by K. M. Scott
But we still dreamed of a day when neither of us were shackled to him or that place anymore.
I turned the car onto the street leading to Jacob Landon’s estate and turned off the headlights to park. For a moment, I sat with the car running, making a mental note that I needed to start squirreling away money for that time when our dream came true. I needed to make sure I could take care of Serena if we got away.
Taking a deep breath, I turned the car off and silently began making my way toward my job that night. That’s what it was. A job. Nothing more, nothing less.
Jacob Landon had made the mistake of crossing the wrong man, and now he had to pay.
The act itself felt like it had every other time I’d done it, just with the slight variation of the method. Landon sat relaxing in his luxurious hot tub like some fucking movie star with a glass of champagne in his right hand and his eyes closed. All he was missing was the big fat cigar dangling from his mouth.
He never heard me coming, probably because of the sound of those jets making all the fucking bubbles around him. Alone for the night, he made himself easy prey. I had no idea where his security was, but if he was like Robert, they were safely somewhere else enjoying a night off while the boss soaked his wealthy ass in a tub.
I pushed up my sleeves and snuck up behind him. I pushed hard on the top of his head, stuffing him under the water. Holding him even as he kicked his legs and flailed his arms, I waited until his limbs slowly stopped moving and then finally he fell still.
And whatever Jacob Landon had been other than the man Robert Erickson wanted gone, he was no more.
* * *
Bright and early the next morning, I stood against the wall in Robert’s office as Oliver and Serena sat in the two red leather chairs in front of her father’s desk listening to him profess his sympathy for the loss of Jacob Landon. Each word rang hollow because they were nothing more than meaningless sounds coming from his mouth.
Then he smiled one of those crocodile smiles and said, “This thrusts you into the CEO chair at your company, Oliver. I hope you remember our agreement. If anything were to happen to you, God forbid, Serena here would then step into the position you find yourself in right now. Of course, none of us wish to see that, but accidents do happen.”
Robert’s not-so-subtle reminder to Oliver of who possessed the power wasn’t lost on him. One look at the grieving man’s expression told me he understood if he stepped out of line, Robert would punish him. I couldn’t tell if he suspected his father-in-law of having anything to do with his brother’s death, but it didn’t matter if he did.
A power shift had occurred, and whatever control Oliver had thought he possessed no longer existed. He was living in the enemy’s house now, and Robert had all but told him if he screwed up with Serena one more time, he’d pay a steep price.
His warning issued, Robert again expressed his condolences on the untimely and premature passing of Jacob before Oliver excused himself in order to deal with the funeral arrangements for his brother. Serena stayed behind looking like she wanted to say something, but Robert cut her off before she had the chance to.
“I’m looking forward to hearing nothing but marital bliss exists between you two from this point on, Serena.”
Just as he’d warned Oliver, this was his warning to Serena that he didn’t want any more problems coming from her house. She opened her mouth to speak but then pressed her lips together as if whatever she wanted to say was pointless.
I knew what she wanted to say. I wanted to say it too. Eliminating Jacob may have helped Robert’s control over Oliver concerning business, but it did nothing to improve Serena’s marriage to him. If anything, it damaged it even more because if he had even a hint of suspicion that her father had killed his brother, anything or anyone connected to Robert would be nothing but a hated reminder of Jacob’s death.
Waving his hand to dismiss us, Robert said, “I need the two of you to leave. Ryder, take the day off. You deserve it.”
We filed out into the main hall and walked silently beside one another until we reached the back hallway that led to the other parts of the house. Serena swiveled her head to see who was nearby and put her hand on my chest to stop me.
She looked up at me with fear in her eyes, and I knew what she planned to say. “Did you do this?”
I could have lied to her, but that wasn’t something we did with one another. I’d lied so many times in my life that it was practically second nature, but I didn’t want to do that with her.
So I told the truth, knowing that she may hate to hear that part of me truly existed.
“Yes.”
Her expression turned to sadness. “Just yes? You kill someone and your answer is a simple yes?”
“Serena, your father wanted him taken care of because of what you told him he said about you,” I answered flatly, still feeling nothing about what I’d done.
She looked away and sighed. “Tell me you aren’t just that man. Tell me who you are with me is the real man you are.”
“Why does it matter? You’ve known who I was for months. Why does this bother you?” I asked, truly confused as to why Jacob Landon’s death mattered. “He wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last, Serena. You know your father better than anyone.”
Shaking her head, she struggled not to cry as she said loudly, “It’s not my father I care about! I don’t care what he does. I care what you do, Ryder. I care that you don’t become him.”
I pushed her down the hall away from the main hall and her father’s office to one of the utility rooms at the back of the house and closed the door behind us. She stood looking up at me with hurt in her eyes, and for a moment I wondered if there was a possibility she did care about Oliver.
“Why are you asking me about this, Serena? You act like I had a choice here, not that I would have done anything differently if I did. That’s my job. Who I am with you has nothing to do with that.”
“How can you say that? How can you act like you’re two entirely different people, one who does these horrible things for my father and doesn’t bat an eyelash or feel any guilt at all, and another who says he loves me more than anything else in the world and swears he’ll protect me like some honorable knight in shining armor? Don’t you feel anything about what you did?”
I looked into those gentle brown eyes so full of sadness staring up at me as she waited for my answer and told her the truth. “It’s the man who loves you more than life itself who wanted to kill Jacob Landon last night, Serena. He called you a whore. You’re the woman I love. The woman I’d give my life for, and he and that fuck of a brother of his called you a whore.”
The tears that had been welling in her eyes rolled down her cheeks as I spoke, and she buried her face in her hands. “What are we going to do, Ryder? My father thinks my marriage is going to be all sweetness and light now. How can that be now?”
Pulling her close, I held her to me as sobs shook her body. I may not have felt any guilt over what I’d done to Jacob Landon, but seeing her sad over who I had to be to do that ripped me apart.
“We’re going to do what we’ve always done. We keep looking forward to a future when this isn’t our life and spend whatever time we can together.”
She looked up at me, her beautiful face tearstained, and as I dried her cheeks, she whispered barely loud enough for me to hear, “I found out this morning I’m pregnant. When he finds out, he’s going to know what we’ve been doing, Ryder.”
Stunned, I struggled to find the words. “Pregnant? When?”
“My wedding night, I’m guessing.”
“How far along are you?”
“Just about three months.”
I took a step back and shook my head, still trying to get my brain around what she’d just told me. “Why didn’t you say anything all this time?”
“I didn’t know until this week. I thought I missed a couple months because of all the stress of having to marry him, and then I took a test and found out.�
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As much as I didn’t want to question her, I had to. “Is there any chance it’s his, Serena?”
She backed away from me like I disgusted her and her face twisted into a look of pain. “How could you ask me that? You know how I feel about him. I hate him!”
“But you slept with him at least a few times, didn’t you?” I asked, my jealousy rearing its ugly head as I thought about him raising my child.
Serena hit my chest with her fist and then hit me again as hard as she could, crying out, “You bastard! I tell you I’m going to have your child and this is what you say? You are that terrible man who does my father’s bidding! How can there be any hope for this child with a father like you?”
Her words cut me to the quick, and even though I barely felt her punches against my skin, I grabbed her wrists and held her arms still in front of me as my emotions warred inside my brain. Part of me rejoiced at the thought that Serena could be carrying my child, but another knew what she said was true.
What kind of father could a killer be?
“Don’t say that. Whatever this child is, they’ll be loved. I promise.”
She closed her eyes and sagged against my body as she began to cry again. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. I know you’re not that man who does those horrible things. I believe that, Ryder.”
Stroking her soft hair, I reveled in the feel of her against me. I was that man who did more than horrible things, but I was also the man who loved her and wanted to be more than I was at that moment.
I didn’t know what the future held for us or our child. Married to another man, she would have to pretend it was his, but I’d know the truth.
And that’s what mattered most until that day we could escape this place and find that life we dreamed of.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Serena
For nearly two months, I hid my pregnancy from Oliver behind baggy sweaters perfect for the winter weather that had settled into the Chesapeake region, and every day I tried to come up with a plan to get away from this life before I had to tell him.
And every day I came to the same sickening conclusion. In a few short months, I’d give birth to Ryder’s child and be forced to pretend Oliver was his or her father. Every moment that ticked by and I hadn’t escaped him and this place became a painful reminder that what should have been the happiest time of my life was simply a horrible extension of every other day I’d lived here.
The moments I got to spend with Ryder remained the happiest of my life, even if they were fleeting and too rare. Oliver worked late almost constantly after his brother’s death, so whenever I could, I snuck down to Ryder’s apartment. Part of me secretly hoped I’d get caught because then at least I’d be able to stop living the lie that my life had become.
Then one night, a fight between Oliver and me laid bare everything I’d hidden.
As usual, he returned home at nearly midnight and proceeded to throw himself onto the bed next to me. Still suffering from nausea from morning sickness that didn’t seem to know the time, I nearly vomited there in the bed and quickly ran to the bathroom to throw up the tiny bit of toast I’d had for dinner hours before.
From the bedroom, I heard him complain about something involving work, and by the time I returned to bed, he had moved on from being unhappy about the art auction business to being miserable about his life with me.
“So now my own wife can’t even be around me without throwing up? Nice,” he snapped as he sneered at me.
“It’s late, Oliver. I’d like to go to sleep.”
I turned away from him and closed my eyes, but he wasn’t finished. “What kind of man has no control over whether his wife loves him or not, where he lives, what he does…or any part of his life, for that matter?”
Not answering because I knew he wouldn’t like what I had to say, I lay there wishing for sleep and knowing it wouldn’t come anytime soon. Oliver had been unhappy from the beginning of our marriage, and his brother’s death had only intensified his feelings about our life together and me, but now it all seemed to come to a head.
“I hate living here, Serena. We have no life here because of your father. He’s like an overseer.”
I couldn’t disagree with that, but his complaint made me chuckle. He’d lived under my father’s rule for less than a year. I’d lived under it my entire life. He’d get no sympathy from me.
Rolling over, I looked up to see him sitting on his side of the bed, his arms folded across his chest like a petulant child. “You knew what you were getting into when you agreed to this marriage, Oliver. You and your brother got something, I’m guessing money that you needed for the company, and in return my father got what he wanted, which when it comes to most things in his life is complete control. And I got nothing I wanted. As far as I see, you came out ahead.”
He sneered at me again. “By getting a wife who never loved me? Never even wanted to love me? Yeah, that’s definitely coming out ahead.”
Behind his anger, I sensed real unhappiness, and for the first time, I pitied him. Maybe he had thought we could be happy in some way in the beginning, although leaving me on our wedding night to go to his brother’s was a strange way of showing it.
I rolled over again and prayed he’d grow tired of talking about things that couldn’t be changed. The problem was whatever had set him off tonight had brought everything to the surface, and nothing was going to stop him now.
“So you don’t love me at all, do you?”
Despite knowing I shouldn’t feed into his anger, I sat up and stared at him in disbelief at how clueless he truly was. “You have never shown me the tiniest kindness. You left me alone on our wedding night to go spend time with your brother, and you’ve trapped me in this apartment to keep me from seeing other people while you’re away all day, every day. And now you’re surprised I don’t love you?”
His eyes opened wide as my words hurt him as much as his had hurt me all those times before, and he angrily said, “I regret ever saying yes to my brother when your father came sniffing around. He told me what you were but said if I simply waited it out, your father would eventually leave his businesses to me. I should have never believed that. My brother was wrong about Robert. So wrong.”
“That you thought marrying me would get you my father’s businesses shows me exactly what you always thought of me. And by the way, if you think being my husband is the golden ticket to getting things from him, you’re sadly mistaken. He’d no sooner leave you anything more than he’d leave me, and I’ll be lucky to have a home when he goes. I’m the wrong sex, and you’re not his son.”
Oliver stood from the bed and pointed his finger at me. “You’re just like him. You know that? Just like him. This whole family disgusts me.”
“Well, it seems that we’re all you have now that Jacob isn’t around for you to go running to every time.”
Oliver stormed out of the bedroom, slamming the door, and as my stomach roiled from the stress of fighting him, I tried to simply breathe and keep calm. My heart slammed in my chest as my nerves began to fray while he stomped around the apartment mumbling to himself.
I didn’t want to fight with him. In truth, I didn’t want to do anything with him. No fighting, no love, no anything. But I sensed he hadn’t finished saying what was on his mind.
He flung open the bedroom door and screamed, “Your father killed Jacob! I know it! Did he do it because you told him to?”
Laughing at the very idea that my father would do anything like that for me, I shook my head. “I had nothing to do with what happened to your brother. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I just want to go to sleep, Oliver, so why don’t you go out so I can go to bed?”
“This isn’t over, Serena!” he yelled and then slammed the door again.
Unsure what he might do, I got out of bed and changed out of my baggy sweatshirt and shorts into a pair of jeans and an even baggier sweater just in case I had to get away from him in a hurry. I’d barely
dressed when he returned to the room with a glass in his hand. From the smell coming off it, he’d started with the gin, his drink of choice.
“I think it’s time we finally had it out, Serena. Why aren’t you even trying in this marriage? I want to know what’s wrong with you.”
His words struck me like a bolt of lightning. What was wrong with me? Why did he get to say there was something wrong with me simply because I didn’t love him like he thought I should? All my life I’d had people around me who thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t think like they did. All my life I’d been convinced I wasn’t right.
Until Ryder. And now Oliver thought he could question what was wrong with me?
Pushing past him, I walked out to the kitchen to get a drink of water before I vomited again, this time from my nerves, and tried to keep my mouth closed as I knew I should. But then he repeated his question, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was tell the truth.
Every last bit of it.
I spun around as the room began to swim in front of me, but I couldn’t hold back the words any longer. He wanted to know why I wasn’t trying to make our marriage work? Then I’d tell him.
“What’s wrong with me? Nothing!” I screamed, making him take a step back in surprise. Usually so docile, now I was anything but.
“I have a father who trades me like I’m livestock to the highest bidder, your brother and you. I begged my father to not make me marry you. Begged! There was nothing wrong with you, but I didn’t want to be married. I wanted to go to school and get my degree, and then I wanted to move away and live my life. A boring life, but it would be all mine. But I wasn’t given a choice. Did you know I tried to kill myself when I found out my father was going to force me to marry you?”