Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2)

by Alexandra Silva

  Cassie looks up at me as I stand outside with them. And yeah, she feels it too.

  It could’ve been Leo. Or Freddie…Casper. It could’ve been worse.

  Kit’s gone. Carina’s gone. I refuse to part with anyone else I love.

  I’m done losing.

  I’m done crying.

  I’m done being broken.

  Now I’m angry. I want to destroy.

  If I can’t win the game, I’ll break the fucking board.

  Chapter 33

  Christopher

  The fire is roaring, the light blues and greys of the room glowing amber. The gilded frames flicker in the dark like flames licking up the walls to the cream and dark wood-beamed ceiling. Strangely what should feel suffocating, feels…peaceful. The darkness and quiet allow my thoughts to spiral freely, where they need to go in order for me tame them.

  Taking a sip of water, I focus on the soft blue eyes of the portrait hanging over the fireplace.

  How did you manage to stay sane throughout all this? I silently ask Grandad’s portrait. I’m trying so hard not to lose it all again.

  I’ve been cursed with the inability to shut off my thoughts. As a child it was torture, thinking about the same thing until it truly felt like I was going insane, my mind unable to take the never-ending estuaries of my thoughts. Something simple all of a sudden became rocket science, a problem with a million solutions I had to whittle down to one.

  I lost hours to my bottomless mind. It was dreary and agonising. The fear that I would eventually drive myself crazy was so consuming, so powerful, that it drove me to think of ways to stop it. Stupid ways, until Grandad sat me down in this room.

  Sit, Christopher. Breathe. Enjoy the quiet.

  At first the quiet felt like a prison. I obsessed over why he would sit with me for hours in silence, but the more I got used to it, the less I thought about the reasons why. Instead I let my thoughts and worries from outside these walls in. I let them have a life of their own. Slowly, my overworked mind relaxed.

  I started stealing these moments by myself. Without making me feel weak or fucked up, he helped me control my mind. Because he knew how it felt. He didn’t smother my thoughts; he encouraged me to let them roam…he gave them life, and in that one act of love and affection, he showed me the true value of humanity and kindness. Something I’ve held on to, even when less than humane things were asked of me. When I asked them of myself.

  “Hey.”

  I look up to find Leo standing in the doorway. He looks like he’s just finished working out.

  “You okay? It’s kind of late…”

  “Says the guy that’s just come from the gym.”

  “Touché.” Nodding his head, he laughs as he wanders over and plops himself in the seat beside mine. “I don’t know why people bother with these chairs. They’re not actually comfortable. I can feel the fucking straw needling my arse.”

  A burst of laughter fills the room from us both. So fucking stupid, but after the last few days…any kind of levity is worth a laugh.

  “What your arse feels is none of my concern. Besides, at least it’s only the chairs they’ve insisted on keeping the original stuffing. The mattresses would’ve been far worse.”

  “Imagine that.” We both fall into silence. After a few moments he asks, “What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit follows everywhere he goes.”

  “As much as I dislike Lucian, I don’t think we can blame him for everything.” A long sigh escapes me. “Have you ever thought about what would’ve happened if he hadn’t shown up that night?”

  Leaning his elbows on his knees, he tucks his head down. His hands massage the back of his neck like he’s trying force himself to relax.

  “He saved you…Cassie. Fuck, if it wasn’t for him you could all be dead.”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” he bites back, venom saturating each syllable.

  “No.”

  “I don’t have to forgive him.”

  “You don’t, and no one expects you to.”

  “I don’t care what anyone expects or says…” Leo looks at me with a hiss. “One benevolent act doesn’t undo years of all the shit he put my mum through. He’s not a good man, and I don’t trust him.”

  “We don’t, but Dad does.” I take another sip of my water. “He trusts him enough to ask for his help when he won’t take ours.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I wish I knew.

  “Who knows what any of this means? Everything was fine until the Stanton girl went missing. Lucy went missing, Grace died, Grandad and Kit. We’re being picked off.”

  Sitting back in his chair, he crosses one leg over the other.

  “It’s not all of us though, is it?”

  “I know what you think, but…”

  “But you think I’m crazy.” He steeples his hands in front of his face. “Here’s the thing. Do you see Charles here? He’s never around us when shit goes down. We’re being fucking hammered, and he’s nowhere to be found. He shows up at the end to make sure the mess is cleaned.”

  “That’s his job. He keeps the peace. Besides, after Grace…”

  “Grace? Come on, Christopher, how long did it take him to replace her with a newer model? Quite literally.”

  I sigh at his insinuation. “You’re beginning to sound like Fleur.”

  “Sometimes I wonder whether I moved her in with Cassie.” The laugh that follows his statement is light and caring. He has a soft spot for her. It’s obvious in the way he smiles when he talks about her, like he does when we talk about Arabella. “Anyway, it seems strange that he would carry on the way he has.”

  “It’s been almost five years since she died.”

  “And how long have he and this girl been together? Come on, if something happened to Arabella—”

  I shut him up quickly with a knock to the wooden side table. Superstition or not, I’m not risking anything.

  “My point is that if they were happily married, surely it would’ve taken him longer than it did to replace her.”

  “That still doesn’t mean anything.”

  He sobers very, very quickly. “It wouldn’t do.”

  “But?”

  “I’ve been going through Kit’s things. He had this fucking weird habit of making copies of things and storing them in the most random places. Anyway, I was going through the stuff from his office, and there was this one pile of papers that were too neat. You know, like they’d been printed and stashed in a rush. The pages were unspoiled, almost like they hadn’t been looked at, at all.”

  “Right…?”

  “Call it serendipity, or whatever. I mean, it’s not exactly a happy thing, but it’s beneficial nonetheless.”

  “Leo, what the fuck are you trying to say?”

  “Sorry,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “That photo Freddie found on Arabella’s phone?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was a copy of the page in his things. With more pages.”

  “And you didn’t tell me because?”

  “Because you had other things to focus on.” Smiling, he shrugs. “Besides, I told you I have shit covered. You know what that means?”

  “You have shit covered?”

  “Precisely. Anyway, the moment I handed Freddie the papers he went crazy. He was all over them like a rash. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take something so seriously.”

  Before he continues, I know what’s coming. My insides tighten uncomfortably.

  “There were some names, but we’re not sure what they mean yet. There’s a couple of pages that have numbers, so I tried to make sense of them, like with the transactions your dad had me looking into. But it didn’t make sense. My theory didn’t work, and I got so frustrated I couldn’t look at them anymore. But Freddie worked it out like he’d been looking at them for as long as I had.”

  There’s too much nervous energy vibrating inside me for me to stay sitting.r />
  “And?”

  “They’re dates.”

  “Dates?”

  “Yeah, dates.”

  “Of?”

  “See that’s the funny thing, most of them appeared to be insignificant. But there was one that meant a lot more than I thought…to Freddie.” The solemnness in his voice is staggering as I pace the length of the hearth. “I can’t stand Harry Stanton. The guy’s an arrogant prick, but the date of his daughter’s disappearance is on those papers. I don’t know much on it; I remember it being all over the news one minute and completely hushed the next. I always thought it was strange that Laura never mentioned it. She was so vocal about everything else, but never about her sister.”

  Nobody talks about Lucy Stanton. Not even her dad, the one man who has endless resources at his fingertips to find her or at least what happened to her.

  “That’s the lead he found?”

  “You knew?”

  “He said something, but I…” Fuck, now I sound like the worst kind of motherfucker. “Freddie thinks he finds a lead and goes crazy, then it turns out to be nothing. I assumed it was the same thing. If he’d told me the whole deal…”

  “There’s more. The other dates, they’re all missing people. Female and male. They’re all somehow connected to someone high up in politics or industry, someone with sway, but every single one of those missing people is pretty much forgotten about. It’s like they cease to exist.”

  His expression pinches as he buries his face in his hands. Shaky breaths fill the air, and if we were different people, I’d attempt to comfort him. Those nameless and faceless people aren’t the only ones who disappeared into nothingness. Forgotten by a world they left invisible footprints on.

  Kit, Carina, and Grandad are already old news, their lives a blip in history, unfortunate victims of fate to a world spared of its reality.

  My heart aches with my chest threatening to cave in at the way everything is conveniently brushed under the carpet.

  This is the life we live though, and as unjust as it is…

  “Leo, we have enough on our plate without chasin—”

  “I’m not Freddie.” His statement is blunt and final. “But someone tried to take Cassie too.”

  Bingo!

  It should’ve been obvious where this was going. I know Leo well enough to know he doesn’t let shit go. The only way he lets go of a grudge is by eradicating the source. It’s why he fucked over his family’s firm.

  To get back at Lucian. Except in the end it wasn’t Lucian who was the bad guy.

  Standing here, I can feel his frustration over it. I feel it eat at him.

  “I’ve never put you and Freddie into comparison.”

  “You’re looking at me like I’m mad,” he spits. “But think about it, the minute we were on their tail, they went for Cass. What’s to say it wasn’t the same people that took the Stanton girl?”

  This conversation is familiar. Different to the last conversation Dad and I had with Grandad in this house, but it feels the same.

  How are we having the same conversations even after everything that’s happened?

  We’re still chasing after shadows.

  “How does a girl like Lucy Stanton disappear into thin air? She was on every fucking magazine, newspaper… She was just like Cass and Bella.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, and no, I don’t think you’re mad. However, we have nothing that says your suspicions are right.”

  “Those pages say it’s got to be more than coincidence, and I think they all know. It’s why they’re blocking us.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. And as much as I want to have someone to fucking blame for all this…” Turning away from the fire, I sit on the antique upholstered coffee table. The old Georgian piece creaks as it bears my weight. “Look, we can sit here and put everything together to paint a picture we both want, but in the end if it’s wrong, what’s the point?”

  “The point is we’re all being played. It means that someone on the inside is fucking every one of our plays. And Francis and Benedict wouldn’t hang us out to dry. There’s only one person that has managed to stay on the outskirts of all this.”

  “Charles has to.”

  “He has to keep things clean, not stand in our way.”

  “Say you’re right…”

  “Say I’m right? We’re fucked and Fleur will be devastated.”

  I reach for the water pitcher on the side table and pour myself another glass, watching as Leo fetches something stronger from the bar.

  “It’s late somewhere in the world,” he says when I look at my watch.

  Time seems to run away with itself here. It’s three in the morning, and the snow hasn’t relented one bit. Everything is still. Like we are forgotten.

  Taking the small measure of vodka, he presents to me. I knock it back followed by half of my water.

  “If you’re right, do you honestly believe she doesn’t know what her father is up to?”

  “She’s too loyal to keep something like that from us. Especially with Cassie being a hit.”

  “Cassie’s her friend. Charles is her father. They’re blood.”

  Leo swallows down his drink. “I trust her.”

  “Because Cassie trusts her.”

  “No.” His gaze squares on mine. “Because I didn’t have a clue about my grandfather’s role in all this. Or my father’s for that matter. And as much as she believes she knows what’s going on, she doesn’t know shit.”

  “She’s not you,” I remind him.

  That’s the thing about Leo—he’s soft as shit when it comes to the girls. But then, it’s not surprising with his mother’s history.

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. I also know that she is broken by the fact her mother died without a real explanation. To find your mother the way she did…”

  “Grace drowned. That’s explanatory enough.”

  “Is it? Because the dates on those pages stop a couple of months short of her death. I’m not saying that there isn’t more, but it’s strange that what we have ends where it does.”

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  I down the rest of my water. It’s a way of pushing down the uneasiness strangling my insides.

  “Is this what you went to see Dad about the other night?”

  “No.” Leo shakes his head, a smile slowly lightening his face.

  The bleakness emanating from him dims, and there’s a glimmer of excitement that takes its place.

  “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, but we got sidetracked.”

  “Sidetracked?”

  “You know what I mean.” He sits back into his chair. Silence stretches between us before he finally says, “Cassie’s birthday is coming up.”

  I hadn’t forgotten, but with everything, it got pushed to the back of my mind.

  “Yeah, Mum normally plans something. Last year she didn’t want anything.”

  Taking a long breath, he says, “Your dad said.”

  “My dad said.” Laughing, I get up from the coffee table. This conversation is getting weirder by the second; I need something to help it make sense. “Why are you talking to my dad about my sister’s birthday party?” I start to pour us another round of singles.

  “I asked him for her hand.” It’s quick and a little too nervous for him. It takes a second too long for his words to register.

  I never in a million years thought that I’d feel the way I do about this conversation. All I can picture is Cassie’s fucking toothless smile, when she started school. The memory of walking her through the gates with Mum and Dad is so fresh, so vivid, that I swear I can smell the mulchy scent of wet, mushy autumn leaves and the syrupy sweetness of the pancake breakfast she picked as a treat to celebrate her first day of big-girl school.

  That one memory is enough to send my heart reeling into so many different thoughts of what it would’ve been like to walk Carina through the sa
me gates. Holding her warm hand through it and missing her like she was leaving me for days rather than hours.

  “I asked for his blessing,” Leo says a little louder and steadier.

  Picking up our drinks, I turn to look at him. “And?”

  “He said yes.”

  “Good.” I smile through the sudden melancholy of my reverie. Handing him his drink, I sit in the chair beside his.

  “Good?

  “Yeah.” Holding my glass up between us, I wait for him to chink his to mine. “Welcome to the family.” I give him the approval he was after.

  “Thanks.”

  “What’re you going to do if she says no?”

  Silence.

  More silence.

  Leo swallows.

  Obviously, I know Cassie won’t say no to him, but it’s sort of fun seeing him process that possibility.

  “Ummm…” Taking a deep breath, he looks into his empty glass like he’s willing it to fill up miraculously.

  “What? You’ve got to be prepared for every eventuality.”

  “She won’t say no,” he says matter-of-fact, but the way he’s playing with the tumbler in his hands says he’s shitting himself.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Shut up!” Standing up, he takes his glasses to the bar and puts them down before heading for the open door. “You’re a wanker.”

  Holding his middle finger up, he salutes me goodnight, leaving me to my thoughts. It’s not the conversation we’ve just had that’s on replay. Not one single part of it is at the forefront of my mind as it should be. Rather, it’s the what ifs they’ve conjured up. The stolen possibilities and memories.

  All I can think about is the little girl I held in my hands. My chest tightens with a love I can’t let go of. A love that I can’t ever imagine not feeling.

  I don’t want another baby.

  Arabella’s words chase every one of my thoughts. And I keep waiting to feel hurt or angry. I keep waiting to feel like I’m missing something. For that feeling of preconceived regret and resentment to kill whatever’s left of me.

  It never comes.

  Instead, I’m drowned in relief. I can’t fathom loving another child as much as I love Carina. Or the obligation of letting go of her to make room for another. I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to forget her weight in my hands. I don’t want the feel of her tender skin to disappear. I don’t want to replace her at all.