by Victoria Fox
Pleasure and pain …
He drove into her on the cusp, obliterating the line between the two. Lori was going to orgasm, faster than she knew she could. Sea water rushed up to shore, more of it, swelling around the point where they locked, getting her wetter and wetter, stinging with saline, and now his pace was increasing, his breath in her ear, the heat between them soaring till she thought they were ablaze, and he was going in deeper, more painful and more pleasurable both at the same time and it flared her like a striking match and suddenly she was ignited, climaxing with the scream she had been holding on to for years, out and absorbed into the boundless sky.
Another thrust and he joined her. She felt the release and the liquid and his face buried in her shoulder, his back rising and falling, sticky with sweat and salt water.
He rolled off, one hand across his chest, eyes closed. She could see the pulse flutter in his neck. For seconds, she watched it, waiting for her own to slow.
Lori matched her breathing with his. She touched the leather band on his wrist, because now she could. ‘Thank you.’
JB kept his face turned away. ‘What for?’
‘You know what for. What you did that day. You saved me. You never gave me a chance to say it, so I’m saying it now.’
‘You don’t need to.’
‘Yes, I do.’
He faced her. His eyes, in the moonlight, appeared softer to her now. At last, human.
‘It was wrong,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have been there.’
‘But you were.’
‘It was wrong.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Why did you pretend it never happened?’ She put a finger on the hollow of his elbow, where the skin was so soft it was like silk. ‘When Desideria brought me back. You killed a part of me that day.’
He averted his gaze, looking unblinking up at the sky. ‘There are things you don’t know, Lori. Things I can’t tell you.’
‘You can tell me anything.’
He laughed, but there was no mirth in it.
‘You can,’ she insisted. ‘Nothing you say could change a thing.’
She saw his throat rise and fall. ‘When you came to this island,’ he said, ‘I told you that ignorance was precious. I meant it.’
‘I’ve spent my whole life in ignorance,’ she countered. ‘Don’t love me like a woman then treat me like a girl.’
Sitting up, he ran a palm across the back of his neck. He brought his knees up and rested his arms across them, head dipped.
‘I’m leaving my wife,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s over between us. It has been for a long time. We never loved each other, not in the way it’s meant to be.’
She waited. The guilt she’d felt previously over Rebecca was a useless instrument now. Lori knew she’d passed the point of no return and the last thing on her mind was an apology.
‘The way I feel about you …’ He struggled for the words. ‘I’m not used to feeling …’ He shook his bowed head. ‘I’m not used to feeling at all.’
She reached out to touch him. ‘It’s OK.’
‘I want it to be.’ He gave her his profile. ‘I swear it, Lori. I want it to be.’
The words she wanted to say, she held tight to. She wanted to save them. And when she finally let them go, she wanted to be sure he’d say them back.
They had sex again in his bed. And again, and again—Lori lost count of the number of times. JB explored her, taught her how to explore herself, with a touch that brought her to the brink of paradise and had her drowning in pools of ecstasy.
It was a shock when he told her that protection wasn’t necessary—at least not for fear of pregnancy. Lori was shattered that he would never be a father. He’d accepted it a long time ago, he said, but for Lori, knowing the breadth and scope of his heart undiscovered, and how he was with Ralph, and how much love was missing from his world, it was an especially cruel misfortune. She realised what she felt for JB was real because she thought not once for herself or what his admission might mean, only for his loss and how brutal a lottery was life.
At three a.m., he showered. Lori slipped on her dress and padded to the room’s shutters, opening them and letting in sea air. She admired the unbroken view of the lighthouse: a pale beam thrown back and forth, searching, searching, leaning out and resting her arms on the sill. Her wake-up call was in four hours but she wouldn’t sleep. The moment she was alone she knew she’d play out every second of tonight and it would keep her from sleep for a hundred years.
On the other side of the window frame was a tiny carved-out nook. It was invisible to the eye and Lori only noticed it because she was running her hand across the wood and her fingers disappeared inside. Curious, she felt about and came into contact with a small key, which she extracted and looked at, puzzled. The shower continued to pound.
There was a desk by JB’s bed. It was made of thick, worn wood and had two panels of drawers running down either side. On a whim, she crossed to it and knelt. She didn’t know what she was looking for, or why—but something compelled her.
The key jammed against the first panel of locks. She began to think it wouldn’t fit any of them before at last it slid into one of the holes and released a neat click.
Inside the drawer was a large black file. On the front in capital type it read: ABORTED.
Lori fingered its edges and met a sheaf of escaping paper, which she tugged at gently. She wasn’t expecting it to come free and must have torn it from some fastening.
LORIANA GARCIA TORRES (17)—ref. LA864 (cont’d) … surviving father, Antony Garcia (40) m. Angélica Ruiz (43), 1996. Stepsisters: Rosa Garcia Ruiz (24); Anita Garcia Ruiz (22). Mother: Maria Valeria Torres (deceased age 31). Household income per annum c. $38,000: see p11 of this doc + employment detail. Boyfriend Enrique Arrio Marquez (20); connections to San Pedro El Peligro street gang—
The shower stopped. She heard the panel slide across.
Confused, fumbling, Lori grabbed her purse from the floor and stuffed the paper inside, in the same movement returning the file, closing the drawer and locking it. She replaced the key seconds before JB emerged from the bathroom.
She saw his eyes absorb the scene, look over the desk as if he’d known where she’d been though that was impossible. ‘What are you doing?’
Lori swallowed. She linked her hands behind her back.
‘Nothing,’ she lied. ‘Only waiting for you.’
42
Present Day
Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean
Two hours to departure
Reuben straightened the knot on his tie and checked his reflection. He was set. He was Reuben van der Meyde and this was his party. Nothing—nothing—was going to go wrong.
So why did he look so bloody peaky? Beneath his tan, his skin was yellowish and damp, waxy as cheese. He had the shits—he always got the shits when he got nervous. Five times he had visited the bathroom since Jax Jackson and his entourage finally departed: there surely couldn’t be that much left to come out. His ass certainly felt like he’d shat out a truck.
I’m one of them. Tomorrow the truth comes out.
It was a practical joke, he kept telling himself. He ought to be less concerned over the message’s content than the fact some clown had managed to hack his account. That was the real threat. Not what the message said.
Not what the message said.
Reuben was due on the yacht, scheduled to brief this evening’s crew and make sure they understood they were playing with the big boys now. It wasn’t his style to employ a new agency but it was for a charitable cause, disadvantaged kids needing a break, and wasn’t his island all about rehabilitation? He had to at least be seen to be giving back to the community.
I’m one of them.
In the air-conditioned solitude of his office, Reuben logged on. There the message was, just as it had been yesterday, mocking him.
I’m one of them. Tomorrow the truth comes o
ut.
JB hadn’t understood the implications. This person was bluffing, he’d said. Reuben might have thought the exact same thing, were he in the Frenchman’s position. But he wasn’t. There was a lot JB didn’t know about the scheme. He didn’t know about the vast cheques Reuben pocketed each month. He didn’t know about Reuben’s failure to wire the money to the poverty-stricken surrogates to whom it was promised. He didn’t know about the insurance Reuben had to take out against the paupers, threats to their livelihood and their families in case one saw fit to blab. He didn’t know that to get to where van der Meyde was you couldn’t always play Mr Nice and sometimes that meant playing Mr Downright Fucking Evil.
Reuben didn’t lie awake sweating it out. Business was business.
But this was different.
This was a revelation he knew he had to take to his grave. It ran deeper than the surrogate agency, deeper than the fortunes not exchanged and the broken guarantees. It was the only thing that, from time to time, made Reuben stop whatever he was doing, heart racing and breath caught, and think, just for a moment: I’ve gone too far.
Oh, there was a lot JB didn’t know.
I’m one of them.
As if this could be any child. As if this could be one of the standard set who’d been placed and bought and sold and paid for. Christ! That would be bad enough.
But not this.
I’m one of them.
Reuben was the only man alive who knew what that could mean. Not JB, not Rebecca, not Margaret, not any of his scouts. This was a secret he had kept entirely to himself.
Only now it seemed that someone else knew it too.
Rebecca Stuttgart ran her hand over the gowns laid out on the bed linen, jade and cobalt and crimson, like a cast of exotic butterflies. She slipped one over her head and brushed her red hair loose around her shoulders.
JB was fastening his tie at the window. He was normally adroit; she could tell he was distracted.
‘Do you want me to do that for you?’
He didn’t say no and so she went to him, looping the ends over each other and tightening the knot. Up close he smelled of an aftershave he’d worn in the early days, one she hadn’t known in a while. Patting the tie smooth, she fought down a swell of tears. If only things had been different for them. In another life, at another time, perhaps … But that was like wishing black were white, and God only knew she’d done enough wishing over the years.
The way her husband’s jaw was set betrayed his anxiety. It was Rebecca’s own fault. It was the lie she’d told, the horrible lie. She’d been acting out of desperation, a last-ditch attempt to rouse her marriage from the ashes. Now she saw it had lain there too long for rescue.
‘You’re more beautiful today than you ever were,’ JB said, with a tenderness she hadn’t heard since the beginning. The compliment was unexpected. Over the past few months they had barely spoken to each other at all.
Rebecca ran a hand over the crisp shoulder of her husband’s suit. She looked up at his face, into the blue eyes she knew would haunt her till the day she died.
I’m not beautiful. I’ve done a terrible thing.
But in him she saw the resignation that matched her own: an unspoken understanding that they had reached the end and that tomorrow it would be over. It would all be over.
‘So are you,’ she replied.
And before she could change her mind, Rebecca reached up and kissed JB’s mouth. Only briefly, but enough to remember.
Enrique Marquez, known back home as Rico, slipped out on to the megayacht’s main deck the instant his cell beeped.
‘What the fuck you doin’ callin’ me?’ he demanded, ducking behind an abandoned crate of table centrepieces. ‘I thought we agreed no contact! ’
Margaret Jensen sounded nervous. ‘I wanted to make sure you’d arrived,’ she hissed, barely audible as she endeavoured to keep her voice down.
‘Course I’ve fucking arrived. Where the fuck else am I gonna be?’
‘Is everything set?’
‘Jeez, lady, you sound like you’re dealin’ with an amateur.’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘It’s set.’
He heard her expel breath. ‘Mr V’s on his way.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ A uniformed man approached the crate and Enrique made off, talking loudly so it sounded legit. ‘It’s what I was waitin’ on when you called me.’
‘You’d better go.’
‘No shit.’ He hung up.
Returning the cell to his pocket, Enrique made his way through the galley and into the saloon. A group of identically dressed crew were milling anxiously, awaiting instruction and straightening their uniforms, determined to make a good impression.
Enrique had struck gold when the employment agency secured him the van der Meyde gig. It was his knowledge of boats that had swung it. That and the false ID he’d had an acquaintance supply him with. Prison had been good for at least something.
A sharply tailored white suit, gold braiding at the collar and cuffs, concealed the hardened, heavily tattooed body beneath. Two years behind bars for a crime he had never wanted to commit had changed Enrique beyond recognition. Finally, his appeal had been granted—he had been acting on behalf of his brother, the notorious Diego Marquez, whose ever-elusive whereabouts had been exchanged for his own release in a backhanded deal set up by the LAPD, whose drugs squad had been tailing Diego and his crew for nearly a decade.
Enrique didn’t feel bad about it. Had Diego taken the rap when it all went to shit? Had Diego come to visit and say he was sorry and pay his fucking respects? No. Instead he’d set his only brother up, quitting town and sending word that a rival gang was planning a hit on their mom. Sure, he’d done it. Sure, he’d gone down for his trouble. What else was he going to do?
Only, now, gone were the gentle eyes, the ready laugh and the dimples of humour. In their place, hostility against the world that had wronged him since the day he was born. Anger—no, too weak: rage—at his betrayal by the woman who had promised she was his.
Loriana Garcia Torres. Once so innocent, a virgin. Not any more. These days her body was there for the taking, a hooker masquerading as something else but a hooker all the same. He’d seen her parading her boyfriends, splashed across magazines like she hadn’t a care in the world. Didn’t she give a crap? Didn’t she think of him? Clearly not.
He’d heard what happened at Lori’s salon—Diego had made one lame attempt to get him out, at least. He and his gang had paid Lori a visit and asked for the alibi that would set Enrique free. Had she given it? Course not. The woman who’d vowed she loved him had turned her back and walked away, without a second thought, leaving him to rot like an animal in a cage. And, more—worse, because he’d always suspected it to be the real reason she was holding out—her boyfriend had shown up, some sharp suit with a fist and an attitude.
Prison had been agony for a whole host of reasons, but those first few weeks were easily the lowest. Imagining Lori—his girl, his woman—with another man, one she’d chosen so swiftly over him, was torture. No wonder she had always refused to put out, she’d been getting it elsewhere the whole time. She’d broken his heart, and instead of waiting for it to mend he had done away with it altogether. He didn’t need a heart any more. All it caused was pain.
Reuben van der Meyde was descending the spiral staircase into the atrium. A hush fell over the crowd as he surveyed the assembly with jumpy eyes.
Enrique despised him on sight. Van der Meyde was exactly like the rich bastards he used to work for at the harbour at San Pedro: arrogant, limp-dicked creeps who expected the world to bow and kiss their feet. Van der Meyde was sweating, mopping his brow like a kid who got caught jerking off. Enrique felt no remorse. It would bring him pleasure to witness this man’s demise. Along with all the other Hollywood sons of bitches without a clue how real people lived, suffering, struggling, every day a mountain. No damn clue. Well, they were about to get a lesson in that
suffering. A very fucking serious one.
With their money and fame and vanity, those people could never understand what it felt like to be locked up. Enrique’s cold stare was a badge of the horrors he had faced. Incarcerated with monsters, it had slowly turned him into one of them. Days and weeks and months of abuse and pain and loneliness had stripped him of pride and dignity and the faith that, beneath the layers of hurt, the world was fundamentally a good and forgiving place. Like hell it was. The world had showed him nothing but cruelty—and it was about time he paid some of it back.
Lori Garcia.
He twisted the silver band on his finger.
So much for promises.
She had forsaken him when he had needed her most.
Tonight, she would pay. They all would.
‘No mistakes, no excuses,’ van der Meyde was saying. For the Very Fucking Powerful Entrepreneur he was meant to be, the guy looked like he was cacking himself. ‘Every drink you serve, every smile you give, will be observed …’
Enrique wanted to laugh. He’d be giving them more than a smile tonight.
Van der Meyde closed the brief. Enrique had scarcely listened to a word of it. He didn’t need to. He had his own brief. And the big man’s rules counted for nothing.
Book Four
2011-12
43
Lori
‘At least meet him, would you?’
Lori came to a halt, bent and put her hands on her knees, catching her breath as Jacqueline Spark slowed up next to her.
‘What’s the point?’ She drank from her bottle of water. ‘I’m not interested.’
A jogger passed, the first they’d met, his dog leaping in the spray. It was early and Venice Beach was deserted, the lilacs of dawn still hazy in the sky.
‘Maximo Diaz is a nice guy,’ promised Jacqueline. ‘He’s not like Peter.’
‘I thought Peter was a nice guy. Until he stole my panties.’
Jacqueline smiled and tamed a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her ponytail. She was determined to get Lori to say yes to the meet. A bounce back after Peter was exactly what her profile needed, and no one better fitted the bill than the new kid in town. Maximo Diaz was from royal stock, the cousin of a nephew of a prince or some such, and last year had played the love interest in two acclaimed movies (he was good to look at but he wasn’t exactly versatile). Jacqueline understood they’d been burned by Selznick, but the fact was that if Lori wanted to stay pure as driven snow, someone had to make sure, at least romantically speaking, that other things were getting driven—namely, her PR machine.