by Riley Ashby
But did he realize that?
“How many shares is she worth to you?”
There was silence on the other end of the line, and then he burst into genuine laughter. “You think I’d give up control of my own company? Better yet, why would I give you even more responsibility when our reputation is going down the drain?”
“So I can fix this mess you allowed to happen.”
A swallowing sound came over the line; he’d taken a large drink of something. That was bad. Gin made him worse than cruel.
“I fail to see how this situation is my fault.”
“You kept Anita locked up. She’s been acting out her entire life to get your attention, and now she has it. It just took an attempted murder and an act of war to get. And now you won’t even hold her responsible for her actions.”
“I’m not turning my own daughter over to the wolves over this. I’ll find a way out.”
“We will. If you give me your shares, and control of the company. In exchange for what you took from me.”
Shawn had abandoned all pretense of cleaning up and was staring at me from where he stood in the door to the closet, face white with horror. I shifted a little so I couldn’t see his stupid face out of the corner of my eye.
“Don’t make me come over there and kick your ass. I don’t owe you shit. If you’d taken care of her the way we talked about, I wouldn’t have had to do this.”
“And you’re going to … what? Do it the right way?”
“You bet your ass I am.”
I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the wall. I knew this, of course. He just wanted to replace Eva. If I’d shattered her from the beginning, showed up at those parties with a battered and broken woman on my arm, he would have been pleased as hell even if the tabloids had picked up on her bruises and public outcry had forced the police to my door. But neither of us had expected just how badly I wanted to avoid becoming just like my father. He spent thirty years beating out every last bit of tenderness in me, but one look at Madeline and something new had taken root inside. Each passing day had let more sunshine into the core of my being, encouraging it to grow, until the leaves sprung up through cracks in the concrete and turned long-hardened rock into dust.
The sun was gone now.
But I wasn’t done just yet.
“I’m coming over. We need to talk.”
“You’re not seeing her.”
“I never said I wanted to. But we have a deal to work out.”
He was quiet.
I’ll take that as a yes.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
I hung up the call and tossed my phone to the side, settling against the wall more comfortably and adjusting the ice on my hand. My eyes closed.
“I need you to get me a blade.” My body and mind craved an escape. I needed to feel in control of something, even if it was the amount of blood left in my body.
Shawn exhaled loudly.
“I’m not sure now is the right—”
“It never is, but I can’t think clearly unless I do.” I was barely holding myself together as it was. If I didn’t find an outlet for this useless panic, I’d lose it completely in front of Conrad.
“Can you even hold it with your hand the way it is?”
“I’ll have to make do.”
His footsteps shuffled on the carpet, then passed me and turned to hard clicks in the hallway, fading, pausing, returning. I opened my eyes to find him holding out my knife. I’d left it in my jacket at his house; I didn’t remember getting it.
“Did you bring my jacket?”
“No. It was sitting in the kitchen.”
Worry about that later. I traded the frozen peas for the knife and went to the bathroom. Shawn’s hand on the door prevented me from shutting it.
“I’m keeping an eye on you.”
“Suit yourself.”
I ignored the pain in my arm as I raised it over my head, tossed my shirt to the floor, and breathed the first sigh of relief I’d felt in hours as the blade slid across my skin and the familiar, comforting pain overtook every wild thought bouncing around my head. Repeated cuts over healing wounds meant I hadn’t been able to wear sleeveless shirts in years, but every time I tried to quit the ritual I found myself drowning in more anger and depression than ever. That was, until Madeline arrived. From the moment I held her in my arms and took her back to my house, I didn’t feel the drive to cut. Having her nearby was a balm to my soul. Deep down, I knew it was a temporary reprieve from the pain, but I enjoyed it while I could. The responsibility of caring for her as she sank into her own depression gave me a drive to live that I hadn’t felt in ages, maybe since the day I realized the woman I thought of as my mother wasn’t ever coming back.
Then I tried to hurt her. That day, she showed me just how at risk I was of turning into the man my father wanted me to be.
I fought off the urge as long as I could, but after a night of tossing and turning with my captive crying in the corner, shivering in her wet clothes, I couldn’t take it anymore. My future was as clear to me as if I were watching it happen on a movie screen. I heard every time I’d cried and begged my father to stop, only to be met with harder blows, days spent without food, sleeping on a hard floor because I didn’t deserve a bed. And layered on top of it, Eva on her knees, pleading, offering her body as payment if only he wouldn’t hurt me anymore.
I woke up early specifically to give myself time to enjoy the ceremony of it all. Testing the knife to make sure I would get a clean cut. Having cloth ready to catch the blood. Preparing the alcohol and bandages to prevent any infection. And a new step—putting myself across the room from Maddie so that she didn’t have to see any blood up close. Was that the moment I really started to care for her? When I bled out the infection that had poisoned my entire being, to ensure it didn’t corrupt her as well? For the first time, I was able to put someone else’s well-being above my own. And I found I didn’t mind it.
The knife clattered to the floor as my broken fingers refused to grasp it any longer, and I put my hand against my head. Had Conrad already hurt her, or was he planning something else? My world was still spinning, but the revolutions felt more manageable now. I could get this under control, as long as I remembered who I was dealing with. He’d probably let her fret for a few days before he did anything. I had time, but not much. Hot blood rolled down my arm, droplets patting softly against the tile.
“Help me bandage it up,” I whispered, and Shawn scrambled to grab my kit from where I kept it under the sink. He’d been witness to this practice more than once, even tried to stop it before. That earned him a broken nose for his trouble. We hadn’t spoken for a month. But he was the first person to visit me in the hospital, besides Eva, when he found out I’d finally attacked a critical vein.
I sat with my head in my hand as he wiped up the mess, pressing against the cuts until they stopped bleeding. He pressed bandages over the open wounds and set about cleaning up the floor.
“You’ll need to change your pants. They’re stained.”
“Good. I wanted to get out of your cheap-ass clothes anyway.”
He snorted. That was a good sign. If he was amused by me giving him a hard time, it meant he wasn’t quite as mad at me as I feared. I couldn’t pull this off without someone rooting for me, even if he didn’t know the whole score.
“What’s the plan?”
“I haven’t quite figured out yet.”
“Well, you’d better do it quick. We need to be there in half an hour, based on what you told your dad.”
“Forty-five minutes it is.” I pushed myself to my feet and walked to the closet. “Follow me. You need to know the whole truth of what’s going on.”
Meyer
It was Joshua who opened the door for me when I arrived at Conrad’s house. We stared at each other for half a heartbeat before he stepped back to let me into the house. I kept my eyes on him as I crossed the threshold, unwilling to show him my back.
<
br /> “He’s waiting for you in the study.”
“No he’s not.” My injured hand was tucked away in my pocket. A massive dose of ibuprofen had taken most of the edge off my pain, but there wasn’t much we could do about the redness and bruising. I didn’t want Conrad to see that if he didn’t have to. “I’m already here late, but he’ll make me wait even longer before he comes to talk to me.”
Joshua looked away and shrugged one shoulder. “Nevertheless, that’s where he wants to speak with you.”
I pressed the fingers of my left hand against my mouth, biting back the words I wanted to sling at him. There would be a time for that later.
“I know where it is.” Even though having Shawn come in here with me would have been a mistake, I was suddenly wishing I hadn’t asked him to stay behind. I could have used his moral support here, especially now that he knew the whole truth of what was going on with Madeline. He reacted as I expected him to, with disgust and disbelief. But he got in the car with me and rode to Conrad’s house all the same. I wanted him to stay at my place, but he was insistent on being close to the action. He didn’t want me to fuck up again, run away when I should be standing firm. His dedication to making sure Maddie was safe was admirable, but it still grated on me. I’d always done things on my own. I wanted to keep it that way.
Maybe it’s time to accept some help. Keeping him out hadn’t worked; I was only here to save an innocent life because of him. I had to give him credit for that.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled as I finally turned my back on him and walked farther into the house. The door closed with a bang, making me flinch. I sneered at myself. Now was not the time to be skittish.
I glanced up the East staircase as I passed it, forcing my eyes not to linger. I was confident Maddie was being kept in the same room where Eva and I had stayed the first couple of years she lived with us.
The first couple of years she was Conrad’s captive. I had to stop thinking of Eva as some sort of guest or nanny. She was a victim. She was kidnapped then raped, repeatedly, for years, yet she always cared for me as if I was her own child. At the very least, I owed it to her to be honest in my own thoughts.
As expected, the study was empty when I entered. I walked to the window and stared out it. The sun was gone now, and residual sunlight streaked purple across the sky. Purple was Maddie’s favorite color, I remembered randomly. I didn’t think she’d ever mentioned it to me, but she bought so many purple decorations for her freshman year dorm room I had a feeling the interior must have looked like she spilled cough medicine over everything. When this was over, I’d redecorate my entire house if it would make her happy. Even better, we’d go somewhere completely new. Build from the ground up. She could pick out the paint color for every wall, and I wouldn’t care how ugly it was.
The well-oiled hinges of the door to the study didn’t make a sound as they opened, but I knew the moment Conrad entered the room. I could taste the bad blood in the air as clearly as if he’d opened a wound.
“You’re late.”
“As are you.” I turned as he approached me, both hands tucked in his pockets, still dressed in his suit as if he’d come directly from the office. It was a good idea to change my clothes, even if they were more wrinkled than I would have liked. Shawn never had the need to dress as pretentiously as I did, and Conrad would have noticed right off the bat.
“Yes, but you’re the one who set the time.”
He reached out his hand to shake mine, and I had no choice but to take it. He smiled maliciously as he squeezed my hand far too tightly. I felt the pain all the way up to my neck and partway down my back. Somehow, he’d figured out what I did to my hand. Maybe he somehow had me followed to the doctor’s office, or just saw the hole in the wall of my office and drew his own conclusions. I slipped my hand back into my pocket the moment he released me, using every ounce of my self-control to keep the pain from showing on my face.
“I hear you didn’t even bother to stay the whole day at the office today. I’m not feeling up to being lectured by you about work attendance.”
His left eye twitched slightly, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and walked to his desk. I knew his routine by rote memorization, and he reached for his bottom drawer as expected. The bottle of gin he pulled out was nearly full, but that would likely change tonight.
“You wanted to talk, let’s talk.”
“You owe me for Madeline.”
“I don’t owe you shit. I told you on the phone, what you think you’ve earned is irrelevant. You take what you want.”
“You already got to have someone around to suck your dick whenever you wanted. Did you really need to take my toy away rather than get a new one of your own?”
“Don’t insult me, boy.” Conrad didn’t bother to look at me as he poured himself a drink, filling the tumbler nearly to the brim. How much had he already had tonight? If he got drunk enough and came after me, I would be able to dodge his blows, but he was strong enough to overcome Madeline. I needed to keep him occupied long enough for him to pass out, in case he changed his mind about making her wait before introducing her to his madness. “You let her get under your skin. It only took her three weeks and she has you taking punishment meant for her. I kept Eva under control for four years, and never once did I catch feelings for that petulant whore.”
I leaned against the wall, then stood up straight again, reminding myself that posture here was everything. There was no point in arguing with him over what Maddie meant to me; he’d already figured it out and I wouldn’t be changing his mind. “I want Anita.”
He actually spit out the drink he’d taken, expensive liquor running down his chin and dripping onto his desk. “You want to fuck your sister?”
“Jesus, no.” What was wrong with him? “I want her to answer for trying to kill Madeline, and putting our company at risk.”
“Forget it.” He waved his free hand at me as he took another drink, managing to swallow this time. “I told you, Anita isn’t taking the fall for this. She showed real ambition in trying to get that deal done, and it’s not her fault it fell through.”
He was unbelievable. “Fell through? Terrorists have our products, Conrad. We could all go to jail for this.”
“Not going to happen. We’ve got our best lawyers working on this. The company will be fine.”
“Shawn says we’re bleeding shareholders.”
He grimaced at Shawn’s name. “You know, I’m about fed up with that imbecile’s meddling in our affairs.”
“He’s my best friend.” My only friend. “And he’s one of our top employees.”
“Well, maybe it’s time for him to find a new employer.”
I winced as I bit down hard on my lip. This wasn’t good talk. We were getting off track. “Anita is trying to destroy everything we have.” Getting angry with Conrad generally wasn’t conducive to my well-being, but this was a unique situation. I walked across the room to stand across his desk from him. “My entire life has been about Schaf Industries—its profits, its growth, recognition within the industry. I worked myself to the brink of insanity while she partied her little ass off all through college, and she ruined everything overnight. I want her to fucking pay for throwing my hard work down the drain.”
Conrad wrinkled his nose at me briefly, as if temporarily losing control of his features. “We’ve been over this.”
“Then we’re going to go over it again.” I pulled my damaged hand from my pocket and snatched the glass from his hand, then turned it over before he could react. Expensive gin poured over the papers lying there, onto the closed laptop, spilling over the edge and splattering on his shoes.
“You insolent cunt!” He reached out to slap me but I had already stepped out of his reach. I threw the glass to the ground and it shattered, cut crystal flying across the dark wood floors.
“I came here for something, and I’m not leaving without it.”
“What you’re demanding is out of the
question.”
He was around the desk and stalking toward me. Every last ounce of my internal strength kept me from backpedaling toward the door. “Then give me Madeline.”
“Over my dead body!”
He swung at me but I was ready, uninjured hand snapping out to push against his chest. We were nearly the same height and should have struck each other at the same time, but I snapped my head back at the last second while keeping my shoulders in place. The look of shock on his face as he stumbled backward was almost satisfying enough to quell the panic rising inside.
“You want me to be cold, Conrad, I’ll be cold. I’m done with you taking what was meant for me. Give me what I came for.”
He roared as he leaped at me, moving with a speed that belied his age. I’d spent years learning his every move, his tactics for hurting me as badly as he could. I stepped out of the way of his swing at the last moment. He went stumbling past me, then wheeled and swung again, and I had no choice but to meet him head on. I couldn’t dodge forever.
But I couldn’t bring myself to hit him, not with decades of fear screaming my defeat before I even had the chance to try. My arms and hands ached as I pushed away his punches, each as powerful as the last. He never seemed to lose steam.
“Hit me back, you pussy!”
I flinched at his voice, hands dropping for a second too long and letting a glancing blow land off my chin.
You know I can’t.
“I’ve laid out my requirements.” Every sane molecule of my body screamed at me to lie down and take what was left of my punishment before it became so violent that he put me out of commission for a week or more. Maybe if I gave up now, I’d be able to sleep without begging Shawn for painkillers. But if I did that, Madeline would still be here. “You know what I want.”
He grabbed my broken hand and squeezed it, but I didn’t go down, even though the blinding pain made my throat close up. It was his foot in my kneecap that finally sent me to the floor. He was on top of me in an instant, kneeling on the bruise on my arm. He always remembered where he hit me previously, to make the next assault go smoother.