with its snow and fairy lights. I wanted that baby. I wanted him with all my soul.
A sound escapes my lips. It’s a horrible sound, one only an animal can make.
“Mrs. Hart?” Brink touches my shoulder.
I jerk at the contact. My voice is choked as I dash toward the entrance, escaping my past and postponing the future, even if only for a short while. My voice cracks on the syllables. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Mrs. Hart.”
He waves a credit card at me, but I shake my head, biting back uncontrollable emotions and stepping aside for an elderly lady to enter. The sliding doors close behind us. The voices and hurried steps of the passersby disappear. A smell of tinsel fills the air. I’m shut inside the world of brochures where snow is warm and children are safe while Brink looks in from a crueler reality outside.
Standing over the display, I stare at the static little train that’s going nowhere in the window and everywhere in my heart.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a woman’s voice says next to me.
I turn to the owner of the voice. She’s pretty and sophisticated, old enough to have firsthand experience of the joys of toy trains.
“It’s wood, not plastic,” she says. “Hand-crafted. Locally manufactured. We only stock community products. Ten percent of the profit goes back to the township.”
Drawn to the toy, I look back at the wagons. There are twenty-six. Each carries a letter of the alphabet.
“How old is he?” she asks.
I glance at her again. “What?”
Her smile is patient, as if we have time, as if everything else can wait. She makes me want to cling to the illusion that inside here the world is on pause.
“The boy you’re shopping for,” she says, “how old is he?”
“Two years and three months.”
“Then this is the perfect gift. I’m sure he’ll like it.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “He will.”
“Shall I wrap it up?”
“Yes. Please.”
One by one, she wraps the wagons in tissue paper. With much care, she packs them into a paper bag, and rings them up.
“Six hundred rand,” she says.
Reaching inside the hidden zip compartment of my bag, I take out the money Reyno has paid me. I hold the stack of hundreds in my hand. For the first time in my life, I count out six notes, and place them reverently on the counter. The moment is sacred, and it seems fitting that it’s here, in this place where smiles are patient and time stands still. It’s fitting that my first purchase with money I and no one else has earned is a silent train that can spell many unsaid words. My heart floats up from the pain in my chest. What I’ve bought is not a piece of handcrafted wood. It’s a gravestone. It’s a gift for a boy who exists only in my heart.
“Thank you.”
The woman hands me my receipt. “You’re welcome.”
Clutching the parcel to my chest, I turn back to the glass doors. Outside, Brink waits. He stares at me peculiarly. His expression is a mixture of pity and concern. The light in his eyes is hesitant, as if he’s not sure what he should do. Inside, I’m safe. Answers will be demanded when I step out of here. Why did I buy a toy? Who am I going to give it to? Where did I get the money to pay cash?
Swallowing hard, I straighten my spine and ready myself to walk back into my reality. There’s no escape from it. Brink already has his telephone in his hand, no doubt calling Damian. I push through the doors when his attention is on the call, using his distraction to compose my features. A cold breeze tunnels down the walkway. The smell of fried corn dog and onion mixes with the bustle on the pavement.
Someone bumps hard into me from behind. The heel of my boot twists inward. Loosing my footing, I go down. The parcel slips from my fingers as I use my hands to break my fall. The concrete scrapes the skin off my palms. The bag splits open, and the pieces spill out. No! On my hands and knees, I crawl to get to them. A black shoe falls in my vision. The sole lifts even as I scream. A crunch shatters the air. The heel lifts. The tissue paper is torn down the middle.
No.
I reach out with a trembling hand, but someone jerks me up by my arm before my fingers can make contact. More feet hurry past, people bumping and onions burning. The tissue paper parcels scatter over the concrete as anonymous feet kick them in all directions. No one stops.
“No!”
As I fight the painful hold on my arm, one hand stretched toward the ground with splayed fingers, my gaze connects with Brink’s. His face is horizontal, his cheek resting on the pavement. Next to him, the red locomotive lies broken in pieces.
Chapter 22
Damian
The air is thin this high up. It’s spring in Switzerland, but snow still covers the mountaintops. After getting off the train I took from the airport, I store my overnight bag in a locker at the station and go into the village on foot. I need the walk to clear my mind and decide on a course of action.
At a tourist shop, I buy a Swiss Army knife. Slipping it into the pocket of my summer coat, I make the steep descent to where the wooden house stands alone on a stretch of property. A cowbell rings somewhere on the hilltop. The unkempt lawn is full of yellow wildflowers.
The gate pushes open without a squeak. There’s no doorbell. I use the knocker.
A lady with white hair wearing a housecleaning overcoat opens the door. I recognize her from the photo. In real life, Dora Riley looks older than her age. No surprise registers on her face as she takes me in from head to toes.
“Come on in,” she says with a Durban accent. “I’ve been expecting you.”
She goes ahead. I close the door and follow her to the kitchen where she waits at the table with a pot of coffee.
“Sit.” She motions at the only other vacant chair.
“You know who I am?”
She pours the coffee into two mugs. “No, but I know why you’re here.”
“Do you, now?”
“No one’s come to see me in two years. There can only be one reason you’re here.”
“Lina.”
“Lina. Ah.” The words are pitiful, sad. She pulls the mug between her palms. “How is she?”
“She’s my wife.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
She pushes the sugar my way. “Good.”
“I want to know everything.”
“She hasn’t told you.”
“She told me enough. I want to hear it from you.”
“I was hoping I’d never have to tell that sad tale to a soul.”
“You do, so start talking.”
“Where do I begin?”
“How about with what your role was?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Mister. I didn’t hurt her. What her husband did to her broke me.”
“Yet, you never said a word.”
“My husband was on life support. Cancer. Jack paid the medical bills. My husband died nine months ago. There’s no more reason for me to keep quiet.”
“Start at the beginning, from when you first met Lina.”
She sighs. Her gaze turns inward. “I always knew what Jack was. He brought prostitutes home, and they never left in a good way. When that young, pretty thing walked through his door, I knew what was going to happen to her, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.”
“Go on.”
“She found out the very first night. The following morning, she called her father and begged him to fetch her, but he told her to grow up and face her responsibilities.”
She adds two cubes of sugar and cream to her coffee. “Jack locked her in her room and kept her there, as naked as the day she was born. He ordered me not to serve her any food. The fridge and kitchen were locked, and only I had the key. After a couple of days of starvation, she gave up the fight. Jack got what he wanted.”
“You had the key.”
“I already told you, I didn’t have a choice.”
Like hell.
“Every time Lina gave in, Jack granted her a meal. He’d tie her up and make me serve it on a newspaper on the floor so he could watch her eat it like a dog. Sometimes, he invited friends to enjoy her humiliation. Then he’d carve a line on her arm, so she’d never forget how many times she sold her body.”
My insides boil. My heart combusts. I wish with every part of my soul I could resurrect that vicious bastard to kill him all over again with the slow and torturous death he deserved.
“Jack traveled often,” she continues. “His instruction was to give Lina just enough food to keep her alive. Whenever he left, I sneaked extra food to her. Especially when she realized she was pregnant.”
“Clarke didn’t know about the pregnancy?”
“She was so thin, you could hardly see the bump. Didn’t show until she was almost seven months.”
Which explains why Lina doesn’t have any telltale stretch marks. “Why didn’t he want his own child?”
“Lina was an object to him, something he could use and abuse. Children weren’t on his agenda.”
“Then why not use protection or give her birth control?”
“I’m not sure it even crossed his mind. He was away on business for long periods. Who knows how his mind worked? All I can say is that he wasn’t always right in the head. When it came to sex, he had unsavory tastes.”
I can’t keep the accusation from my tone. “And you never tried to help her.”
She gives me a levelheaded look. “On the last trip, Jack was gone for six months.”
“Why so long?”
“He was overseeing the construction of a new mine somewhere in the Richtersveld, I think.”
I clench my fists under the table.
Taking a deep breath, she wraps her hands around her cooling mug again. “He was furious when he came home and found Lina with her big belly. I huddled outside the door. There was a lot of screaming and begging. Then came the crash. It was horrible. Glass splintering and Lina’s scream. I still hear
it in my dreams.”
“He threw her from the window,” I hiss.
“Second story.”
“It’s a miracle she survived.”
“She landed in soft soil. The gardener had just upturned it that morning to plant new ferns. Broken collarbone, cracked ribs, a few scrapes and cuts.”
“What happened?”
“She was so still. We thought she was dead. Jack told me to call an ambulance and tell them she jumped. Suicide. Only, when they got there, she was very much alive. Jack was a mess. Lina’s father took charge. He had her transferred to a private clinic.”
Where her secrets could be swept under the carpet and forgotten.
“When she was discharged, Mr. Dalton loaded her into his car and brought her right back to Jack. Jack went straight back to his old habits, locking her up and starving her. I couldn’t take it anymore. I slipped the key under the door.” She falls silent, staring into the distance.
The woman in front of me fills me with disgust. She turned a blind eye for two years so her husband could stay hooked up to machines that did the work of his organs. That’s what loves does to you. It makes you selfish and unscrupulous. It makes you dangerous.
“Finish the fucking story,” I grit out.
She flinches. “I thought she would escape, but no. When she unlocked the door, she went to the study, took the hunting rifle from the mantelpiece, and blew Jack’s brains out. He must’ve been on his way out, because he was dressed in a suit, the car keys clutched in his hand, but the face… You couldn’t recognize the face.”
“Then what?”
“Lina collapsed. She was weak from her injuries and malnourishment. I couldn’t call the police, not with being implicated, so I called Mr. Dalton.” She shrugs. “Who else did she know? He came over and staged it like a suicide.”
Which he conveniently held over Lina’s head.
“That’s all I know,” Dora says. “The house was packed up and sold. The staff was paid off.”
“Enough to keep them quiet.”
Beauty in the Broken: A Diamond Magnate Novel Page 38