Magda arrives shortly before teatime. Despite her brave composure her face is ashen. We face each other in a strained atmosphere by the door. Since our move, she hasn’t been over to visit, not even to see the house. No matter our history, my heart aches for her loss.
I place a hand on her arm. “Magda, I’m sorry.”
She shakes off the touch. “If it wasn’t for you…”
My stomach dips, and my insides twist, guilt eating at my gut. I step aside to let her in. “He’s in the lounge.” I motion at the group crowding the sofas.
Sylvia arrives a few minutes later on the arm of her boyfriend. Her hair is neatly plaited in a French braid, and she’s wearing makeup, but she looks haggard. Her eyes slice through me, and then her gaze drops to my big stomach. The way she looks at me makes me feel dirty, like I cheated or did something wrong. Was I wrong in surrendering to Gabriel’s advances? Shouldn’t I have been stronger? A better person would have resisted. Indefinitely. I feel like I’m standing in a spotlight about to receive judgment.
“This is her,” she says to Francois. “This is the reason my Carly committed suicide.”
11
Valentina
The subdued conversations around us drone out Sylvia’s words. Nobody but her friend and I heard. For that, I’m profoundly grateful. I’m not sure I can handle the whole room’s eyes on me in the midst of Gabriel’s grief.
A switch in her flips, and I no longer exist. She looks right through me. Like Magda, she walks to Gabriel’s side to receive the sympathy and support she deserves. I didn’t expect anything different, but it makes my standing clear. Gabriel and I may be married, but only in name. To everyone else I’m still the maid, the slave, the toy, the imposter. I can’t even deny it. All of those things, I am. The only people who pay me kind attention are Michael and Elizabeth Roux.
Elizabeth hugs me by the door. “How is he doing?”
I can only shake my head.
“Come here.” Michael takes me in bear hug, holding me for two seconds to his big body.
Up to now, I haven’t realized how much I needed a hug. There’s nothing sinister in the gesture. The only vibe he gives off is of platonic affection. I immediately like him more.
Elizabeth hovers a palm above my stomach. “May I?”
I try to give her the bright smile of an expecting mother, but my effort flies half-mast. “Sure.”
She places her hand on my belly and looks at Michael with sparkling eyes. “Oh, my God. I swear I feel the baby kick.”
“He’s been kicking up a storm since this morning.”
“You’re beautiful, Valentina. Truly stunning. Isn’t she, Michael?”
“Breathtaking,” he says with a kind light in his eyes.
“I think I’m making the baby active.” Elizabeth removes her hand. “He obviously likes me.” She looks toward the lounge, taking in the guests. “Poor Sylvia.” Her attention returns to me. “Poor Valentina. She hates you, doesn’t she?”
“Is it that obvious?”
Elizabeth makes a sad face. “The way she looks at you…”
“I deserve it.”
Michael grabs my hand. “No, you don’t, and if you ever say something so self-degrading again, I’ll get Gabriel’s permission to spank you myself.”
A baritone voice resonating from behind us makes me jump.
“What was that, Michael?”
The three of us turn in unison. Gabriel is standing two steps away, his white shirt and black tie pristine, as if he hasn’t been wearing it since early this morning. He appears together, like he has a handle on everything. Only the haunted look in his frozen-over eyes gives him away.
“I was just telling Valentina not to put herself down,” Michael says.
Gabriel’s eyes find mine. They penetrate my soul, making me cold inside. “Is that so?”
“Our deepest condolences, my man.” Michael places a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “There are no words.”
“No, there aren’t,” Gabriel says.
“Gabriel.” Elizabeth embraces him. “If there is anything, anything at all…”
“Thank you.”
“Congratulations on the wedding,” Michael continues. “We’re happy for you.”
“Yes,” Gabriel says without looking at me.
Inwardly, I cringe. If I had any doubts about Gabriel’s feelings toward me, I don’t any longer. He thinks like Magda and Sylvia. It’s only his sense of responsibility and honor that prevents him from tossing his true thoughts in my face.
Elizabeth saves the moment by asking Gabriel questions about the funeral planning. All the while, he ignores me without ignoring me. He pretends I’m not standing next to him, but we’re so aware of each other our bodies hum.
The atmosphere is uncomfortable. The stress is too much. Every muscle in my body is clenched. A band tightens around my abdomen, squeezing and holding for three seconds before releasing. After two beats the pattern repeats, but it doesn’t hurt. My first Braxton Hicks contractions.
Needing to escape the tense situation, I offer to get Elizabeth and Michael a drink, but Gabriel stops me before I can walk away.
His fingers curl around my upper arm. “No.”
I stare at him in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Go upstairs and rest.”
Is he trying to ship me off? Is he ashamed of me? Of everyone seeing the evidence of what happens between us in the size of my belly? Hurtful feelings scorch through me, but this isn’t the time or place. This isn’t about me. Or us. This is about him and Sylvia. This is about Carly.
“All right.” I smile brightly for his guests. “Let me know if you need me.”
I purse my lips as another contraction hits. Gabriel holds my gaze for two more seconds, his eyes too knowing, too piercing. When the invisible vice on my belly snaps, I offer Elizabeth and Michael a polite greeting and free my arm from Gabriel’s hold, turning for the stairs, but he doesn’t let me go. His palm presses on the small of my back.
“I’ll walk you.”
I can’t be alone with him, right now. I’m afraid of the intensity of what I felt a moment ago, and most of all of his honesty. “I’ll be fine. Stay with your guests.”
And he does. He turns around and walks away.
In our room, I sit down on the bed. My hands smooth out the comforter that knows our secrets, our shame. Grief and blame tear me apart. My heart breaks a thousand times over for the man downstairs. I’m powerless to console him. How can I? I’m an ugly, dirty link in a chain of events that led to Gabriel’s daughter’s death.
Gabriel
Magda is getting impatient with me. She taps her nails on the desk upstairs in Napoli’s. “It’s been a month. You have to move on.”
A month since Carly is gone, and I can’t get my shit together. With moving on, Magda means killing, of course. Some jackass in Braamfontein crossed the line when he burgled our office. A month ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would’ve taken the idiot out without blinking an eye, but I made a promise to myself, for Carly, and I won’t betray my daughter’s memory.
I turn my back to her, facing the window that overlooks the gambling floor below. “Told you, I’m done. I’m out.”
There’s anger in her voice. “Without you, we’ll go under.”
“You have Scott and a thousand others you can recruit.”
“You are my son. Albeit a useless one, and thanks to––” She cuts herself short, gulps in some air. A shaky breath slips into the silence. “Now we don’t have an heir.”
Damn right, we don’t. My son won’t end up like me, just like it was never my intention to marry Carly off to a criminal worthy of running our shady business. What Magda won’t see is that we never had an heir, and we never will.
“It’s your business.” I turn back to face her. “Do with it what you will, but I’m leaving.”
Scorn deforms her mouth. “What will you do? How will you live?”
She’s got me by the balls a
nd from the way that scornful smile grows into a spiteful grin she knows it. I have no idea. I have a wife and soon I’ll have a child to take care of. People hate me. Enemies have grudges. I need to keep my family safe, and the only way to do it is to have money. State of the art alarm systems, ammunition, and guards cost bucks. Big bucks.
I cast out my feelers carefully. “I could still run the office, take charge of our business affairs.”
She throws me a snide look. “In our business the only bosses respected are the ones who get their hands dirty.”
“We could clean up the business.”
She slams her fist on the desk. “This isn’t how this city works, and you know it.” She points a finger at me. “Try and run a clean loan shark business and see how far you get. The competition will ruin you in a day, and if they don’t, the police and government will. They’ll take kickbacks from someone willing to pay it, and we’ll be finished. Over.”
The sad part is she’s right. If you can’t do bribes and play dirty, you’re going down.
“I will not see my hard work to build this company up to where it is go down the drain.” She accentuates her statement with a nail she pushes on the polished wood of the desk.
I won’t break my vow. That leaves only one option. “I’m sorry, Magda. I guess that means you’re on your own.”
Her body goes rigid. Pushing back her chair, she rises stately. It looks as if her back is about to snap. The fine hair on her upper lip and chin trembles. Her nostrils expand and shiver like a buck smelling lion.
She presses her palms flat on the desk, regarding me from over the rim of her glasses. “You’re making a mistake.”
“This is the only right thing I’ve done in my life.”
Her arms are shaking so badly she has to lock her elbows. I’ve never seen her this mad.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” she hisses. “It’s her idea. Her doing. She planted this in your dim-minded head.”
My defenses rise. “Leave Valentina out of this.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. “I should’ve known. Should’ve guessed this is her game. She’s always been too holy for us.”
I take a step toward the desk. “Leave her alone.”
“This is what it’s come to, then?” She straightens, balling her fists at her sides. “You’ll choose her over your family, over your own mother?”
“She is my family, and yes, she comes first.”
Magda reels at my words. I may as well have slapped her. The color of her skin takes on an ashen tone. For a few seconds, emotions suspend between us––shock, betrayal, disappointment, anger. They pollute the air and poison the blood that’s supposed to be thicker than water.
When there’s no other expression but disillusionment left on her face, she says flatly, “Get out.”
I throw her words around in my mind. This is what it’s come to. To be honest, we’ve always been heading this way. I was always the son who disappointed. She took my choice and gave me a gun, but I’m not that boy any longer. I’m the man Magda bitterly hoped I would never be.
Rapping my knuckles on the desktop, I give her my resignation with a tight nod and turn my back on her and the future I’ve been building all my life. A part of me feels sorry for her. Not only did she lose her only granddaughter, but also the ambitions she had for her son. I won’t be her successor. I won’t salvage and nurture the business she busted her balls for. It will go with her to her grave, and what I’ve done for this business will take me to hell.
Outside, I stop on the landing for a breath. I lean my palms on the balustrade and inhale deeply. This is where it all started. This is where I laid eyes on Valentina for the first time. She looked so young and damn innocent in her white uniform and so strong. She was standing right there, at that table, and when the croupier grabbed her arm, I wanted to chop off his hand for laying a finger on her. The minute I looked into her scared but defiant eyes, I wanted her. She was a challenge and a mystery. She was brave and naïve. So damn hot and so damn untouchable. Unobtainable, and yet, just there, within my reach. Every contradiction in the book. The woman I wanted, and the woman I had to kill.
It seems like three lifetimes ago, but it’s only been a year. If I were a better man, I’d right the decision I took here that night by setting her free. I’d cut her lose like I cut the cords with The Breaker, but I’m not a good man. I can never let her go. This is my unrepented evil. She’s my biggest sin.
Looks like we came full circle. It ends where it began. With her. Somewhere in between, I lost Carly. My marriage, the baby, the changes in our living arrangements, it was too much. My ruthless lust for a woman I stole drove my daughter away from me, pushed her right over the edge. My burden doesn’t feel lighter when I descend the stairs and walk the hell away from who I used to be. It only grows heavier the nearer I come to the house. I can’t lay that godforsaken burden down, because it will mean I have to set Valentina free, but I can’t look at her, either, because it means I’ll have to face my guilt.
Valentina
As the days move on, Gabriel grows further and further away from me. He’s closed up in himself, and no amount of probing or baiting can lure him out. To suffer the loss he did is shattering, and the grief is devastating. He eats well and exercises every day. His body is the same rock-hard, strong one I remember, but the man inside has changed. Is he even in there, in the darkness that’s become his mind? No matter how much I talk or touch, I can’t get through to him.
From the dark circles marring his eyes, I know he’s not sleeping, even if he no longer sleeps next to me. After the funeral, he moved into the spare bedroom. He doesn’t go to work or see friends. He stays at home all day, but well away from me. When he’s not closed in his study or working out in the gym, he’s doing DIY work around the house. I watch him with his shirtless body up on the ladder, and my body doesn’t care that he’s still in grief or that he blames me. It only wants what it’s being denied––my husband’s touch.
Abstractly, he’s never been my husband, of course. Our house of cards, my make-belief reality, has come crushing down, and the man who taught me to be hungry for his caresses is now withholding them from me. This makes me sad. Since he hasn’t been inside me for weeks, I feel obsolete, like a purposeless burden. When he didn’t give me a choice, I didn’t want to be his toy or his wife, and now that I’m neither, I desperately want to be one or the other, preferably both. I’ll settle for anything he gives. There has to be hope, because he still gets hard for me. It’s difficult to hide when he’s working out in his sweatpants or swimming in his trunks.
Tonight, I cook his favorite dishes––lamb roast, green beans with bacon, and fried potatoes––and set a table with candles outside. Rhett, Quincy, and Charlie are dining inside, as usual. The falter in Gabriel’s step when he comes downstairs and sees the romantic setting in the garden almost has my courage failing.
Meeting him at the bottom of the staircase, I take his arm and lead him outside, not giving him the choice of heading for the dining room.
Without a word, he seats me and takes the opposite chair.
His gaze moves over the meal. “What’s the occasion?”
“Just dinner.”
For the first time in a month he meets my eyes directly. “Just dinner?”
“And spending time alone. We’re always with the others, not that I’m complaining. I like them, but…” Damn. My courage fails me.
The look on his face stops me before I can work up the nerve to finish my sentence. A veil falls over his eyes, and a shutter clicks in place. The silence stretches as he regards me with an emotion that slowly breaks through his unreadable expression. Under the thick surface of his mask, I recognize pity.
He pities me. He must think I’m pathetic. Irrational anger spreads through my veins. This is his doing, what he made me. If I’m needy, it’s his fault. If I want him, he’s to blame. How dare he sit there and judge me, feel sorry for me for wanting him? Tears prick at the back of
my eyes. No matter how fast I bat my eyelashes, I can’t blink them away. One slips free, two… Goddamn. Do I have to show weakness after weakness?
The mask slips another fraction as he reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Don’t.”
Don’t cry? Don’t want? Don’t feel? I want to shout and hurt him like I’m hurting, but I sniff my tears away and force my irrational hormones down.
“I’m trying so hard…” My voice cracks on the last word. I can’t carry on speaking for the fear of sobbing all over the roast.
He rubs a thumb over my knuckles. “You don’t have to try, beautiful.”
I don’t have to try what? Staring at him through my tears, I will him to explain, but he doesn’t.
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses the back. “You need your strength. Shall I dish up for you?”
My heart shatters into tiny shards. It takes everything I have to take my rejection gracefully and not jump and fight him like a bitch in heat. I nod. When he’s busy dishing food onto my plate I quickly wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. It’ll be easier for him to just let me go.
“Gabriel?” I wait until he faces me. “Set me free.”
His eye turn hard. “I already told you it’s not going to happen.” He puts down the spoon. “Eat. Your food’s getting cold.”
I vowed to take whatever I could get. Looks like I’m settling for being an unwanted responsibility.
Kris picks up on my change at work. She drags me outside to the garden table for lunch and sets down a box of chow mein takeout in front of me. I feel bad that Charlie is eating alone inside, but when I mention it, she shakes her head and points a chopstick at me.
“Stay put. We’re going to talk.”
I groan.
“You can give me that look all you like,” she shakes out a napkin in her lap, “but you’re going to spill the beans. What’s eating you?”
“Hormones.” Lately, I’ve been using that a lot as an excuse.
Consent (The Loan Shark Duet Book 2) Page 16