This was an intricate dance, not a game as Damon had suggested. This was shadowed in layers of secrecy and riddled in excess and desire. It was a dance performed in Hell. And as I came closer to Nathaniel Marcroft, who was now watching me and not the curtains, I realised that this man could well be the devil himself.
His suit was bespoke, gold and diamond cufflinks glinting in the low lights of the room at each wrist. His hair was an intriguing salt and pepper shade, cut to accentuate his square jawline and strong, straight nose. His skin was tanned to perfection, not too much, not too false, just right. As though he had obtained it on the exclusive beaches only the rich and famous attend. Everything about his appearance was the height of elegant fashion. Everything about his mocking smile and calculating eyes represented a sense of entitlement and boredom only the supremely wealthy can effect.
He was gorgeous, for a man well into his fifties. A true fallen prince.
“Mr Marcroft,” I said, offering a smile as I came abreast of his seat. “What a pleasure.”
He stood up in a move that would have been considered gentlemanly, if he hadn’t stepped into my personal space with such apparent disregard for social etiquette.
“Lara-Marie,” he said softly, the hint of his accent shining through in just my name. His body emanated a type of heat. One that made me think of lower circles, and fire and brimstone, more than anything else.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked, purposefully ignoring my father’s curtains. I couldn’t go there. Even if I was prepared to use them to corner Marcroft, I still couldn’t look at those blasted curtains.
Nathaniel raised a single eyebrow and then indicated the vacant seat at his side.
“If you were to join me,” he said, “then I am sure to enjoy myself.”
I smiled and took the offered seat. He waited for me to be seated and then sat himself. He was a man of manners. But I suspected those manners were only for show. What really existed was beneath the exquisite exterior. What really existed could have killed a woman, I told myself.
“I met Kyan the other day,” I said as a way to start the conversation.
“Yes. I’m aware.” His attention kept straying to the curtains. I’m not sure he was aware of that fact.
Or maybe he was and he was using it.
“He hasn’t changed a bit since we were young.”
“I do hope he has changed some, my dear.” He looked at me again with such delight it made me wonder if he’d been looking elsewhere at all. “Men need to grow up eventually.”
“Well, you know what I mean. He still looks so young and full of life,” I said, wondering just what Nathaniel had meant.
“He is a Marcroft,” he replied in what was obviously a tease. He winked when I smiled at him. It should have been creepy. I needed it to be creepy. But his smile seemed genuine and his humour self-deprecating.
“Your new venture seems quite the success,” I offered, wishing I had a glass of champagne in my hands, as for some reason I suddenly felt the need to fidget.
It wasn’t that he was looking at me in a way that made me nervous. It wasn’t that I found questioning an old family friend in such a veiled way disturbing. It wasn’t even the fact that my father was doing God knew what to his collared and graceful girlfriend just a few feet away.
Something about all of this was off. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“We were lucky to find a niche that was underrepresented,” Marcroft replied, taking a sip from his own glass.
It was the first slip-up he’d made in regards to being a gentleman.
“And you, my dear,” he added. “I hear you are doing very well in your chosen profession.”
“I like what I do.”
“You look happy. Or is that for more personal reasons? A man, perhaps?”
OK, and the creepy had arrived. And yet, his questions were light and well intended. Casual conversation between an established businessman and the daughter of his old friend.
But something was off.
I had to force myself not to look at my watch, wondering how much longer I had before Damon arrived to rescue me. The uncomfortable of earlier had become a tight noose around my neck.
And still he’d done nothing, absolutely nothing, to have set the fine hairs on my arms up on end as they now were.
I offered a smile. I feared it was patently false. Nathaniel’s eyes assessed me and then he looked toward the curtains, even though they hadn’t moved. This time it was definitely purposeful. Drawing my attention, even as he added, almost absently, “Don’t mind me, Lara. I’ve been hounding Kyan to settle down, and I’m afraid matchmaking is on my mind of late.”
“Do you have someone lined up for Kyan?” I asked.
He smiled, still looking at the curtains.
“In fact, I do,” he said, almost wistfully.
Damon’s arrival couldn’t have occurred at a better time. And then not. This was the Nathaniel Marcroft beneath the perfectly presentable gentleman facade. This was the evil behind the prince.
There was something wrong about this man. Something that set a primal part of me on high alert. He was intelligent. Poised. Every action and emotion well contained. For all intents and purposes he was the picture of charm. But he’d forgotten one thing.
I grew up next door to him. I saw him at our dining table on many occasions as a young girl.
This man before me was not the Nathaniel Marcroft I had known. This man was all calculated charisma, masterful manipulation, and errant elegance. The Nathaniel Marcroft I had known was full of potential but also quite unable to shut the fuck up.
He could have trained himself to be more circumspect. He could have learnt to hold his tongue and mete out conversation as though it was priceless.
Or he could have been completely inside his head, otherwise unengaged, but somehow managing to cover the shortfall.
What had happened? And did that make him good for Samantha Hayes’ murder?
“There you are, darling,” Damon announced, handing me a glass of champagne and garnering Nathaniel’s attention. How long he’d hold it, I wasn’t sure.
Because that was becoming more and more evident. I’d thought him charming, but charm requires attention to detail. And for Nathaniel Marcroft I was suspecting the details were a little off.
“Damon Michaels,” I said, smiling up at him in a way I hoped looked convincing. “This is Nathaniel Marcroft.”
Nathaniel smiled. It was a Cheshire cat grin.
He stood up and held out his hand to Damon, murmuring through a smirk, “Pleasure to meet you, Mr Michaels.”
They’d met before of course. At Sweet Hell. But I wasn’t meant to know this. I looked toward Damon, hoping he’d play along. But Damon was more switched on than your average investigator.
Plus he had a reason to continue to dupe Marcroft. He hadn’t found his sister yet.
“Mr Marcroft, my pleasure as well.”
“Are you taking good care of our Lara-Marie?” Marcroft asked, his voice low and conversational, but I had the sudden impression that he was trying to keep my presence overlooked by those still obscured by the curtain.
I have a suspicious mind. I’m a police detective who sees the darker side of life more often than not. I’ve witnessed some truly devious acts. Seen the repercussions of them. The fallout that ensues. The far reach of nefarious crimes. Nathaniel Marcroft was not doing anything illegal, not right now that is, but he was setting the stage for something. And my money was on it being wicked.
“Absolutely,” Damon replied, placing his arm around my waist and ‘staking his claim.’
Marcroft noticed. Of course he did. He smiled, lifted his glass up in salute, and said, “To matches made in Heaven.”
We all took a sip, repeating the words.
“To relationships that can traverse Hell,” he said immediately afterwards, in a way that would have received an automatic repeat in normal circles.
But we were n
o longer in normal circles. We were somewhere in the lower circles of Dante’s Hell.
Because I realised as Damon repeated the words and I mouthed them, and then he sipped his drink and leaned in to kiss my temple, showing affection and possession in that one simple move, that he’d just played right into Marcroft’s hands. Danced directly into position.
And been caught in his treacherous web.
To Nathaniel Marcroft I was ignorant of what Damon had been doing. Blinded by his soft kisses and tender caresses. Unaware of the nature of his evenings in a back room of Sweet Hell.
The eighth circle was fraud. Damon had just passed it. Acting as though he didn’t know the man I had introduced him to. Behaving as though I was the centre of his world.
To Marcroft that was as good as a lie. A deception worthy of a true fraud.
To Marcroft, Damon had just become his poster boy. And that meant his journey through the ninth circle, the remaining circle, would be personally orchestrated by the man.
I knew this. I knew it with a sense of clarity that alarmed me.
But it still did not mean Nathaniel Marcroft murdered Samantha Hayes.
I had nothing. Except a predatory sexual deviant who fit the role but seemed more concerned with winning his next conquest. A closed-off, ice sculpture for a father, who kept sexual slaves as pets. And a strangely compelling but completely hollow psychopath, who enjoyed fucking with people’s lives.
Either one could have done it, really.
None of them I could conclusively peg for committing the crime.
Chapter Thirty
“If you think you saw it, you probably did. If you pretend you didn’t, it never exists.”
I didn’t want to stick around and corner Kyan. I certainly didn’t want to spend another second in the company of his chillingly, fucked-in-the-head father.
And staying long enough to see Haydee emerge with her jewel studded collar from behind those curtains was a definite no-no, as far as I was concerned.
But if wishes were horses, I wouldn’t have been so lonely as a child.
Kyan approached from over the shoulder of Nathaniel. A look of abject terror on his face and then gone in the blink of an eye. I didn’t mistake it. His skin was still blanched and his fingers shook when he attempted to brush hair out of his eyes. A move designed to look relaxed, and it would have succeeded, but my bullshit meter was set at its most sensitive.
It was dinging a mile a minute right about now.
Then, in the next breath, my father pushed through the curtains. No Haydee, but he shut them quickly at his back, and effected a look of casual surprise when he spotted the group who awaited his arrival. His eyes skimmed over Kyan, hesitated briefly on Nathaniel, and then took in Damon and myself without so much as a pursed lip or narrowed gaze.
Or appropriate blush.
The emotionless expression on his face suddenly meant something. The look I had seen so often as a child made sense. I’d known it was an act, a cover for whatever the fuck went on beneath his chilly exterior. But I hadn’t realised just what that act tried to hide. Just how much it said by saying nothing.
He’d made a mistake. Exiting the curtains without taking care that the coast was clear. He’d made a monumental mistake and he was angry. The type of anger that consumed a soul. The type of anger my father had been living with all of these years and then some.
Anger was better than indifference. But he wasn’t angry at me.
He was angry at himself.
“Well, this is cosy,” Nathaniel said, breaking the silent stand-off first. My father said nothing. “A Redoubt Road reunion.”
“Dad,” Kyan urged, moving closer and laying a hand on his father’s arm. “I think it’s time we should go.”
“Nonsense,” Nathaniel countered. “We’ve only just all arrived.”
It was almost a childlike gleeful statement. An innocent announcement couched in that shadowed, multi-layered unease I’d begun to feel. And, by the looks of it, Kyan felt it too. The need to get his father out of here overrode any act he had managed to perform in the past.
“We have a late afternoon meeting, Dad,” Kyan pushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally addressing the rest of us. “But we’re expected and must leave.”
“Not a problem,” I replied. “The day is still young, after all.”
“Indeed,” Marcroft said, his attention springing to me in that instant. “You never know what the night will bring.”
I smiled. Pleading ignorance in that one vacant look. Marcroft grinned; the Cheshire cat look again. And then looked toward Damon.
“You two make a fine couple,” he offered, ignoring the continued efforts of his son to get him to move. “We should have an official reunion, Ethan,” he said, still looking at us and not my father. “Lara-Marie brings her Damon.” Now he looked at my father. “And you bring your latest pet.”
I’d thought he was icy before, but the chill that emanated from my father almost froze our heated breaths on the tense air.
Kyan struggled with his composure, such a contrast to who he had presented at the back door to Sweet Hell. Marcroft floated in the blissful turmoil he’d created, watching first my father’s cold, feigned indifference and then me. It wasn’t the surprise he’d thought it would be. It wasn’t the distraction he’d hoped he’d achieve.
I stared into the eyes of a treacherous spider and smiled. It was hopefully confused, shocked and mortified all at once.
I glanced at my father, a nervous and uncomfortable look shared between daughter and parent, then said, “I’m sure Mr Marcroft doesn’t mean that.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Kyan offered, grasping his father’s wrist and starting to haul him away. “Too many glasses of champagne,” he added, his grip tightening.
“We’re all family here,” Nathaniel declared, as if that allowed for such blatant rudeness.
“Come on, Dad,” Kyan said, and finally his father agreed to be turned away. Kyan’s eyes met mine, a look of shame crossing his features and then replaced suddenly - and I suspected purposefully - with a haughty smile. “It doesn’t help that we spend our nights surrounded by every manner of vices.” He lowered his voice, his words aimed at me and not my father, the subject of Nathaniel Marcroft’s darkest vice of all. “Sometimes I think my father wishes the rest of the world were as open as those who frequent Sweet Hell.”
“Open about their sexuality, Kyan?” I asked.
He paused, his father now deep in conversation with someone else further along. We were all but forgotten to the man. At least for now.
“Any vice, Lara,” Kyan offered. “We’re a gambling establishment which caters to the many sins known to man.”
“Those would be what exactly?” I pressed, my words still only mildly interested. “Lust? Gluttony? Greed?”
He stilled, but returned to his polished performance in the next heartbeat.
“Come now,” he said jovially. “Surely you’re not entirely unfamiliar with any of those. You do see some interesting things in your line of work, I should think.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping eye contact. “It makes it easier to see the truth amongst the treachery.”
“Well,” he replied softly. “A worthy trait for a police detective to have.” He nodded to my father. To Damon. But not to me. And then left.
We watched him approach his father, but couldn’t hear what was spoken or see what expression Kyan wore. Their backs to us, they made their way toward the exit of the banquet hall. Somewhat faster than strictly necessary.
“Are you aware of any illness, mental or otherwise, that Nathaniel Marcroft might have?” I asked, still watching the men leave, but my father knew the question was all for him.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Lara-Marie.”
“One you think I’m not adept at,” I countered.
“On the contrary,” he remarked, straightening his cuffs and taking a step away. “I think you play it better than me.”
<
br /> Was that a compliment? He was gone before I could ask.
“Fuck me,” Damon whispered, somehow managing to break the strain of the last few minutes and allow me to breathe. “What the hell just happened?”
Good question. Kyan Marcroft was a performer, an actor who excelled at his chosen role. Was his initial terror at seeing his father cornered by me the act? Or was the conversation afterwards part of the play? Who was the more treacherous? Father or son?
“There is something seriously fucked up about the Marcrofts,” I offered in way of answer.
“You’re telling me,” Damon murmured, and then took a step towards the curtains my father had appeared through and parted them slightly.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was seeing.
“But what the hell have they got to do with HEAT?” I added, in a poor attempt to get him to butt out of my father’s - out of what was now my - secrets.
He turned to look at me and smiled. “I don’t know either of them. Never met them before last weekend. They’re more connected to you than me, love.” The curtains at his back slid together. They hadn’t been parted long enough for me to see behind them, but they taunted with the way they continued to softly sway.
I ran a hand over my face. Carl insisted it wasn’t just about revenge. Or just about evading capture. Or just about the nine circles of Hell. It was about all of them.
HEAT had to be the revenge. But for what?
Evading capture? Was it to cover the crime of murder, or was it something else? And if it was something else, how did Samantha Hayes fit into all of this?
Lastly, the nine circles of Hell. That was perhaps the easiest to solve. The Irreverent Inferno was involved. Providing the stage? Or hiding the actors?
“She’s not there, you know,” Damon said from beside me.
“Who?”
“Haydee.”
I glanced up. He shrugged. “Magic.”
I let out a small laugh.
“What’s our next step?”
I slowly shook my head. “I need to plot the case. Map it.”
“You’re close enough to the end to do that?” He knew me so well. The white-board only came out when my mind was too full of potentially connecting dots.
H.E.A.T. Book Bundle (H.E.A.T. Books 1-3) Page 60