Rising: Slay Four

by Paige, Laurelin

  “Special doesn’t always mean celebratory.” He took a sip from his own glass, his mouth puckering as the flavor hit his tongue. “I think this will do just fine. Shall we?”

  I walked with him back to the living room and took a place on the couch, curling my feet up under me. Edward looked from the chair to the bench. It was our pattern to sit apart during sessions, and I was sure he was deciding which he would find most comfortable.

  “If this is your session, that means I’m in charge, right?”

  He laughed. “Whatever you say.”

  I glowered momentarily then relaxed into a smile. Edward’s way through these was to be stoic and controlled, which I appreciated, because I needed that from him. But he didn’t need rigidity and distance from me. He needed warmth.

  “Then, since I’m in charge, I say we change things up.” I patted a spot on the sofa next to me. “Come sit by me.”

  His lips twitched with what might have been disapproval, but after a slight pause, he strolled over. “You know why I required the space between us in your sessions?”

  I peered up at him standing above me. “Because you’re cruel and cold and you like to be able to watch while I squirm?”

  He scowled at my response. “Because I thought it would help me not accidentally fuck you.”

  Huh. It was odd how an unknown detail like that from our past could make me swoony, even under the circumstances. “Funny then how all of your responses involved fucking me on purpose.”

  “Funny indeed.”

  I grinned. “Well, I can’t guarantee you won’t accidentally fuck me if you sit by me. But since you’ve already just had your way with me, you might be safe for a bit.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to take my chances.” He sat down, not close enough so that we touched, but close enough to be cozy. “Whenever I’m ready?” he said, making fun of himself since those were the words he always said to start my sessions.

  It struck me as surreal—the wine, the intimacy, the lighthearted vibe between us. It felt as though he were preparing to tell a story about “that one time” he went fishing or some other jovial reminiscence. Did that make him a worse person? To not only be capable of murder but to also behave like it was no big deal?

  Or was the carefree act for me? His way of making his tale easier to hear.

  Both thoughts sobered me. I took a long sip of my wine.

  Then, I buckled in for the ride. “Yes. Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Very well.” He cleared his throat and began. “I’ve told you before that Frank Dougherty wasn’t a good guy. I should have known it from the start because Camilla only ever found herself with the worst of men—a pattern, I’m told, that stems from the abuse at the hands of her foster father. But Frank wasn’t like the others. He was from a good family, and though he was privileged and reckless as many trust-fund heirs are, he was the first man to make my sister happy.

  “Or, he did in the beginning, anyway. By the time he stopped making her happy, she was too involved with him to let on. And when they married, which was a little after a year of dating, they moved to Berkshire where Frank’s family house was located, and though I bought a country house near Bray to be near her, I didn’t see her as often as I would have liked. I was busy with work and kids and. Well. I was preoccupied.

  “So I’m not sure exactly when it was that he started hitting her. Let alone when hitting turned to full-on beatings.” He paused to drink some of his wine, medication to follow the wounding words. “She had bruises when I’d see her, but I didn’t come to the country enough to notice the frequency, and she always had an excuse. Fell while hiking. Tripped over the dog. Everyday injuries. Red flags, but she never made a big deal and so I didn’t either. I believed the perfect marriage image was real. He worshipped her in my presence, and at a time when I was very uninterested in my own marriage, I envied what they had.”

  He finished off the rest of his glass in several gulps, and I was grateful for the break, brief as it was. It gave me a moment to absorb what he’d said. Gave me a moment to feel for the sister-in-law that I’d begun to feel close to during the effort to snare Ron. I’d known she’d suffered abuse in the past. Beyond what Edward had told me, it was evident in her carriage, in the way she dressed, in the reclusive manner in which she lived.

  Hearing her abuse confirmed, though, made it real, as real as the ending we were heading toward. The words that my husband had used to explain that reality took up the space of a minute when the acts they conveyed had taken far more of Camilla’s life.

  I hurt for that life she’d led. The ache burrowed in between my ribs, a twisting constant sort of pain. I imagined those years she’d spent in secret, enduring abuse she most likely thought she deserved, walking on eggshells all the time in order to not incur more. Ron had hurt me too, similarly and not at all the same, and there was an intense part of me that felt her pain like it was a memory, yet I was sure I understood only a fraction of what she’d gone through.

  More important at the moment was Edward’s pain. His love for his sister was very fatherly. It was evident he felt responsible for what she’d gone through, so much so that years later the telling of her story still required a good amount of alcoholic lubrication.

  When he set his glass down on the nearby stand, I passed him the rest of my wine. He smiled appreciatively. “Needless to say—” he swirled the liquid, watching it coat the sides of the glass “—I had no idea what was wrong when she called one day at the office and begged me to come to Berkshire to get her. Said she needed to leave and that she’d explain when I got there. Very vague. I tried to get more information from her on the phone, but she insisted it wait and that it was urgent. Camilla wasn’t one to cry wolf. I dropped everything and went.”

  I smiled. “Of course you did.”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal, but it was. He wasn’t a knight in shining armor, perhaps, but he was a hero all the same, and I loved him for that, even when his methods of protection were on the dark side.

  My smile faded as I remembered we were headed to a grim ending. “Then what?”

  “Not knowing what I was walking into, I drove myself instead of taking a driver. It was late afternoon when I got to her house. She was waiting at the gates with an overnight bag, wouldn’t even let me pull into the driveway. She got in, urged me to drive, and refused to say anything more until we were somewhere ‘safe.’ I didn’t know what safe meant, of course. I should have taken her to London, and I would have if I’d understood, but I didn’t. So I took her to Brayhill, which was nearby, and flat out told her I’d take her nowhere else until she explained.”

  He took a sip of my wine then set the unfinished glass down beside him. Sitting forward, he rested his elbows on his thighs and clasped his hands together in front of his face. “I didn’t believe her at first. Which I regret very much. But she’d put on that show for so long. They’d been married for ten years, and I’d never had any clue. I’d even forgotten about the times I’d seen bruises until I really thought about it later on. In the end, she had to peel off her shirt and show me the scars. Camilla’s always stayed covered up. She’s self-conscious about the marks her foster father left, and I’d known about those, of course, as well as other scars, but I hadn’t seen so much of her skin in nearly a decade.”

  His torso expanded as he took a long breath in. “It’s not my place or my story to comment much on what I saw,” he said, breathing out. “Let’s just say it convinced me.”

  I ran my hand up and down his back, not sure if it was meant to comfort him or me. He accepted it for longer than I thought he would. Then, when he glanced over his shoulder at me, I pulled my hand back into my lap.

  “What happened that finally pushed her to call you? Something worse than usual?” It probably wasn’t relevant, but the question came out anyway. A sick sort of curiosity, and I braced myself for details of an altercation that had to be horrendous. Being beaten at all was appalling. Yet my mind ran away
with all the possibilities that would make it worse—did he burn her like her foster father had? Cut her? Break her bones?

  In the profiled position, I could easily see Edward’s jaw tense, mirroring the dread that I imagined. “She’d tried to leave him before, apparently. Without success. He always tracked her down, made her feel like it was impossible to get away. She’d been too embarrassed to involve me, she said. Can you believe that? Embarrassed.”

  Yes, I could believe that. I’d felt the same about Ron.

  “As for the fight that day, she didn’t say much about the details except that it had been a typical row. Apparently his violent streaks came in cycles, and there’d been a fairly good reprieve before that morning. The reprieves always ended eventually, according to what she told me, and she’d been half prepared for it this time, but was hoping beyond hope that he’d meant it this time when he’d said he’d changed. She thought if there was any chance that he would, this would be it.”

  Putting together what I already knew about Camilla at the time of her husband’s death, I realized why she’d put so much stock in him. She’d been six months pregnant. “She wanted to protect Freddie.”

  “She did.” Retrieving the glass of wine, he stood and paced over to the window. “Freddie was the only reason she called me,” he said, looking out into the night. “She didn’t care enough about herself on her own, but for him…”

  He washed the thought away with a swallow of wine, then turned back to me. “To be fair, Frank had really made it difficult for her to see any other path. He’d ostracized her from her friends. He’d taken complete control of her life—her accounts, her daily schedule. She couldn’t even get access to her car without going to him, which was why she’d needed me that day. She had no money, no vehicle. She’d only been able to phone because he’d been in the shower. She managed to call me and take her bag down to hide by the side of the road during that time. Then she spent the next hour placating his every whim and praying he wouldn’t check her call log, which he often did. She got away to meet me by telling him she was going for the mail.”

  It sounded similar to every account of domestic abuse I’d ever heard, which made it no less horrifying. I pulled my feet up to the sofa and hugged my knees to my chest, needing the support to hear more.

  Edward’s support was the wine. He finished it off and set it down on the side table. “Obviously, once I was convinced, I was ready to tear the man apart with my bare hands. I fantasized doing so for much of the evening, in fact. Planning all the ways I’d destroy him when we should have been headed back to London. They were brutal, believe me. Ways in which he truly suffered. Who knows what I would have done. I would have started legally, though. I called my lawyer that night to request a meeting the next day when we got into town. I believed we had time, see. I didn’t think that he would come after her so quickly or know to come looking for her at Brayhill. Stupid, right? Where else would she go? I suspect things would have gone quite differently if I hadn’t thought I was so invincible.”

  He sank down in the armchair. “I never did figure out how he got past security. She’d left her mobile behind. My best guess is that he found where she kept the system code saved in her contacts, but he may also have lured her to let him in some other way. I’d given her my laptop when she’d gone to bed. He might have emailed her there or messaged her through a social app. I didn’t want her to ever think I blamed her, so I never asked. All I knew was that, in the middle of the night, I was woken with shouting from the guest wing. I didn’t even think about it—I grabbed my gun.”

  My skin prickled with foreboding, but I tried to remain expressionless as he went on, the way he always was when he listened in my sessions. It was harder than I’d imagined.

  Whatever my face said, he went on. “Camilla and I were the only ones in the house. I was ninety-nine percent sure that Frank was our intruder, but I had no plan. I just went to the safe, took it out, loaded it with a full cartridge, and went to her room. The door was open when I got there, and I must have arrived just after it happened because they were both by the fireplace, Camilla standing with the poker in her hand, Frank swaggering as blood gushed from a wound at his head. Whatever threat he’d been, he was outnumbered now. We could have dialed 111, had him arrested and taken to hospital. He may have survived. Though she’d hit him pretty hard. There was a good chance the injury was fatal on its own. Either way, I didn’t let us find out. As soon as I registered what I was seeing, I aimed my gun and shot. Three times, to be sure.”

  There it was. The terrible truth, not quite as terrible as I’d imagined, gruesome as it was. No premeditation. Self-defense, most likely, according to the law. Potentially hard to prove, but with Edward being who he was...

  Except.

  “Frank died in a fire,” I said, remembering the accounts I’d read. The entire estate had burned down.

  Though, of course that had been a cover, I realized now. As likely as it was that he could have walked away unscathed, there was also the chance that he wouldn’t. It was only Camilla’s word that her husband was a danger. If Frank had entered without breaking in, it made it harder to claim self-defense. It might have been different if it were only himself, but since Camilla had hit Frank first with the poker, Edward would never have risked going to the authorities. His only choice was to cover up what happened, which had to have involved a whole new level of risk.

  Confirming my thoughts, Edward leveled his gaze on me. “Do not underestimate the power of a rich white man, Celia. It was nothing to get his body taken back to the Dougherty home, to have the estate burned to ashes, to have the fire service call it an accident, to have the coroner cite asphyxiation as the cause of death.”

  It was Ron’s similar position that had kept him from being arrested for years. It was how so many men got away with evil deeds.

  I rubbed my palm across my forehead. “That’s terrifying,” I said without thinking.

  “Which part?” Edward asked sharply. “Because all of it terrified me. I’d killed a man in cold blood. I covered it up without any inquiries from authorities. I got away with it scot-free. It disturbed me so much that, needing comfort, I ended up calling the one person I knew that wouldn’t care what I’d done.”

  “Marion.” She’d referenced the last time they’d been together when she’d seen him that day in the office. This had to be the time she’d been talking about.

  “She came straight away,” he said, though I hadn’t needed the confirmation to know I was right. “She let me take out my horror on her. When she left, she was as black and blue as Camilla ever was, I guarantee it.”

  Edward was a sadist, but he tended to prefer psychological pain to physical. For him to lean on the latter said what sort of place his head had been in.

  I rubbed both hands over my face. There was a lot to process. It was outright murder. No denying that. But if he’d lived, it was unlikely he would have gone to jail for any real time. Frank had money on his side too, and rich men rarely got punished for their sins. He might always have been after Camilla. They’d definitely have always been connected through their child. What worse things could Frank have done to Camilla and Freddie if Edward hadn’t done what he had?

  It was complicated, and I would probably need to take some time before I completely understood what I thought about it.

  None of that mattered right now. Strangely, my concerns at the moment were less about what Edward had done in the past and more about how he viewed himself now because of them. From his bitter tone, it was evident he was carrying a shit load of blame for things that, in my humble opinion, he didn’t deserve to be blamed for.

  Especially when the only one blaming him was himself.

  I dropped my hands from my face, set my feet on the floor, and leaned toward him. “Okay, hold up. This is a terrible story—I’m not going to deny that at all—but there are a number of things you’ve said that seem to lack perspective.”

  “Oh, really,” he said patr
onizingly.

  “Yes, really. Number one—” I held up my index finger “—the things you did to Marion within a consensual sexual relationship are nothing at all like what Frank did to Camilla. You know that. My God, out of everyone in the world you know that. You were the one who forced me to see that the relationship I had with Ron was different from the relationship I had with you. You not seeing it now is shortsighted and, frankly, it’s martyrdom. You are neither short-sighted nor a martyr, so what the fuck?”

  His frown eased ever so slightly. “I didn’t feel good about it, regardless.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were dealing with other shit, and you weren’t behaving like yourself, but was Marion upset?”

  He paused before he shook his head. “She was not. In fact, she was rather into all of it.”

  I held my hand up in the air to stop him. “More than I need to know, thank you, and let’s just be clear that I’m not ever going to be into the pain stuff no matter what shit you’re dealing with.”

  “Duly noted.” This time his frown was almost a smile.

  Feeling bolder, I moved to the ottoman in front of him and put up two fingers. “Number two, it was not your fault that you didn’t take Camilla to London. It was not your fault that you didn’t know what Frank was doing to Camilla all those years. Is it my mother’s fault that she didn’t know what Ron was doing to me?”

  “Yes, actually, I think it really is.”

  I shook my head. “You’re wrong, but bad example. The point is, you couldn’t have known because she didn’t want you to know. And I think, deep down, you know that. You know it, and you hate it, because it means you don’t have control. It’s probably one of the reasons you push so hard to maintain truth in your relationships now, because you don’t ever want to be blindsided like that again. I understand, and I’m going to try to be better about meeting that need with you, but you also need to let yourself off that hook. It was not your fault.”