by J. Kenner
“That’s not something his restaurant does regularly,” Evelyn had added, “but I know he’s been considering a catering sideline. And if he’s tackling your guest list, I bet he’d appreciate a dry run.”
“I’m sure Alaine can handle it without a rehearsal,” Damien had said. “He’s as competent as they come.”
Evelyn had squeezed Frank’s hand, then cleared her throat. As a rule, Evelyn’s as strong and outspoken as anyone I’ve ever met. That’s what’s made her such a powerhouse in Hollywood for all these years. Right then, though, she’d looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Oh, hell, Damien,” she finally said. “Don’t you get it? I want to be family—officially—before your wedding.”
She lifted her left hand that had been hidden in the folds of her dress. “Been meaning to find a way to tell you two,” she began, as I started to squeal with glee. “We’re getting married. And if it doesn’t inconvenience you, we’d love to be your dry run.”
Now, Damien shifts Bradley in his arms, the motion pulling me from the memory. “They’re already family,” he says, making clear that his thoughts had tracked my own. “Both of them. But I like the idea of it being official before our ceremony.”
“Me, too,” I agree, understanding what he has left unspoken. That both of us are the product of deficient parenting. Damien, with his snake of a father and a mother who passed away far too young. Me with an abusive, controlling mother and a father who walked when I was too young to understand and old enough to be hurt.
Neither my mother nor Jeremiah Stark have redeemed themselves. But Frank sought me out and worked slowly and deliberately to not only make up for his past mistakes, but to prove that he truly loves me and my family and wants to be part of our lives. Not for financial gain or the spillover from the spotlight that seems to constantly follow my husband. But simply because we are family.
Family. That’s the core of the pride I see coming off of Damien. This corporate warrior and master of the universe. For years he built his empire in a vacuum, without any purpose other than an innate need to conquer his past and build a tangible future. Now, he’s still as competitive and innovative and commanding as before, but the core of it is different. Now, his goal is a legacy for our children. Comfort for our family and friends. And the fact that we have the kind of home that Frank and Evelyn—two of the most important people in our lives—want to share on their most special day is both magical and humbling.
I’ve been looking out over the workers who have finished with the chairs and arch. Now I turn toward Damien to find him looking at me, his expression so full of joy that I feel almost weightless.
“Hard to believe that—” he begins, only to be interrupted by the chime of his phone. “Sorry,” he says, passing Bradley to me. “I’ll turn it off closer to the wedding, but until I hear back about this meeting, I—”
“I get it,” I assure him. Damien seeks out new talent the way my best friend Jamie used to stalk cute guys. I don’t know who he’s courting specifically, but I do know that his potential conquest is a genius in the area of applied physics and mechanical engineering.
I bounce Bradley, turning to show him the ocean and the tennis court and whisper that he’s going to take a short nap before the craziness of the ceremony and reception.
That’s when I hear Damien’s sharp curse.
I turn, wondering what could possibly have upset him.
“Damien?” He looks up, and the haunted look in his eye scares me so much I actually take a step backward. “Damien,” I repeat. “What—”
“I got them, too,” Evelyn says, and I glance over Damien’s shoulder to see her standing in the doorway, our part-time nanny, Bree, standing right behind her. “Bree, can you take Bradley?” Evelyn continues.
“Of course.” Bree shoots me a look of confused concern, then comes to get Bradley from me. “Lara and Anne are already in the playroom.”
I nod, grateful the kids are downstairs. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I am absolutely certain I don’t want the children around when I find out.
As Bree heads out with our son, I look between Evelyn and my husband, expecting Damien to speak first.
He doesn’t, though, and it’s Evelyn who meets my eyes. “It’s the Richter photos,” she says, her flatly professional voice belying the horror of those vile images that stand as witness to the abuse Damien suffered. “Apparently there are more, and someone’s threatening to release them.”
2
My stomach twists with both disgust and confusion, and I reach out to take Damien’s hand, only to find his cold and clammy. “I don’t understand,” I say. “Damien released the Richter photos to the press himself. And they were—”
I cut myself off, then swallow. “I mean, how much worse could a few more be? This is a storm we already weathered, right? Damien won. He had the press and the public’s sympathy and they haven’t mentioned the abuse or the photos in ages.”
Damien burst onto the sports scene as a tennis prodigy when he was nine years old, and he won the Junior Grand Slam at fifteen. After that, his career only got better. From the outside, it looked like he had it made, but what the world didn’t know was that his former tennis coach, Merle Richter, had abused Damien for years, even going so far as to force Damien to do horrible things with Sofia, Richter’s daughter, who was even younger than Damien. To make it worse, he’d photographed those vile moments, keeping the pictures and videos as his own sick souvenirs.
After Richter’s death, the pictures disappeared, only to resurface again years later, most recently as a threat—either I walked away from Damien, or the pictures would be made public. It almost worked, too, until Damien had turned the tables and faced the press, standing strong against the horror of his past so that we could move forward together into our future.
The photos were vile. Horrible evidence of the torture through which Richter had put two innocent children, one his own daughter and the other a star athlete that Richter had been hired to mold. And if that weren’t bad enough, Damien confided to me that his own father had known perfectly well what was going on, and he’d never stepped in. Not and risk stifling the cashflow coming in from Damien’s wins and endorsements.
I try to lick my lips, but my mouth is too dry. I’ve been parched by my fear. No one has answered my question, and I still don’t know what these new images show. All I know is that they are bad enough to have knocked the wind out of my husband, and that tells me plenty.
“Damien,” I whisper, but he simply shakes his head, his hand clutching so tightly to mine that I fear he’ll crush bones. His face is a mask of pain and regret. And of failure, too, as if all the progress we’ve made in the years since he went public with those pictures has been completely erased.
“Who sent them?” I ask stupidly, because of course it’s going to be anonymous. “And what are they?”
Evelyn starts to speak, but Damien holds up his free hand. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.” He releases some of the pressure on my hand, his attention on Evelyn. “This is nothing. Not even a blip on the radar. Not today, anyway. This is your day, and you need to enjoy it. Don’t you have a whole hair and makeup thing to do? Isn’t Nikki helping you get dressed?”
He’s right about all of that. Carina, who does hair and make-up for Jamie’s publicity photos, is due here any minute. And Evelyn’s dress is hanging in the guest bedroom, just waiting for me to help her put it on.
“It’s okay,” Damien adds to me, and even though I can see the tension in his body and hear it in his voice, I don’t argue. “Frank’s probably here by now. I should go check on him.”
“Damien…” I draw in a breath as he pulls his hand free of mine.
“I’m fine,” he says, in the cool and controlled corporate voice that I’ve heard him use whenever a meeting isn’t going exactly as he’d planned. “This is an inconvenience. An irritation. But it’s not an immediate problem, and I won’t let it interfere with your day,” he adds fie
rcely, his gaze hard on Evelyn.
She starts to respond, but he silences her by raising a single finger. “I mean it. Enjoy your girl time. And you,” he adds to me, “stay here and don’t worry about me.” He cuts off my protest with a kiss, then pulls Evelyn into a hug. I hear him whisper, “Don’t let this mar your day,” and then he’s gone, leaving me and Evelyn staring at each other in horror and bewilderment.
I draw in a breath, then shake my head. I want so badly to ask, but Damien’s right. This is Evelyn’s day, and I won’t let some random asshole fuck with it. “Let’s get down to the guest room and get you in your dress. You’ll want to be in it before Carina gets here so you don’t smear.”
She waves my words away. “I’m not wearing white, and I’m not wearing fancy. It may be the dress I’m getting married in, but it’s not my wedding dress. We have time to talk, Texas, and it won’t ruin my wedding day if you need to do that.” She moves to sit on the small chaise that highlights one wall of our bedroom, immediately beneath the painting Damien bought a few years ago. An erotic image that captured my attention that first night at Evelyn’s house.
I know Evelyn well enough to know that she means what she says about taking time to talk; she wouldn’t have offered otherwise. And the truth is, I’m grateful for the offer. Damien might have made a show of brushing the whole thing off, but I know better. Evelyn, I’m sure, does, too.
“Show me the pictures,” I finally say, taking a seat beside her. I don’t want to see them—if they were enough to upset Damien, I know they must be worse than the photos he released himself right before we got engaged. But at the same time, I have to know.
For a moment, I think Evelyn will argue. But then she taps her phone to bring up the images. She grimaces, then puts the phone in my hand, the screen pressed against my palm, and her own hand holding it in place.
“Be sure, Texas. Be sure you want to see this. To see him like that. You can’t unsee it, and to be honest, that wasn’t bad advice he just gave both of us. You can comfort the boy without ever taking a peek. And you can go do that right now. As much as I love your company, I’ve been dressing myself for about sixty years now. I can handle today, too. Especially since that boy needs you.”
I fight a smile. “I know. And I will go to him. But you already knew that.”
The corners of her eyes crinkle with her smile. “I did, Texas. That’s why you two are so good together.”
I swallow. We are good together, but part of that is because after a rocky start, we truly don’t have secrets between us. Not the kind that matter, anyway. Not the kind that fester and hurt. “I have to see,” I tell her. “I don’t want to, but I need to know. I need to understand.” Whatever is in that text has already clawed its way into Damien. The only question now is whether I have the power to help him heal.
She grimaces. “I know. You need to see it, and he needs you. And, honestly, I came up here to tell you both the damn thing existed. I didn’t think the fucker had sent Damien the same despicable text.” She frowns. “At least I assume he sent the same text. He or she, that is.”
“So let me see.” I look down pointedly to where her hand covers my palm.
She exhales heavily, but lifts her hand, then flips the phone over. The screen is unlocked, and I glance down, then wish that I hadn’t. I don’t need to see this, and yet at the same time I do. It’s a video, and not one I’ve seen before. Something Damien held back when he released the Richter photos, I think, then immediately change my mind. Damien’s never seen this before. That’s part of why he looked so wrecked moments ago.
The video is long—almost five minutes—and there are eight stills from the video, too. And each shows in graphic, frozen detail Damien and Sofia having intercourse in front of the camera when neither one of them was older than fourteen, him with a cock ring and with her wrists bound to the headboard.
I feel queasy, but force myself to watch to the end. I see Damien mouth, I’m sorry. I see the tears in Sofia’s eyes. And all I want to do is hurl that despicable phone across the room and watch it shatter.
Instead, I read the message.
I know what he did. I know how fucked up he is. I won’t let him get away with it. Take responsibility, or I’ll share this with the world.
“He?” I whisper, my stomach queasy. “They mean Richter, right? He’s the one who’s fucked up.”
“Richter’s dead,” Evelyn says gently. “You know that’s not who they mean.”
I swallow. She’s right. I know exactly what this means. Someone wants to release this. To embarrass Damien—or worse.
Evelyn takes the phone back, deliberately closing the app and making the screen go dark. “Whoever’s doing this hasn’t released the video or the stills yet, but they might. They haven’t said how Damien is supposed to ‘take responsibility,’ which probably means a blackmail note will follow. In the meantime, I’ve already contacted Charles. These images show minors and there’s no consent for release.”
Charles Maynard is Damien’s long-time attorney, and I assume he’s putting some sort of injunction in place. The photos that Damien released to the press have been aired all over, but I also remember that they were blurred, presumably because of both the content and Damien and Sofia’s ages.
“I thought all of this was behind us.” The drama with Sofia had twisted and twined through my relationship with Damien. She was his childhood friend despite what her father had made them do, or perhaps because of it. The trauma of their past had screwed them both up, but Damien had managed to channel his pain and fear and anger into tennis and then into his work. Sofia had gotten twisted up in it. Their past had messed her up mentally, so much so that if she weren’t dead, she’d be at the top of my suspect list.
But, of course, she’s not behind this new version of hell, and that leaves me floundering, wondering not only who knows this horrific truth, but who would drag it out of the dark simply to torment Damien.
And on this day, too.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell Evelyn. “Whoever is behind this is fucking with Damien, but this is against you, too. It’s coming on your wedding day, and I can’t believe that whoever sent this doesn’t know that you represent Damien.”
“I don’t just rep him, Texas. He’s family. Always has been, and even more so after today. You are, too. Come here, honey,” she adds, hooking an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close.
It’s only then that I realize I’m crying. “I thought we were past this,” I say again, my throat thick with tears.
Not that Damien will ever truly be over it; what happened to him in his youth both shaped him and haunts him. But I’d foolishly assumed that there was no one left who had the information or interest in using his childhood trauma as a hammer against him. Then to wield that hammer in order to break Damien down for their own purposes.
And the truth is, I can’t imagine who has done this. Who would have access to this video, and who would be ballsy enough to wield it.
“Jeremiah, possibly,” Evelyn says when I voice the question.
“He’s at the top of the list, of course, but he never had the original Richter photos, and these must have been part of that group. Something Sofia held back when she sent the originals to the court.”
Damien had been on trial for Richter’s murder, and the evidence had been bad, especially since Damien had refused to testify about the abuse. But then the images had been delivered anonymously to the court, proving the child abuse that Damien had desperately wanted to keep a secret and giving the court a reason to dismiss the charges.
Damien was given a copy of the images the court received, and I’ve seen them all. These weren’t in that package.
At the time, we’d suspected that Damien’s father, Jeremiah, had anonymously delivered the evidence to the court, but it turned out that he’d had no knowledge. It wasn’t until later that we learned that Sofia had delivered them.
“These could have belonged to anyone who knew Richter,�
�� I say. “He could have sold them to some pervert who’s held onto them for years.” I frown, my thoughts raising another question. “And why now? What was the trigger?”
“I don’t know. We might never know. Not until whoever is behind this decides to show himself.”
“Sofia’s death, maybe? But it’s been so long.” It’s been over three years since Sofia died, taking a bullet to save me, her sacrifice both ironic and heartwarming considering that not long before, she’d truly wanted me dead.
“Wounds fester,” Evelyn said. “But it still leaves open the question of who. Perhaps she told someone what happened back then. Someone other than her therapists and doctors, that is.”
I frown, something else occurring to me. “Damien used to tell me about him and Sofia and Alaine hanging out together. I assumed all of that was while the abuse was going on, but Richter died when Damien was fourteen, and I’m sure he’s older than that in one of the photos of the three of them that he keeps in the library.”
Evelyn nods. “Those three were tight even after Richter’s death. Ultimately, Damien’s star rose, and that pulled him away even as Sofia’s issues came to the surface. She ended up getting help at the first of many residential facilities. As for Alaine, his parents decided to enroll him in boarding school before college. But until then, those three were thick as thieves.”
“But why was Sofia even there? Her father was dead. There was a new coach. Why was she still entwined in the tennis life at all?”
“Ah,” Evelyn says, her tone making clear she understands my confusion. “Sofia had no other family, so Alaine’s parents petitioned to be her guardian.”
“Oh,” I say. “Could one of them be behind—”