by E. K. Blair
I grab my phone, anxious to find the man I’ve been dreaming about my whole life. “Give me the name of one of those sites. I’ll search while you’re finishing up with the contact information.”
Seconds later, I’m on the world’s largest business network, punching in the names, starting at the top of the list.
The incessant ticking of the clock greets the sun as it rises behind the cloud-covered sky. I look over from the couch I’m now sitting on to Declan who has just finished the last of his coffee while still at his desk. Sounds of the clock, tapping keys on the laptop, and raindrops plopping against the window are the only noises in the room.
“How are you holding up?”
“There’s nothing,” I respond in frustration. “Half of these people aren’t even on these sites, and the ones that are, half of those don’t even have a profile picture.”
“I’m hitting dead ends myself.”
Although I feel defeated, I’m not hopeless, because it’s always been my dad who’s kept that hope alive when I wanted to give up. Even if it were only a miniscule piece of hope that remained in my heart, I couldn’t let it go, and that strength to hang on was always for him.
“I’ve got to take a break,” Declan eventually says, pushing his chair back from his desk. He rubs his eyes, and I can see the reddened fatigue in them. He holds out his hand for me, saying, “Come on. You need a break too.”
“I can’t.”
“Elizabeth, put the phone down. You’re going to tire yourself out to the point you’ll make yourself sick. If you want to find him, you need to get some rest so your body doesn’t give out on you.”
“But—”
“It isn’t a request, Elizabeth,” he states firmly, and it isn’t meant to be a test of his authority, but rather a display of concern for me.
It’s clear I worry him, so I don’t protest again. I take his hand and allow him to lead me back to bed. He curls his body around mine as I lie with my back to his chest, but I never fall asleep. My mind won’t quiet down enough for me to relax. Memories flood, playing reels of my past: tea parties, bedtime stories, scratchy beard kisses, and scooter rides around the neighborhood. He’s so vivid in my head, his eyes were unnaturally bright, and his smile . . . just the thought pricks my heart in needling pains.
Quiet tears slip out and roll onto the pillow beneath my head, and I wonder if he had been looking for me during the years I wasn’t me. Did he just give up when I was living as Nina? Does he know that I devoted so many years of my life to destroying the man who destroyed him? Does he want to find me as much as I want to find him?
“Shh, darling,” Declan breathes into my hair, and I’m suddenly aware of my vocal whimpers.
“Do you think we’ll find him?” I ask in weak hiccups.
“Yes. It might take time, but I will find him for you.”
“You know when I was little, after he was taken from me, I spent the first few years being kicked out of every foster home I was placed in,” I begin to tell him.
“Why?”
“I would find ways to sneak out in the middle of the night. For the most part, it was me climbing out of my bedroom windows.”
“You were only five though. Where did you go?”
“Anywhere. I look back now and feel so bad for the girl I was. A girl so desperate for her dad that she would roam the streets in the middle of the night.”
Declan moves to prop up on his side to look down at me and wipes my tears.
“When that foster home realized that I wouldn’t stop sneaking out, no matter how much they tried to set up preventions, they’d call my case worker to pick me up and deliver me to the next family who was willing to take me. Eventually, I went through too many homes, and I was sent down to live in Posen, where I wound up staying for good.”
“Why didn’t you try to leave that house like you did all the others?”
“Because of Pike. Because for the first time since my dad, I had someone who loved me and cared about me,” I explain through lamenting pain. “I was more terrified to lose him than being locked away and tortured.”
Declan’s muscles constrict when he screws his eyes shut. It’s an anguished display he can’t control, and I suddenly feel guilty for putting that weight upon him.
I reach out to touch his arm and he nearly recoils, causing me to jerk my hand back.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” he snaps, blinking his eyes open. “Don’t ever be sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to upset y—”
“I want you to talk to me,” he says, cutting me off. “I want you to feel safe enough to unload all your pain, because I want to carry it for you. I want it free from your soul, so I can bury it deep inside mine.”
I touch his grief-stricken face and tell him, “I don’t want to be your martyrdom. I want to be the thing that makes you happy.”
“You do make me happy,” he affirms. “You do. I’m happiest when I’m with you—always. Even in our darkness, I’m happier than what I am without you.” He drops his head, kissing me, sliding his tongue across my lips. And with my hands tangled in his hair, he looks intently down at me. “You’re not my martyrdom. You’re my profligacy.”
I listen to Elizabeth as she continues to open up to me more. She tells me a story about the time her father let her put makeup on him. She laughs through her tears as I listen, combing her hair with my fingers and licking away the salts that crystallize her heartache. Each granulated fragment, I take for myself, freeing her a tiny piece at a time.
After a while, her guard is down enough that when I suggest a sleeping aid, she takes it without a fight. I lie with her, watching her lull into a peaceful sleep before going to shower and dress. She still remains in bed, in my sheets. Her red hair splayed over the pillow, her milky skin with faint reminders of her kidnapping, her petite body curled into a ball. One could look at her and never believe the titanic life she’s endured.
She poises herself as strong, but it’s her cracks that cause me to stumble and fall, making me love her even more. I’m a greedy man, and to know that her weaknesses make her more dependent on me feeds my avarice. But at the same time, I get off on her strong-willed feistiness. She’s a mélange that appeals to all my facets and allows me to freely indulge in my nefarious needs that other women would take high offense to. But Elizabeth has this unique way of submitting to me without being submissive in nature.
She’s enigmatic.
My phone goes off, pulling me away from the room where my love sleeps. When I answer, it’s security needing permission to let Lachlan up. I called him as soon as Elizabeth fell asleep because I need to talk to him about why he’s been communicating clandestinely with Camilla.
“’Morning,” he greets when I open the door.
“We need to talk,” I say and then turn to lead him into the office.
I sit at the desk and he takes one of the seats opposite.
“You look like shit, McKinnon.”
“Long night, as you can imagine,” I respond.
“How’s Elizabeth?”
“Anxious. Stressed. Confused,” I tell him. “She’s sleeping now, which is why I called you over to talk.”
“Let’s talk.”
“Camilla,” I state, and when I do, I note a hint of nerves in Lachlan—restless hands.
“Go on.”
“Last week, when I answered your phone, she thought I was you. She called you baby. When I confronted her about how she knew you, she told me I should ask you. So, as a man I hired because of the implicit trust I have in you, tell me why that trust shouldn’t be obstructed by this.”
“Like I told you before, Camilla and I go way back.” He stops his nervous hands and folds them in his lap. “She’s actually the reason I stopped working for your father. We had a long relationship and were engaged when I found out she was sleeping with Cal. She didn’t have the nerve to tell me, but the close proximity in which I worked with your father, it was bound to surf
ace.”
“Jesus,” I mumble under my breath, uncomfortable that I’m having him divulge this embarrassment. But if I’m not only going to put my life and trust into his hands but also Elizabeth’s, I need to know everything to make sure there are no hidden agendas.
“Without question, I kicked her out of my home, and it came as no surprise that she went from my house to Cal’s,” he continues. “That was the last day I worked for him. That is, until a lifetime after all that happened, my phone rang. To my surprise, she was still with the bastard, and an even bigger surprise, I find out he never married her.”
“Why did she call you?”
“For help. Your dad had just been arrested.”
“Wait,” I say, stopping him. “You mean recently?”
“A little over a month ago.”
Agitation gets me and I lash out at him. “You knew he was in jail this whole time and never told me? What the fuck, Lachlan?”
“He didn’t want you to know. Said you two had some pretty harsh words before you moved back to Scotland from Chicago.”
“So explain how it goes from a dissolved friendship to him confiding in you from jail?”
“He needed my help. I gave him over a decade of my loyalty. Bad blood or not, he felt I was his last resort for confidentiality.”
“And you just gave it to him? That doesn’t add up, Lachlan.”
“Perhaps it was curiosity,” he defends. “I fucking despised your father and Camilla for what they had done right under my nose. So, imagine my shock when I find out he’s in jail and she’s left high and dry. Karma had done her job, but I wanted to bask in the wake of her achievement. I humored him and lent him the false comfort of an old friendship.”
“Baneful.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you.”
“Because he’s my father?” He nods, and I lean back in my chair, clasping my hands in front of me. “He’s a piece of shit,” I lash out in hate. “He’s spent his whole life virulently criticizing my every move in this world.”
“He’s a narcissistic bastard, but I had been unaware of any discord between the two of you until he told me about the confrontation the two of you had after you’d been shot.”
“Our issues go way back,” I say. “That doesn’t explain why Camilla is calling you.”
“She thinks she can run back to me. She calls, sobs her pathetic story, and thinks I’ll take grace on her. She’s delusional.”
“And your loyalty?”
He leans forward with a leaden stare, stating adamantly, “My loyalty is with you and that girl in the next room.”
I then lean forward too, resting my forearms on the desk and brutally threaten, “It better be because if I find out otherwise, I promise you, your head will be the next one I put a bullet in.”
My words cause him no hesitation, not even a blink—a steady sign of his integrity. This man knows what I’m capable of—he’s seen it with his own eyes—so he’s fully aware of the repercussions if I find out there’s fault in his word.
THE SMELL OF the black pepper tenderloin Declan’s preparing fills the apartment, causing my belly to growl. The past few days I’ve struggled to eat and even sleep. I keep going over that manifest incessantly. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy, but I can’t stop myself. Declan practically had to force-feed me a sleeping pill last night just so I could get some rest. I was pissed and lashing out at him.
“Why aren’t you trying harder to find him?” I screamed as he fought to hold me down.
“I’m doing everything I can, but I don’t know what he’s hiding from or the threat we face when we do find him.”
He then pinned me to the couch and shoved the sleeping pill down my throat. In the process of gagging on it, I accidentally swallowed it. When he released my arms, I began swinging at him, irate that he would rob me of the time I could’ve used to get closer to finding my dad.
I woke this morning after allowing sleep to fuel my body with restored energy and a clear head and apologized to Declan. But the moment he left to go attend a meeting with the architecture firm, I was back at it, dissecting the manifest. It’s been five days since I received this list of passengers, and I’m no closer to finding a lead. What’s even more discouraging is the fact that both Lachlan and Declan are starting to feel like they’ve exhausted all avenues aside from traveling all over the States to knock on all one hundred and twenty-two doors. And as much as Declan affirms that he will find him, I don’t doubt that he would actually go to those lengths to do so.
While Declan is in the other room cooking, I take my time getting ready. As I’m applying a little gloss to my lips, I hear the buzzing of my cell phone. It catches me off guard since no one aside from Declan and Lachlan has the number. When I walk into the bedroom, I spot the phone on top of the dresser and pick it up.
UNKNOWN, reads across the screen.
“Hello?” I question curiously when I answer the call.
“Hey, kitty.”
His voice stuns me for a split second.
“Matt?”
“You miss me?”
God, he’s so skeevy.
“How did you get this number?” I bite on a quiet voice as I walk into the bathroom and close the door so Declan can’t hear.
“Everyone is traceable. Even you, my dear.”
“What do you want?” I snap irritably.
“That’s no way to greet an old friend.”
“Cut the shit, Matt.”
“Fine. I need your help.”
“Forget it.”
“Do I need to remind you of your place in this equation? You owe me.”
He’s right. I very well could be sitting in prison if he hadn’t covered up Pike’s murder for me, so I swallow back my hatred for his slimy ways. “What do you need?”
“Well, it seems I’m in a bit of a bad situation with a loan shark.”
“What the hell are you doing business with a loan shark for?”
“Pike’s murder being the face of my business wasn’t a good look, kitty. No one wanted to be associated with me with the threat of cops watching. I needed money.”
“What happened to it?”
“It’s gone. I gambled it away in hopes of increasing my profits.”
“You’re an idiot, you know that?”
“The idiot who saved you from a life behind bars,” he reminds with growing pique, and then drops the bomb. “They’re gonna kill me.” He pauses. “I can’t buy any more time from them.”
I brace my hand on the edge of the sink and drop my head. I could bail him out, sure, but he’ll never leave me alone. The threat of this guy will continue to hang over my head, and how do I have a shot in hell of moving forward in this life if my past is forever following me? Matt is nothing but corrosive—he always has been. Unwilling to allow him the opportunity to one day pull me down with him or to risk him turning me in to the cops for all the crimes I’ve hidden under my belt, I take back the control.
“You want me to bankroll you?”
“I need you to wire the money. My time is up.” Panic seeps through his words the more he speaks. “Pretty soon, there’s gonna be a bounty on my head.”
“If I do this, will you leave me alone?”
“Yes.”
I take a moment to let him sweat a little, enjoying the upper hand and listening to him squirm for my help.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Elizabeth, what the fuck? Come on!”
“Don’t call me again.”
“You fucking cunt!”
“Let me tell you who the cunt is,” I seethe through my teeth, injecting each word with the poison of my rusted heart. “You don’t get to fuck with me anymore. I’m not a toy you get to play with. So this cunt is done with you, you little shit. Let them kill you; it’ll do me the favor of dispelling you from my life.”
Before I give him an opportunity to respond, I disconnect the call and shut my phone off. With both of my hands clutching the c
ountertop, I look at myself in the mirror and greet the monster that stares back at me, but no sooner say goodbye. I take in a few deep breaths and rein in the beast I’ve been trying to tame—for Declan—for us.
Minutes pass, and my heart settles into a healthy rhythm. I apply a little more gloss before taking the phone and shoving it down in my purse that’s in the closet. I turn to the mirror and give myself a lookover, paranoid that Declan will see right through me.
Walking out of the bedroom, I watch Declan for a few seconds. He’s barking at someone on his phone while pots are steaming and boiling. He surprised me with the announcement earlier today that Davina, his childhood friend, is joining us for dinner. I’m not exactly happy about it but refuse to let Declan notice my displeasure. He says that he wants me to give her a chance, that it’s time I stop secluding myself from people and put myself out there to make friends. The thought doesn’t sit well with me though. I’ve never had friends. The women I socialized with back in Chicago were merely a charade I put on to appease Bennett and play my part in the whole con. Those women weren’t my friends though.
The only two people I’ve ever truly welcomed into my life are Pike and Declan. I never saw the point in having friends; I still don’t. But Davina is part of Declan’s life and it’s important to him that I get to know her. So with my fake smile, I’ll do my best to stifle any jealousy that might arise to placate him.
“Is someone in trouble?” I ask when I walk into the room after Declan ends his call, shaking off the residue of Matt’s phone call.
“I think I’m going to have to make a trip back to Chicago to deal with some business concerning Lotus.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is fine. Forbes is going to be doing a feature on me for an upcoming issue and they want to get photos of me at the Lotus property.”
“You’re kidding. Declan, that’s amazing!” I exclaim. “Congratulations!”
He laughs at my reaction, but I can’t help myself. Declan’s spent his life trying to measure up to his father’s success, so to have a feature in Forbes is incredible validation.