Kane snorted in disgust. “You’d go against the man paying you?”
“Call it insurance. I got to protect myself in case he don’t come through.”
“It would be more accurate to call it blackmail, wouldn’t it?”
“So it’s blackmail, fine. I’m no high and mighty Benedict, just a poor schmuck trying to make a living the best I know how.”
“What else,” Kane said with deliberation, “do you know about Berry?”
Slater stared at him a long moment. Then he smiled. “How bad do you want to know? How rich are you Benedicts?”
If he flashed enough cash, Kane knew, he could have everything he needed to know to put Berry Association, Inc. six feet under. It would take about two seconds to run the case through the court and pull down a verdict in his grandfather’s favor. Two seconds to remove all threat to Pops.
He couldn’t do it.
It stuck in his craw to win by trafficking with such scum. More than that, Lewis Crompton would rather lose than stoop that low.
Kane got to his feet. “Sorry,” he said in quiet disgust, “I don’t work that way.”
“Too good, that it?”
Kane made no answer. Turning, he walked away with unhurried treads. He didn’t look back.
Slater began to curse in a virulent undertone. He was still at it when Kane passed out of hearing.
15
New Yorkers, Regina thought from her new, Southern-tinged perspective, could be friendly enough when they wanted. For the most part, however, they hurried along both oblivious to each other and suspicious at the same time. Encased behind their self-protective mental barriers, they made no eye contact, but focused on their own problems to such an extent that all they wanted was for everyone else to get out of their way. They talked too fast and with little consideration for how what they said might affect someone else or what others might want to say in return. Nor did they notice or care that their habits made them appear distant and self-centered.
It seemed peculiar that she had never noticed, more peculiar still that she had been that way herself before she went to Turn-Coupe. But the sad part was that she would probably be exactly the same again after a few days back in the city.
In the meantime, she found herself having to make a conscious effort not to smile too much or speak too familiarly to the cabdriver who loaded her bag in his taxi at the airport, the doorman who let her into the apartment building, or the man who held the elevator for her as she approached it. She had no such problem, however, when she unlocked the door of the penthouse apartment and saw Gervis waiting for her.
“Well, it’s about time,” he said with heavy sarcasm from where he stood in the study doorway, filling the opening with his burly body.
“There was no flight out until this morning, then nothing without a layover.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Don’t tell me you were worried about me?” she said in dry disdain.
“I expected you hours ago.”
“Did you? I’d have flapped my arms harder if I’d known.” So much for her polite consideration for other people. It hadn’t lasted a day.
“Don’t give me any lip,” Gervis warned.
“Fine.” Swinging from him, she wheeled her suitcase away down the hall toward her bedroom and set it inside out of the way, then freed herself from the strap of her shoulder bag that she’d automatically crossed over her chest as she deplaned.
“I’m not through talking to you,” Gervis growled, following her as far as the bedroom doorway.
She didn’t bother to answer. Throwing the shoulder bag on the bed, she walked back to the door, put a hand on his barrel chest, and pushed him aside. It was surprise that made Gervis give way, she thought, but the reason didn’t matter. She’d have walked through him if necessary. Stepping farther along the hall, she opened the door of the adjoining room.
The small boy sitting on the bed looked up from the book spread over his lap. The afternoon sunlight streaming into the room caught glints of red in his brown hair and made his small, pale face look as fragile as fine china. His gaze was lackluster, his eyes heavy lidded. Then a slow, beatific smile spread across his face.
“Mama,” he cried, and began to push clumsily out of the bed.
Regina crossed the room in a flash and scooped him close as she dropped down onto the mattress. Rocking back and forth in a glorious excess of maternal love and pleasure for the familiar scent and feel of his thin young body, she murmured against his hair, “Stephan, my honey, my tiger, I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” he said, his voice thick.
“Now that we’ve settled that,” Gervis said from the hallway in sneering impatience, “could we talk here, Gina?”
She ignored him. Loosening her hold on her son, she ran her gaze over his small face, searching for reassurance. “How have you been, sweetheart? Has everyone been treating you okay?”
“I guess,” Stephan said, sending a quick look toward Gervis before giving a nervous shrug and lowering his gaze.
Her stomach muscles tightened, but she didn’t press the question. “What about school? Is it all right? Have you been doing fun things?”
“Well…”
“What is it?”
“I’d rather be here with you.”
Heart aching, she caught him close again. “I wish you could be, honey. I wish you could so much.”
“C’mon, c’mon,” Gervis said, snapping his fingers in harsh impatience.
Regina gave him a quelling look. To her son, she said, “Where’s your nurse.”
“She’s lying down,” he said slowly, as if it was difficult to remember. “I’m supposed to be taking a nap, too.”
“A nap? But you’re too old for that.” He was nine years old and usually had too active a mind for that kind of thing.
“She doesn’t think so. Michael doesn’t, either.”
Michael was the houseman who served as Gervis’s bodyguard on occasion. Regina couldn’t help wondering if Stephan’s nurse had been using the hulking ex-football player to frighten her son.
“We can talk here if that’s the way you want it,” Gervis said, shoving into the room and planting himself in the middle of the floor. “Matter of fact, it might be best.”
She looked up at him, her face set. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m tired of you avoiding this, baby. I want to know exactly what went on down there in Louisiana. I want to know how come you turned on me.”
“Considering whom you heard that from, I’d think you’d be embarrassed to believe a word.”
“You saying it’s not true?”
“There was never a chance.” Which was the exact truth, though not, perhaps, in the way she hoped he would take it.
He grunted. “So why was I getting zilch in the way of news out of you?”
“Did it ever occur to you there might be nothing to be had?”
“You saying that bunch is so squeaky clean I should give it up? Never in a million years. Either you weren’t trying hard enough, or you’re holding out on me. Which is it?”
“Neither—” she began.
“Oh, yeah. Slater says you were getting it on pretty good with Benedict. So why wasn’t I told? Why didn’t I get a report on what you asked him and what he said? Or were you too busy to say anything?”
“Please,” she said with a meaningful glance at Stephan who was watching them both with wide, frightened eyes.
“Don’t sweat it. I think maybe it’s time the kid found out what kind of mama he’s got. I think maybe you been holding out on me for years, Gina. I think you fabricated that little tale about being forced against your will, there, years ago.”
She stared at him with a frown meshing her brows. “That’s crazy and you know it.”
“Is it? Seems to me you got over being against sex mighty fast. You been holding out on me about that, too, haven’t you? We could have been real cozy all this time if you’d been straig
ht with me.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she protested. “We’re like brother and sister.”
He grunted a coarse laugh. “I think you do.”
“You think we should have—” She stopped, not wanting to say the words in front of Stephan.
“Why not? You don’t think I noticed you that way? I could have gone for you, might even have married you. But a cold fish for a wife didn’t exactly turn me on, and besides, I figured I owed you after the Harvard man.”
Regina had grown attuned to nuances of expression in the past few days. Something she saw in Gervis’s face tripped a sensor in her mind. “You owed me?”
“Yeah, well.” He lifted a shoulder and diverted his gaze to a spot above her head. “The guy asked me to set him up with you. He’d seen you, liked the way you looked. It was part of a package deal, business between me and his old man, you know?”
“No, I don’t know, Gervis,” she said slowly, “though I remember you arranged the date. Was the date-rape drug part of this deal?”
“That’s a hell of a question!”
“Isn’t it.” The agreement was without inflection.
Red splotches of color appeared on his jowls. He opened his mouth, then closed it and shrugged.
“What did you think?” she asked in low amazement. “That I wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t matter?”
“I didn’t know, okay?” he said, flinging up his hands. “The guys he ran around with bragged about slipping dope to women so they could put it to them while they were out, but hell, it could have been just talk. Anyway, you weren’t supposed to remember. How was I to know he’d screw it up, get in too big a hurry. Or that he’d knock you up?”
She couldn’t speak, could only stare at him, this man she’d thought she knew. Regardless, there was a sense of completion about it, as if some long-missing piece of a puzzle had been found. The suspicion must have been hovering at the edge of her consciousness since the beginning. She’d pushed it aside all those years ago because it would have meant she had no one, nothing to cling to while she waited for Stephan to be born.
Gervis waved a dismissive shrug, then stepped closer. His voice hardening, he said, “That’s not the problem right now. I want a full report on what went on between you and Benedict. No more excuses, no getting around it. You owe me, Gina. I put clothes on your back for years, shelled out for schools, hospitals, and a thousand other things. You’ve got by without a payback till now because I was suckered. That’s over. You’ll give me what I want or I’ll take it out of your hide.”
“You’re not going to hurt my mama,” Stephan said, his lower lip thrust out and his small fists tight as he struggled from the confinement of her arms.
Gervis barely glanced at him. “Not if she’s smart.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Regina said, catching her son to her again and holding tight.
“What, I’m supposed to tiptoe around you forever? I always knew you lived in a dream world, someplace like where that old jewelry came from, with ladies and gentlemen and hand kissing. I just never figured you were soft in the head.”
“I’m an idiot because I don’t think like you, is that it?” she asked in disgust as she got to her feet. “You’re the one talking in circles. You owe me, you say, but only until you want something, then suddenly I owe you. Well, not anymore. We’re even, starting now. You’d better go talk to that rat you hired.”
Gervis shifted to block her way to the door while his fleshy lips thinned. “I can see I’m talking to the wrong person here, all right, but I think I can still get some answers.” He lowered his hard gaze to Stephan. “Tell me something, boy. You got any idea where you came from?”
“Don’t,” she exclaimed, setting her feet in a fighting stance in spite of the trembling in her knees.
“I told you how it was going to be, but you don’t seem to get it. Guess maybe it’s time I showed you.” He jerked his head in Stephan’s direction. “Well, kid?”
“It won’t work. He’s not likely to know the words you’d use.”
“He can understand, can’t you, Stevie? You can understand real good. For instance, you know you don’t have a real daddy, don’t you now?”
Stephan blinked hard, frowning. He meshed his fingers, twisting them together. “A lot of the kids at school don’t have a daddy. It’s all right.”
“He’s a bright little bugger, see?” Gervis gave her a hard grin. “I think he’ll get the point just fine. You sure you don’t have something to tell me before I get into the really interesting parts of what the Harvard man did to his mama?”
“This is sick,” she threw at him as she tightened her protective hold. “You’re insane.”
An ugly look came over Gervis’s face. Holding her gaze, he said to Stephan, “You know how babies are made, boy?”
“They grow in the mama’s stomach.” Her son looked up at her for corroboration and Regina gave him a strained smile. She had to think, had to find something to give Gervis to pacify him for at least a little while. But what?
“That’s right, son. And do you have any idea how—”
“Wait!” Regina took a step forward, pulling Stephan with her at the same time. “Please, wait. Don’t you know what you’re doing? He won’t know it doesn’t matter anymore. He won’t—”
“Hey, I can’t help it, Regina. It’s your doing. But he’ll understand just fine, I promise you, because you’re exactly right about his brain power. There’s not a damn thing wrong with it.”
“The emotional damage could be terrible if he thinks—”
“Are you dense or something? I’m telling you the kid is perfectly normal.”
She stared at Gervis, not quite comprehending, yet afraid she understood too well. Her hands were trembling with a combination of horror and hovering anger. “What do you mean, normal? The doctor said—I was told over and over that there were definite learning and behavior problems.”
“The doctor said,” Gervis repeated with a sneer. “Find the right one, name the right price, and he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear.”
“You’re saying Stephan was misdiagnosed?”
“I’m saying I paid off the experts to tell you the kid had to have special schooling. I was tired of his noise and mess, and it was the only way you’d agree to let him go. Besides, you were taking up too much time with him. Between that and work, you weren’t carrying your part of the load around here. You never had time to talk when I needed to bounce ideas around….”
She said with care, because she had to be very sure, “You put my son into an institution for your own convenience?”
“Now you got it, and about time, too.” Gervis smoothed his thinning hair. “No need to pull some outraged-motherhood act about it, either. It’s a boarding school, for crying out loud. People send kids there all the time.”
“It’s not just a school! He’s been sedated for a solid year because of your experts!” Hearing the pain in her voice, Stephan turned and flung his arms around her, burying his face against her side.
“So what? It hasn’t hurt him,” Gervis said, the words exasperated.
She had been separated from her son for no reason other than the man in front of her had wanted it that way. He had taken Stephan from her and left him in the care of strangers. All her protests that her son was normal had been turned aside with jargon and statistics and condescending assurances that a mother never wanted to believe her child was flawed. And, finally, she had betrayed Stephan by listening, by letting herself believe she was doing what was right for him. He had been kept like a small, pale zombie for nothing. Nothing.
Rage such as she had never known swept through Regina, rage that fired her brain while leaving her heart cold. Sheer, unadulterated rage that made her want to kill.
Her voice a harsh rasp in her throat, she said, “Get your backpack, Stephan. Put everything in it that you truly need, everything you don’t want to leave behind.”
Gervis put his hands on his hips. “If you think you’re going somewhere, you can think again.”
“We’re leaving. For good.” She watched with grim anticipation as Stephan ran to his closet and jerked out his backpack, shoved jeans and a couple of shirts inside, then turned to scramble among the toys on his special shelf.
“I don’t think so,” Gervis said, spite glittering in his eyes. “Not with the boy.”
“I won’t let my son remain here.”
“Your son? Aren’t you forgetting a couple of things?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Number one,” he said, counting off points on his stubby fingers, “you’ll have to get by Michael. Number two, the boy belongs to me.”
She opened her mouth to deny it. Then she remembered.
Gervis was listed on the birth certificate as Stephan’s father. She had done that herself because the hospital nurse who’d filled out the papers had insisted the space couldn’t be left blank. She’d known Gervis wouldn’t object and wanted no possibility that the real father could ever have a claim.
Moistening lips that were suddenly dry, she said, “You can’t mean to hold on to him?”
“Want to bet?”
What she wanted was to smash the gloating satisfaction that shone on his face. She wanted it so badly she felt sick with it. “I’ll fight you.”
“Do that, if you think you can win.”
If you think you can win…
Did she? Could she? Was it possible?
Gervis had wealth, access to excellent lawyers, and the kind of vindictive drive that made coming out on top the only thing that mattered. If Stephan was hurt in the process, Gervis would blame her, not himself. He’d say she should have done what he asked, given him what he wanted.
Maybe, just maybe, he was right.
No. She couldn’t win.
A laugh, a low sound of intolerable pain, left her. She had to laugh or she would scream. Stephan knew what it meant, she thought, for he turned to look at her. Then he slowly put the space toy he had selected back onto the shelf, dropped his backpack to the floor.
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