Beauty in the Broken: A Diamond Magnate Novel

by Charmaine Pauls

  “Yes.”

  Then Dalton sent Lina to Willowbrook and took over the management of her inheritance while conveniently keeping her declared mentally ill.

  “Why did you come here, to Switzerland of all places?”

  “I was the only one who knew what went on behind the closed door of Lina’s bedroom. The other staff believed what Jack told everyone, that Lina was self-destructive and not in her right mind. They didn’t know the real crazy one was Jack. He was good at acting.”

  “Dalton exiled you.”

  “I didn’t fight very hard.” She chuckles. “I know when to shut up and do as I’ve been told.”

  “You said Dalton took charge of Lina’s admission to a clinic when Clarke threw her out of the window.”

  “Yes.”

  I get to the crux of our talk, to what I’m really here to find out. “Where’s the baby’s body? What did Dalton do with it?”

  She gives me a startled look. “There was no body, Mister. The baby didn’t die.”

  My heart jerks to a standstill. “What?”

  “He survived. He was in an incubator for a month, but I know he lived because I heard Mr. Dalton on the phone when he brought Lina home to Jack.” Her face twists with uncertainty. “Mr. Dalton was making plans for the baby. I thought he took the little boy. Didn’t he?”

  Fuck, no. Lina’s child is alive. He’s out there, somewhere in the world. I swear to God, I’ll make Dalton sing like a canary before I kill him.

  “Didn’t he, Mister?” Her eyes fill with panic. “Please.”

  I can’t tell her what she wants to hear. All I can see is Lina’s hollow expression and that almost-smile in the church, that perfect beauty in the broken, just like the sublime portrait of Mary hanging under a frame of shattered windowpanes and pigeon shit.

  “How many times did Lina ask you for help?”

  “Every day in the beginning.”

  “When did she stop?”

  “A couple of months later.”

  A couple of months. “Give me an exact date.”

  “I can’t.” She pulls up her shoulders. “I didn’t keep book.”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  Something so profound and she’s can’t fucking remember. She should’ve remembered the month, day, and time. The exact second Lina gave up hope should’ve been carved into her heart.

  “You know what has to happen.”

  Her voice doesn’t waver. “Yes.”

  Taking the knife from my pocket, I place it on the table. “I’ll give you the choice.”

  She looks at the knife for a couple of beats before pushing herself up with her palms on the tabletop and fetching something from a cookie jar that she carries back to me. A bottle of pills. I read the label to be sure and give her a nod.

  She shakes the lot into her palm and swallows them with her cold coffee. When the mug is empty, she walks to a daybed that faces a window, takes off her shoes, and lies down. The window has a nice view over the green field with the yellow flowers. Grabbing a throw from the sofa, I cover her legs. It’s the most kindness as I can spare her for not doing enough.

  “I slipped her the key,” she says, staring at the window, talking to herself.

  Too little, too late.

  Exiting the warmth of the house, I close the door behind me and leave it unlocked so whoever finds her body won’t have to break it down. I walk back to town slowly, trying to process the information. How do I tell Lina? Do I call her? Do I wait until I see her? Do I tell her now, or after I’ve found her child? Definitely after. He could’ve been adopted. There will be legal shit to sort out. How much dirty laundry is Lina willing to wash in public? How much is she prepared to share with the world?

  I’m halfway down the hill, my thoughts heavy, when Brink calls. Unease seeps into my gut. Something’s wrong. He wouldn’t otherwise call me in Switzerland. Just as I swipe the button to accept the call, the line cuts.

  My unease explodes into full-blown panic. I start to run even as I dial Maze.

  His tone isn’t reassuring. “Damian, where are you?”

  “Abroad. Brink called, but we got cut off.”

  “I know. You’ve got to catch the next flight back.”

  I stop. My heart thuds like a bull in a matador ring. “What happened?”

  “Lina’s been taken.”

  Chapter 23

  Lina

  This can’t be happening. Not again.

  Blindfolded, I’m lying on my stomach on a hard, cold surface. My hands and feet are tied. I’m shaking from the shock. My cheek throbs where it was smashed against the window when my kidnapper threw me into the van, and my hipbones feel bruised from being knocked around as the vehicle skid around the bends. It’s cold, but I’m sweating. The perspiration makes my scraped palms burn.

  Lifting my shoulders off the floor, I try again. “Where am I?”

  So far, no one has replied to my question. There are two people in the room. I only saw the face of the one who grabbed me. He pulled a bag over my head before I could make out the face of the driver, and he replaced the bag with a blindfold before leading me from the van. We climbed stairs for what felt like forever, until my lungs burned from the exertion, before reaching the floor where they’re keeping me. It was especially difficult with the blindfold. I still feel the toll of the effort on my legs.

  “Who’s there?” I ask.

  I can make out my kidnappers’ distinctive footsteps when they move. The man who took me wears shoes with rubber soles. They squeak when he walks. The other is a flat heel that falls hard, like a man’s dress shoes.

  “Can I please have some water?”

  “Take off her blindfold.”

  I freeze. That voice. Oh, my God. A gulf of anger eradicates my fear.

  Someone hauls me up by my arm. A sharp pain shoots through my hip when I put my weight on my legs. I try to find my footing and limp when he lets go. When the blindfold comes off, I’m already beyond my shock. I only have disgust left for the man facing me. Harold looks alarmingly well, a far cry from the disheveled man I saw in Brixton. He wears an expensive suit and shoes. He had a haircut, and he’s freshly shaved. We’re in a circular room. The view makes me gasp. We’re even higher up than I thought. Yellow mine dumps stretch into the distance. Johannesburg. From the scattered and broken furniture, I gather the place is abandoned.

  I glance behind me at the man who pulled me to my feet. He’s the one who took me at the mall.

  “Where’s Brink?”

  “He’ll live,” the man says.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Stun gun.”

  I turn back to Harold. “Damian is going to kill you.”

  “If he had any intelligence,” Harold says, “he would’ve killed me the day he got out of prison.”

  “That’s what vengeance does to you,” the man says. “It clouds your good judgment.”

  “Who are you?”

  He drags his tongue over his teeth. “Someone who’ll get a big cut of the profit pie.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” I ask Harold.

  “Told you the last word will be mine.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What’s mine.”

  “What’s that supposed to be?”

  The man pulls a chair closer and pushes me so hard onto it my teeth clack.

  “The mine and evidence in exchange for you,” Harold says. “Sweet deal, no?”

  “You can’t be serious. The only reason Damian married me was to acquire that mine. You’re dreaming if you think he’ll give it up for me.”

  Harold grins. “Apparently, he values you more than the mine. He’s already agreed to my terms.”

  My mouth drops open. “How’s this supposed to happen?”

  “Wait and see, Angelina.”

  Is Damian bluffing about giving up the mine and evidence? No, he never bluffs. A startling insight hits me. He could’ve used the evid
ence to clear his name and win back his mine, but he didn’t. He used it to get me. It’s never been about my inheritance. He chose me over the chance of clearing his criminal record. Hope swells with love in my chest.

  He’ll find me. I refuse to lose him now. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by his foresight to plant a tracker in me. What had seemed like a punishment at the time turns out to be the biggest blessing of my life. It’s going to be all right. It has to be.

  “When Damian finds me, you’re going to die.”

  “We destroyed your phone,” the man says. “No one is going to find you.”

  He doesn’t know how wrong he is. The question is, will Damian find me in time?

  Damian

  A car is waiting for me when the plane touches down. The driver throws my bag in the trunk and holds the door. I duck to get inside and pause. Russell sits in the back.

  My fingers clench on the doorframe. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I’m Maze’s best man, and you know it.”

  “I can’t trust your feelings not to get in the way.”

  “It won’t. Get in. Time’s not on our side.”

  I ignore the fact that he’s just given me an order, because he’s right. We only have two hours before Dalton’s deadline. I needed Maze’s men to hold off an attack until I arrived. I don’t trust anyone but myself with Lina’s safety.

  Sliding into the back, I check the tracker on my phone, the small, vulnerable dot that represents Lina. Dalton isn’t moving her around. She’s still in the same place as twelve hours ago.

  The driver has barely taken off before Russell hands me an iPad with a kaleidoscope of drone images. Dalton is keeping her in one of the top floors of the Hillbrow Tower. The tower has been closed for security reasons since 1981. It can’t be too difficult to break into a dilapidated and deserted tower. No one goes there, anymore. Not even the police. It’s a dangerous neighborhood. The floor used to be a revolving restaurant called Heinrich’s. At two hundred meters high, there’s no other building on the former Heinrich’s level. No place from where to launch a sniper attack. There’s only one way up and one way down. It’s a good place to hide a captive. Too damn good.

  “Are you meeting his demands?” Russell asks in a solemn voice.

  I give him a cold look. “Of course, I fucking am.”

  He narrows his eyes to slits. “Just checking.”

  “I emailed the contract my lawyer drafted.” A whole team worked on it through the night. “I’m waiting to hear back from Dalton. He’s probably reading it as we speak.”

  “The minute you sign it, there’s a good chance she’ll end up dead anyway. We can’t trust Dalton to meet his end of the bargain.”

  My stomach lurches, and my heart beats harder. “That’s why we have to get her out before. How many men has your drone picked up?”

  “Infrared shows three people. We couldn’t get a visual on their faces. They’ll spot our drone if it hovers in front of the windows. Those damn windows run three hundred and sixty degrees around.”

  I wipe a hand over my face, the strain of two sleepless nights catching up with me. “We have to assume two of the people are Dalton and Lina. The third is probably the guy who took her. Did Brink get a visual?”

  “He only saw a man dragging her to a van.”

  Cold fury rages through me at the mental image. I should’ve sent more guards with Lina, a mistake I won’t make again. I never expected anyone to strike after the example I made of Anne and Zane. After the failed kidnapping, I thought Dalton was on the run, knowing what I’d do to him when I find him. I never expected him to pull such a move.

  Russell taps on an old photograph of Heinrich’s in its former glorious days. “There’s a fire exit on the east side of the room and the main one facing the escalators, which are out of order. We could take the stairs, but there’s no way of breaching it from the doorway without being spotted. Plus, Dalton isn’t stupid. I’m one hundred percent certain he has the stairs booby-trapped. We need an element of surprise. I say we go in air-borne and snipe Dalton and his crony.”

  “No.”

  At my harsh tone, Russell looks at me quickly.

  “I need Dalton alive.”

  His face contorts with the emotions he’d sworn wouldn’t get in the way. “He took Lina.”

  “He’ll pay when I’m good and ready.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Hart? Do you want her to die?”

  I slam a fist on the seat between us. “I’m not going to let her die.”

  “Then explain why you won’t snipe that bastard. It’s the best damn solution.”

  Exhaling deeply, I stare at the blue almost-winter sky through the window. “Lina has a child. Dalton is the only one who knows where he is.”

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  I lift the iPad again, enlarging one of the drone photos. “There’s a panoramic terrace at the top. Below used to be a smaller restaurant.”

  “The Grill.”

  “How’s the tower structure inside?”

  “Hard to say. The last time anyone’s been up there was when Carte Blanche broadcast from the old Heinrich’s in 2013. No safety checks have been filed with the municipality since 1980.”

  I search for behind the scenes images of the broadcast even as he speaks. “No engineering reports?”

  “Zilch.”

  A few photos of the Carte Blanche studio setup prove helpful. They give a view of certain spots inside. The interior structure looks sturdy with a few places where the ceiling boards are peeling. I flick to the blueprints. Ventilation tubes run around the ceiling, but they’re too small to fit a human. A trapdoor between the floors of The Grill and Heinrich’s catches my attention. The blueprint shows stairs. In the earliest days, the floors must’ve been connected. I flip to the photos of the restaurants in the days when they were still in operation. No stairs. The interior was redone.

  I point to the blueprint. “There’s a trapdoor here. We get onto the terrace and enter through The Grill. Then we use the trapdoor to access Heinrich’s through the ceiling.”

  Russell rubs his chin. “The trapdoor will make noise. It puts us at risk for a few, unprotected seconds, but it could work if we check Dalton’s position on the infrared before we move.”

  I check the time on the screen. Still twenty minutes before we get there. We need to get to the top of that tower. Pronto. “What were your air-borne plans?”

  “Helicopter.”

  “Too much noise.”

  “We don’t have an alternative.”

  “What has radar picked up?”

  “Nail bombs at the ground floor entrance, but no other explosives.”

  “Wired?”

  “Worse. Heat sensitive. Anyone who dares it inside will end up like a voodoo doll full of needles.”

  “Then we climb up from the outside.”

  He shifts in his seat. “You’re out of your mind. The ladder is metal.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Metal, Damian. You’re a mine magnate. You know better than anyone what that means. Rust, erosion. Need I say more?”

  “We’ll just have to take our chances.”

  “We won’t have a safety rope.”

  “I won’t. You will.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I climb up and attach the rope at the top. We use an electric harness to pull you up.”

  “It’ll take too long. I won’t make it up on time.”

  “Then I’m on my own.”

  “Fuck.” He leans his head back on the headrest and closes his eyes, seeming to think. After some time, he regards me warily. “Can’t let you do it. I’ll go up. You wait at the bottom.”

  “She’s my wife.”

  “Exactly. You can’t be as levelheaded as you need to be.”

  “Neither can you.”

  Rubbing his temples, he blows out a long bre
ath. “It’ll be stupid for both of us to risk our lives on the ladder. I’ll stay at the bottom, but if you don’t make it up, I’m calling in the helicopter and the sniper.”

  “If I don’t make it up alive, I swear to God I’ll haunt you if you don’t get her out, do you hear me?”

  “I’ll get her out.”

  He will. Russell is a good soldier. More importantly, he’s a good man. If I don’t make it, I hope he’ll hang around for Lina. She’ll need someone. I’m not going to jinx myself by saying it out loud, though. To hell with that. As long as I’m alive, I’m the only man she’ll have.

  Russell calls the waiting unit and gives them instructions before briefing me. A few armed men in civilian clothes are hanging around the tower, pretending to be beggars. I’m pretending not to be sleep-deprived and going insane. I’ll happily give the mine and everything else I own if I thought I’d get her back, but Russell is right. I can’t trust Dalton. This isn’t something he sucked out of his thumb yesterday. It’s a well thought out and premeditated plan. He must’ve been hiding in that tower, perfecting his scheme, for the two weeks I’ve been searching for him.

  Maze’s men wait at the bottom of the tower with the equipment I need when we park. The security company has cordoned off the area and is waving around guns big enough to scare away curious spectators.

  “What did you tell them?” I ask the man who hands me a backpack with the harness and rope, a smart wristwatch, ear pod, and pistol.

  “Contamination.”

  “Good.”

  There was a soil contamination issue at the gasworks not far from here a few years ago. It made a lot of noise. No doubt people still remember the scare.

  My phone pings with an incoming email. Both Russell and I still. My gut churns as I open the message. It’s from my lawyer. Dalton returned the contract. He’s waiting for me to sign. I don’t think twice. I drag my finger over the screen, signing my name at the bottom before handing the phone to Russell.

  “Don’t send it a minute before the agreed time.”

  He nods.

  I strip my suit on the street and dress in the cargo pants, T-shirt, and heavy-duty boots from the security company before pulling the goggles over my face to protect my eyes against insects and wind.