by L.J. Shen
Dad sat back, but he didn’t look smug. A pang of worry pinched my chest. He had the constant air of someone who’d just fucked your wife, emptied your safe, and taken a shit in your bed. Now he looked surprisingly somber. Somber meant trouble.
“We had to talk privately,” he said.
“Clearly.” I scanned his face, looking for clues.
“I figured it all out, son. I’m sorry. I’m so. Fucking. Sorry.” His voice broke midway, and he turned his face away, his jaw clenching like mine did. His throat bobbed.
No.
No.
I dropped my head into my hands, elbows on my knees, and shook it.
“Troy Brennan?” I asked. It had to be that fixer he’d hooked me up with. How the fuck else did he figure that out?
“No. I made a promise and kept it.”
“Jaime, then?” I snorted in false amusement. He must’ve told Dad I was in some kind of trouble. I didn’t even have it in me to be mad at him. It was the logical thing to do. Still, shitty as hell. He’d signed a contract.
“No,” Dad said, standing up and taking the necessary half-step toward me.
I didn’t want any of what he was about to offer—not the pity, the pain, the shame, the feeling that accompanied those things. Still, he sat next to me on the bed.
“I think Jaime was planning on telling me after the fact. But one night I got into my bedroom and your mom had fallen asleep with the lights on, an art magazine half-open under her arm. I tucked her in and was about to turn off the light when I picked the magazine up and saw an item about how all of Harry Fairhurst’s paintings had been bought by a mysterious collector. I wondered why we hadn’t been approached about the paintings in our house—everyone else had been, after all—but the answer was simple. You had access to our house, and to the paintings in it. I threw the magazine away so she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t do the math herself. I racked my brain trying to figure out why you’d want to own all this motherfucker’s paintings. Better yet, how you could afford them. So I checked your trust fund, and sure enough, it was empty.”
I swallowed wordlessly. I’d been sloppy in that regard. All I could see was the end goal, and that had backfired in my face.
Dad put his hand on my back, both of us hunched over, seated on my bed. My face was still buried in my hands. I felt like a stupid kid, and hated every minute of it.
“What could drive a man to buy an entire, eight-figure collection of paintings he’s not even fond of?” My father’s voice drifted in the air like smoke, lethal and suffocating. “There was only one answer: vengeance.”
I stood up and walked to the window, refusing to face him.
He knew.
Lenora knew.
My secret was no longer mine. It had broken free. Run loose. I had no control over it. It was probably pounding through the alleyways of every ear in my inner circle.
“You want him forgotten,” Dad said gently behind me.
I appreciated that he didn’t say outright the things Harry had done to me. It made the situation a little less unbearable, somehow. I sniffed, ignoring the statement.
I wanted to forget Harry Fairhurst had ever existed, yes, but I knew I couldn’t. So I’d settled for erasing him from the memory of the rest of the world.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
But not if all your paintings are torn, burned, and floating in the Atlantic Ocean. Then you’re just another mortal.
Dad stood up and came toward me. He planted his hands on my shoulders from behind. I dropped my head to my chest. He hadn’t ridden my ass like I thought he would for ghosting him for eternity.
…or spending a sickening amount of money on art I had burned.
“Let me do it,” he whispered.
“Huh?” I spun, my eyebrows diving down.
“I know what you’re about to do, and I’m asking you to let me do it. Not for you, for me. When we talked about your problem before, I told you I wouldn’t pry, but if I found out who was involved, I’d deal with them myself. And you agreed. We shook on it. There’s a lot on the line for you, son. Let me shoulder your burden. Let it be on my conscience, not yours. After all, I was the one who fucked up. I was the one who let it happen. I was the one who didn’t figure it out in that Parisian gallery, the idiot who sent you to Carlisle Prep when you were a young boy. My fuck-up. My mistake. My payback.”
I appreciated how, even now, he did not bunch Mom into the colossal fuck-up that was Harry Fairhurst. He took full responsibility as the head of the family. Some people thought flowers and hearts were romantic. Me, I thought being a badass who took the fall for his entire family and shouldered all their sins was far better. Not that it was really my parents’ fault. They’d prodded, asked, begged, and questioned. They’d provided me with a magnificent childhood, and not just materialistically.
“Thank you,” I said curtly. “But no.”
“You don’t know what killing a person does to your soul.”
“And you do?”
He squeezed my shoulder again, refraining from answering me. Interesting.
“You have a girlfriend.” Dad changed the subject. “Isn’t she his niece? That would complicate things.”
“We’re not staying together.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. That would be beyond awkward, now that she knew my plans for her uncle.
I’d given her all my secrets.
I’d trusted her then, and I trusted her now.
She’d never opened her mouth. And, as it turned out, she hadn’t even known what she saw back then. When I told her about Harry’s abuse, she’d confessed to me that what she saw in that room was completely different.
“I didn’t see Harry’s head underneath you. I just thought it was a girl. I didn’t know anything about oral sex. I thought you were young, and angry, and doing things you shouldn’t be doing and going to regret. I felt sorry for you. At thirteen, you shouldn’t need sex and booze and blow jobs to feel. At thirteen, you’re learning the hang of feelings. It’s life on training wheels, you know?”
I didn’t know. Harry never gave me the chance to know what it felt like to feel.
“Besides…” I moved around Dad, changing the subject. “…how do you know about her?”
“Knight sent a family newsletter,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Fucker,” I mouthed.
“Watch your mouth.”
“I was making a general statement. What do you think he does with Luna? Play poker?” I flung myself over the bed, staring at the ceiling. I felt like a real teenager for the first time in forever. My dad was on my case, offering to get me out of the shit I’d gotten myself into. I had girl trouble. I made sex jokes on my best friend’s account.
Dad stood in the middle of the room, looking a little lost all of a sudden—for the first time ever, actually.
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Vaughn. You don’t have to lose her. You don’t have to lose anything.”
“It’s a done deal, Dad. Drop it.”
“Son…”
I turned to look at him. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Mom. It would break her.”
He held my gaze, nodding gravely. He got it. He got why I needed to do it myself.
“I won’t,” he said. “I didn’t when I saw the article. This stays between you and me. What happened doesn’t define you, you hear me? Once upon a time, I held on to a dark secret, too.” He leaned down, brushing my ink black hair from my forehead and frowning. A mirror image of father and son, with nearly three decades between them.
“How did it end?” I blinked.
He kissed my forehead like I was a toddler, smiling.
“I killed it.”
I was raised to find beauty in everything.
Growing up in Virginia, we didn’t have any money. We used buckets as small pools in hot, humid summers and trash bags to collect oranges and peaches in spring. An old tablecloth was destined to become a fine-looking dress once it ceased to serve its purpose. Two empty tin c
ans turned into a very short-distance walkie-talkie. An evening without electricity quickly rolled into an all-nighter full of scary stories and truth or dare.
Years later, after I married my billionaire husband, I’d stumbled across an article in the New Yorker, asking if the poor lead more meaningful lives.
I didn’t agree with the sentiment altogether, because I was happier now—happier with the love of my life, with my beautiful son, and surrounded by friends I could host and spend time with. But then again, I wasn’t really rich, was I?
Even with many millions in the bank, I would always be Emilia LeBlanc, who wore knock-offs and shook with exhilaration when opening new tubes of paint. There was something about the unavailable, the unattainable of buying new painting gear I’d grown up with that made unwrapping new equipment almost orgasmic. I never lost the joy I found in small things.
That’s why I fell in love with Harry Fairhurst’s paintings the moment I spotted the first one. It was a lone figure, walking in an alleyway, the buildings around it melting downwards in an arch, ready to swallow the person who dared take that path whole. Regardless of his precise technique and striking execution, it just seemed like a sad painting of a sad person.
When I met him and found out he was gay, and that he’d been bullied for it in school, I immediately took a liking to him. But something always lurked in the background, something dark and feverish I couldn’t pinpoint.
He’d asked me a couple of times, while we were on vacation in the same city or island, if I needed some time off from Vaughn, if I needed him to babysit my kid. My answer was always no. But when I asked Vaughn about it, he was adamant everything was okay, that he liked Harry, and that nothing had happened in that room.
I believed him. After all, my kid had always been very much outspoken when things weren’t okay.
Now, as I walked aimlessly in my grand, empty house, my husband miles away in England on a business trip, I decided to occupy myself by cleaning a little. I discharged our staff early, surprising them with tickets to Hamilton in San Diego, and began to scrub the kitchen floors. It was weirdly therapeutic—maybe because I’d been used to helping my mother clean the Spencers’ grand kitchens when I was a kid and she worked for them.
After that, I took the trash cans out. I flipped them open to make sure nobody had put anything in the wrong place. California was big on recycling, but it seemed like our neighborhood was practically obsessed with it. I was, too. I’d always been frightened about the world we’re going to leave for our grandchildren.
As I peeked inside, everything looked kosher. In the brown trash can, appointed to recycling, lay the art magazine I’d never finished reading. I frowned. I didn’t remember throwing it away.
Something willed me to reach into the bin and take the magazine out. Confused, I began to thumb through it, my forehead so tight with a frown, my entire face hurt. It was unlike Ronda and Lumi, our housekeepers, to throw such thing away without asking me first. I wasn’t mad. I was curious.
I stopped when I reached the last page, in the section about new art deals taking place around the world. The page was more wrinkled than the rest. I skimmed through the text, my heart stopping in my chest.
The magazine dropped from my hands, and I felt my mouth going dry.
For all the things I’d missed throughout my life, which weren’t many—the occasional friend’s birthday, a wedding, and a couple charity events I couldn’t attend, I’d never missed something so big.
Fairhurst’s paintings had all been sold to a secret bidder.
Almost every one of them, other than mine.
I ran back into the house, up the stairs, and to the main hallway of the second floor. I stopped at my favorite of Harry’s paintings, the one in front of Vaughn’s room.
Heartless Prince
Fairhurst had told me he’d titled the painting that because it was a replica of the Death Mask of Tutankhamun. But the eyes were the real kicker. They looked so completely human, and deliciously frightened—shocked and panicked, ice-cold and blue as the brightest summer day’s sky.
Something dangerous began to hum in my blood. I stared at the painting, and before I knew it, my entire body was shaking with wrath, nausea coating my throat. I could feel myself breaking out in hives. I looked down, and my skin was patchy, red, the hairs on my arms standing on end.
My husband was in England.
The magazine was in the trash.
My son was different from other boys—always had been, but particularly since our trip to the Parisian gallery.
This is not a coincidence.
Vaughn, Vaughn, Vaughn.
My precious son who’d had to see this painting for months, day in, day out. Face it, brave it, overcome it. My boy, made out of frosty exterior, with fire in his heart. Just like his dad. I’d waited so long for him to fall in love, to blossom into the man I saw behind his anger and pain.
I’d never thought my predator son could be someone’s prey.
I pounced on the painting, ripping the thick canvas with my bare hands, feeling my nails breaking, my flesh bleeding. My fingernails ripped from some of my fingers, dropping to the floor, but I didn’t stop. Like a declawed cat, I persisted tearing at the fabric. I only realized I was screaming when my throat began to burn. Once the painting was on the floor, in tatters, I began to kick it.
Only when there was no way to distinguish what had been in the painting, when the eyes were completely gone, did I ball on the floor and began heaving and crying. When I could, with shaky fingers, I withdrew my phone from my dress’ pocket and booked a ticket to Heathrow, a red-eye flight taking off in less than an hour.
My son was not a heartless prince, placid and beautiful and lifeless.
He was misunderstood, wild, and alive.
And he had a mother—a very angry one at that.
One Harry Fairhurst should not have crossed.
“Holy shit, this place is colder than Vaughn’s heart,” Knight complained, pretending to rub his arms, even though he was clad in a pea coat that probably cost more than a Fairhurst painting.
Hunter, a Boston native, wore a light bomber jacket and a patronizing smirk, wheeling the one suitcase they’d brought with them.
“Did you bring what I asked you for?” I hissed, flipping the keys of the rental car I’d picked them up with from Heathrow.
Dad had asked if I wanted him to do it—he was staying at the same cottage Mom and he had rented when I’d moved in here—but I’d told him I didn’t want him to get involved. Unlike Knight and Hunter, he asked questions. My friends were another story altogether. Knight had trashed art worth millions of dollars, burning it to the ground, and didn’t even wonder why. That’s why they were perfect for this job.
The automatic doors of the airport opened, and we all walked across to the Vauxhall Astra I had waiting. My friends looked at the silver car with a mixture of disgust and horror.
“Shit, man, you really don’t want to get laid here.” Hunter shook his head. “Do you have something against British girls, or…?”
“It’s a rental,” I barked, grabbing his suitcase and hurling it into the open trunk of the car. “And chasing tail is not an Olympic sport for me as it is for you. Now, I’ll ask again—did you bring it?”
He knew exactly what I meant. It was too specific for me to buy here, in the UK. It could be traced back to me, and that was a risk I couldn’t take. Hunter, on the other hand, had no problem buying it from a Canadian dude who drove all the way to Boston to hand it to him in person. Untraceable.
“Of course we brought it, fucker.” Knight laughed, tapping the roof of the car and sliding into the passenger seat. “Why else would we bring a half-empty suitcase? So we can shop at goddamn Primark?”
I slid into the driver’s seat, buckling up. Hunter got in the back.
“Tell me you don’t shop at Primark,” Knight said, dead serious, after a beat.
I shrugged. “They have good socks and jeans.”
“Jesus.” Knight dug his palms into his eye sockets at the same time Hunter laughed and said, “Goddamn, you are something else.”
We spent the rest of the drive catching up. Knight seemed genuinely happy, which didn’t surprise me, because he’d finally gotten what he always wanted: Luna Rexroth. Hunter lived in Boston and seemed mysterious about his time in college. I knew he had a job lined up, working for his family’s business once he graduated, and that his future had been written in blood the day he was born, but he never seemed to want to talk about it. And naturally, I wasn’t one to poke.
When we got to their Airbnb condo in Reading, everything had already been readied. The security cameras upfront were working, blinking their red dots at us and recording everything. I slid into the garage, took the thing I needed from their suitcase, and drove back to Carlisle.
I couldn’t help but make a stop at Lenora’s room. I got as far as her door before pressing my forehead to it and taking a deep breath.
There wasn’t any point in seeing her again.
It would just make shit harder.
I knew she was on the other side.
Alone. Soft. Beautiful. Mine, for now.
I turned and walked away, feeling for the first time what it meant to have a hungry heart.
Harry Fairhurst wasn’t born yesterday.
Shortly after I broke his arm, he’d booked a ticket to Brunei, in Southeast Asia, known for its beautiful beaches, exotic rainforest, and ability to hide there without a trace—the perfect haven for a child molester. Luckily, I’d calculated his moves, no matter how fast, swift, and smart. Right now he was still in his St. Albans house, packing up and getting ready to leave for the airport.
The first thing I’d done today was slide a letter under Len’s door. I wasn’t dumb enough to discuss what I was about to do in said letter—I trusted her, but how was I to know it wasn’t going to find its way to unfriendly hands? The second was to head to my cellar and pretend to work as if nothing had happened.
When the clock hit three, I went to Hunter and Knight’s apartment, passing the security cameras and making sure my face was visible. The perfect alibi. Once inside, I jumped out the back window, ran across the street to another rental car—this time a Kia—and drove to Harry’s.