Beautiful Little Fool

by K. K. Hendin

  He lost his license and was sent to jail. His wife and son were left homeless, as his wife did not work.

  2003.

  Cedar asked for sword fighting lessons in January. She said it would make her well-rounded. She trained for six months with Emerald Jane, an expert swordswoman. Emerald had said that of all her students, Cedar was the only one she was worried about.

  You weren’t supposed to swordfight with blood in your eyes, Emerald had said. And Cedar always did.

  And then there were a few articles that made no sense.

  Why were they in there? They had nothing to do with Cedar. They couldn’t possibly…

  May 16, 1995

  A car crash on U.S. 1 has claimed the lives of two people. Randall and Sarna Carrington were killed in a four car pile-up last night. The drunk driver of an eighteen-wheeler crashed into the Carringtons’ car, which then flipped three times before hitting two other cars. According to witnesses, the Carringtons’ car burst into flame when flipping over. First responders arrived at the scene early enough to pull out the individuals from the other two cars, but not early enough to pull out the Carringtons.

  Randall and Sarna Carrington are survived by their son, Ellis James.

  Funeral and memorial service will be held tomorrow in Our Savior Church in Norwich, Connecticut.

  Ellis dropped his head onto his desk and tried to breathe. It was far from the worst article he’d read about his parents. But it wasn’t like he wanted to read it at all. It had taken him years to be able to get in a car on any highway when he was a kid. He still freaked out when he heard the sirens of a firetruck. Hell, he was the only kid in his kindergarten class that didn’t want to grow up to be a fireman.

  Why was this here? What did this have to do with anything?

  And why were there so many articles about his parents here?

  May 18, 1995

  Last Will and Testament of Harold James Feingold:

  I, Harold James Feingold, being of sound mind and health, bequeath the entirety of my belongings and investments to Ellis James Carrington…

  What the hell.

  Ellis reread Harold’s 1995 will, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Why Harold Feingold had decided, two days after his parents were killed, that he should be the sole heir of Feingold Investments.

  He wasn’t breathing well. Fuck, where was a paper bag or something?

  According to Morris, Harold had known his parents. But that didn’t explain anything. They weren’t the same age at all. His uncle never mentioned knowing Harold at all. Any Harold, for that matter.

  Nothing was making sense.

  Maybe this was all a dream. Or he was high. Or something.

  Ellis contemplated taking a drug test, and then opened up the next document. It was full of pictures. Of his mother with a guy that was obviously not his dad.

  His mother was pretty young in the pictures. He clicked on one to enlarge it, trying to figure out when and where the picture was taken.

  There was a date at the bottom of the picture. 1980.

  His mother was fifteen.

  The guy she was with in the picture was very obviously a lot older than that. It wasn’t his grandfather, it wasn’t any family member. Ellis had seen enough pictures of his family when he was younger to know whoever this guy was with his mother was not someone related to him. Or her.

  He scrolled down, where the back of the picture was scanned onto the page. “Harold and I <3. July 25, 1980.”

  Harold?

  Shit.

  Ellis quickly opened a new window in his browser and googled Harold Feingold.

  Harold Feingold. Still born in 1935.

  Maybe he was just a family friend, Ellis thought desperately. Because when his mother was fifteen, Harold was forty-five.

  He scrolled more, and gagged.

  Jesus Christ, his mother was making out with Harold Feingold.

  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. What the fuck was going on?

  They were thirty years apart. Why were his hands on her ass?

  Ellis slammed his laptop shut and dropped his head between his knees, trying to breathe.

  This had to be someone’s idea of a sick joke, and it wasn’t funny at all.

  But like a train wreck, Ellis couldn’t look away. He reopened his laptop, and with shaking hands, opened the file back up.

  In the summer of 1980, Sarna Sharp was fifteen and hated her family. Hated their rules. Hated the restrictions they shoved down her throat.

  She was fifteen, full of hormones and rebelliousness and the want to lose her virginity. Her best friend already had. Sarna hadn’t been kissed, other than by Arnold Moore during a spin-the-bottle at Charlie’s fifteenth birthday.

  Summer was spent in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, where her grandmother lived. Her parents didn’t want to spend two-and-a-half months fighting with her, and they thought her grandmother could control her.

  Her grandmother couldn’t do anything. None of them knew she had early onset Alzheimer’s. When Sarna realized there was something wrong with Grandma, she decided she would tell her parents when she got home.

  And decided to have the summer she would never forget.

  Harold Feingold had rented a house a few doors down from her grandmother. Sarna didn’t know, but he was checking out the town as a possible place to build a resort.

  All she knew was that he was the cutest guy she had ever seen in her life. And he was totally older than eighteen, and had a car.

  And he was totally into her, too.

  The first time he kissed her, it was like fireworks.

  The first time they had sex, it was magical. Even if it did hurt a little bit.

  He took her everywhere. Bought her whatever she wanted. He ordered wine for himself, and let her drink it.

  He was everything she ever wanted in a guy.

  She was nervous, because she loved him, and she had lied to him about her age.

  She told him she was seventeen. He told her that seventeen was the perfect age for him. She told him he was perfect for her.

  He told her that he wouldn’t forget her.

  She told him she loved him.

  He didn’t say it back, but she knew he loved her.

  He was the great love of her life. She knew that. It didn’t matter that she was only fifteen. She was going to finish high school early and she was going to marry him.

  He wouldn’t be angry with her that she lied about her age. It was only two years. It wouldn’t matter.

  And it didn’t.

  Until the one day Harold accidentally left his wallet out on the bedside table after they had sex. He went downstairs to get her a drink. She snooped in his wallet, and found his driver’s license.

  She thought he was twenty.

  He was forty five.

  She ran out of his house as fast as she could.

  He found her.

  She cried.

  He begged.

  She said no.

  He kissed her.

  She kissed him back.

  Cried more.

  She let him go too far. He didn’t have a condom.

  She didn’t care.

  She loved him too much to care.

  She loved him too much, but she left. She called her parents and told them there was something wrong with Grandma and she wanted to go home.

  The next day, she was gone.

  He was beside himself.

  If he had a heart, it would have been broken.

  But he didn’t.

  And he wanted her back. Even if she didn’t want him anymore.

  She cried herself to sleep every night.

  She missed him.

  She missed being with him.

  She knew she shouldn’t go back to him.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  That summer, Sarna Sharp grew up very quickly.

  Harold never forget Sarna.

  Not when he went back to New York. Not when he married the fi
rst of his future ex-wives. He kept tabs on her.

  He had known she was fifteen.

  He didn’t care.

  She cried when she heard he had gotten married.

  She told herself that it was over.

  There was no baby from their last time together. She told herself that she was relieved.

  She wasn’t.

  Randall Carrington was one of the sweetest guys Sarna had ever met. He was gorgeous and funny and smart, and when she was with him, she felt safe.

  She didn’t tell him about that summer.

  She was too ashamed.

  When Harold heard that Sarna got married, he clenched his teeth, divorced his wife, and decided he was going to get her back.

  He’d comfort the grieving widow she was.

  But then she got pregnant.

  With Randall’s child.

  And that was unacceptable.

  But he waited. He had waited long enough for her. He could wait a little longer.

  1995.

  Randall was supposed to take Ellis out for a “man day,” as they called it. Sarna would be home alone.

  Harold sat by the phone and waited.

  But Ellis was sick that day.

  So they left him home with a sitter, and went out on a date night. Randall told Ellis he would take him out on a man day when he felt better.

  Ellis wasn’t so happy.

  Randall and Sarna left.

  They didn’t manage to get to the restaurant. The semi came out of nowhere.

  When Harold found out, he fired seventy-five of his employees.

  They had killed Sarna. They had left her fucking bastard child alive.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  He was going to pay, the kid.

  He was going to pay for everything.

  Harold wouldn’t be around to see his ruin, but he knew it was going to happen. He was going to find exactly the right people to make sure it did.

  The Ellis kid was going to pay.

  It would be a long time before he paid, but he was going to pay.

  Ellis closed the files on his computer. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking, he thought. Why were his hands shaking?

  This was too much for him to handle then. He couldn’t.

  He walked over to the little bar in the office and poured himself a shot of whiskey. Ignoring the flash drive sitting on his desk like Pandora’s box, he downed the shot and shuddered before throwing it right back up. He made it to the garbage can just in time.

  The conclusions he could draw from the articles he read weren’t ones he wanted to think about at all. And as much as he’d like to pretend he hadn’t just read what he had, he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to bury his head in the sand, no matter how tempting it sounded to him.

  He took another shot, and then headed back to his desk. He was going to read through everything that was on that flash drive before he went home. And he wasn’t going to make any rash decisions until then.

  But he wasn’t going to read anything else about his mother. He couldn’t stomach any more of it.

  If he looked at his computer screen for another nanosecond, his eyes were going to dry up and roll out of his sockets. And he still wasn’t finished reading through everything.

  God, it was so much worse than he thought it would be. Which was saying something, considering the allegations that Cedar was instrumental in killing her siblings, as well as directly murdering her parents.

  Who the hell had he married?

  A psychopath, it seemed. While money could hide anything it wanted to, money could dig it all up again. And considering what had been hidden, there were a lot more people to blame than just Cedar.

  Fuck, Cedar.

  He married her.

  He married a killer.

  Ellis moaned and dropped his head down onto his desk. What the fuck was he going to do now? He couldn’t go home, he knew that.

  God, he had slept with her. In the same bed. Fuck, how many options did she have to kill him?

  But she hadn’t, a small voice in the back of his head whispered.

  He ignored said voice, deciding he was drunker than he thought he was.

  He was going to go to take a nap on his couch, shower and change before anyone came into the office tomorrow, and pretend that nothing was wrong.

  Even though everything was wrong. Everything was horribly wrong.

  Ellis was on his third cup of coffee when Robert came in the next morning. “Good morning, Mr. Carrington.”

  Ellis looked up at Robert. “Oh. You.”

  “Me.” Robert looked curiously at Ellis, and Ellis ignored it. He was in charge here. He could look however he wanted to look. “Your first meeting is at nine-thirty with Arthur Mondale.”

  Fuck. The forensic accountant he had hired right before the wedding.

  The day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  “Mondale.”

  “Mr. Carrington.” Arthur Mondale looked terrified.

  Oh, great. That was exactly what he needed now. Someone terrified of him who wouldn’t answer anything in full sentences. Jesus, there was not enough coffee to deal with the rest of today.

  Ellis watched as Mondale closed the door and paused. “Do you want me to lock the door?” he asked.

  Ellis’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t know. Do I?”

  Mondale took a deep breath and let it out. “I would if I were you.”

  “Then go ahead,” Ellis said, feeling his stomach sink. Whatever was going to happen next, he was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for it.

  Mondale locked the door and then sat down in the same chair Gregor had sat down in, a few weeks before. Part of Ellis wanted to scream and tell him to go sit in the other seat now, but he told himself not to be a baby.

  “What do you have for me, Mondale?” he asked, taking a drink of coffee and bracing himself.

  “Where should we start?”

  “Wherever you think we should start with.”

  “Well, then. The gallery is fine, aside from the fact that Ms. Reynolds gave herself a three million dollar raise last month.”

  “Three million a year?” Ellis repeated. “Does the gallery even make enough for her to do that?”

  “Three million a quarter,” Mondale corrected. “And not unless they find five or six artists who are willing to work for free.”

  You will not vomit. You will not vomit. You will not vomit, Ellis chanted to himself. The gallery couldn’t support a twelve million dollar raise. What the hell was she doing?

  “Okay, then. What else should I know about?” Ellis asked, hoping his voice stayed steady.

  “You gave me the name of fifteen different businesses, but there was a sixteenth.”

  “What do you mean?” If Ellis ever got migraines, now would be the time that one would show up.

  “There’s a sixteenth business registered under Feingold Investments. Kain Security.”

  Goddammit, he was going to throw up. “Jesus Christ. Please tell me that’s a joke.”

  “It’s not,” Mondale said, pulling out a small stack of papers from his briefcase. “I assume you’ve heard of Kain Security.”

  “I wish I hadn’t,” Ellis said. The security firm known to be full of ex-military who’ve gone off the deep end? The people who probably had what to do with every civil war in the world over the past eight years? Mercenaries to the very end, and you crossing with one of them ended in death.

  Eight years.

  No.

  It was just a coincidence. There was no way.

  “Who’s running Kain Security? How did I miss it?”

  There was a distinct tinge of green in Mondale’s complexion. “It’s Cedar. She’s been running Kain Security since Harold took her in.”

  Fuck. Ellis sighed, and tried to remember what it was like when his biggest worries were student loans and whether or not he’d manage to kill the last cockroaches in his New Haven apartment. Not when he found out his wife had killed her en
tire family and was running the largest black market security company in the world.

  He had a strong urge to pick up the phone and call Karen to apologize to her for being an asshole, but first he had to figure out what to do with the fact that he was still married to someone who didn’t seem they would shed a tear if he died.

  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

  The rest of what Mondale had said to him flew in a blur. He had to call someone. He had to do something. He had to talk to Cedar.

  Because, even after everything he’d learned over the past day and a half, he still wanted to talk to her. He wanted to hear her side. Maybe it was all in self-defense.

  Are you seriously trying to rationalize all of this? He screamed at himself. Seriously?

  Seriously, it seemed, because there he was, in his car, driving back home. It was seven already. He wasn’t really sure how that had happened. But he was going to talk to Cedar about this. Until he heard it from her, he wasn’t going to believe a word of it.

  He wasn’t.

  Cedar’s phone rang.

  Not that phone.

  The other one.

  The one that hadn’t been mentioned until now, because you didn’t need to know anything before I decided you did.

  Cedar picked up her phone and listened to the voice on the other end.

  And yes. I’m going to keep on referring to myself as Cedar.

  You didn’t actually think that was my real name, did you?

  How stupidly naïve of you, darling.

  As we were saying.

  Cedar picked up her phone and listened to the voice on the other end. “He knows,” the voice said.

  “How much?”

  “He hired people.”

  Cedar swore viciously. It was too early for all of this to happen. As much as he annoyed the hell out of her, he was an excellent cover, and she really didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of getting rid of him now.

  But she had to do what she had to do. “Where is he now?”

  “On his way.”

  “Let him.”