Kept

by Jami Alden

“They’re not going to do anything,” she said as they hurried from the police station. “They’re not even going to bring Harold in for questioning.” She spit the last word out. “And Richard and Louis have already fled the country. They’re going to get away with it. All of it.”

  Derek reached out, took her arm, and guided her to the car. “We’ll find a way to nail your uncle,” he said as he opened the passenger door so she could slide in. “And Homeland Security has Abbassi on their watch list. If he tries to get back in the country, they’ll nail him. He won’t be able to hurt you.”

  Alyssa shook her head. “I’m not going to let him off the hook. He can’t just keep living his life like nothing happened.”

  Derek climbed into the driver’s seat and slid his hand across the console. His hand rested on her jean-clad leg and gave her a comforting squeeze. “I don’t like it any better than you do. But we’re not going to stop digging. If your uncle’s behind this, we’ll find the proof.”

  “What do you mean, if?” she asked, whirling on Derek. “Are you like Reyes? Do you think I’m deluded, too?”

  His mouth pulled into a hard, tight line. “I know you’re upset and overwhelmed, so I’m going to forget you said that. After all I’ve been through for you lately, you should know how much I believe you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice high and tight with strain. “I just—I can’t go on like this, always looking over my shoulder, wondering if he’s going to come after me.”

  Fury bubbled up in her again. Her uncle, so devoted to maintaining the family image, the facade of propriety. Lashing out at her for her supposedly scandalous behavior.

  And now that she knew the truth, the police wouldn’t listen to her. No one took her seriously. She was just a stupid, useless trust-fund baby who had learned to manipulate the press and manufacture scandal to increase her fame.

  Now it was time to put her skill to work for something important.

  She knew exactly what she needed to do. If the police weren’t willing to go after Harold Van Weldt, she was going to get him and get him good. Where it hurt most.

  CHAPTER 21

  “WHO ARE YOU calling?” Derek asked as he pulled away from the curb.

  Alyssa ignored him as she dialed Kimberly’s number. Everything that was about to happen was going to hurt her, too. And after all Kimberly had done for Alyssa, she owed it to her half sister not to blindside her with what she was about to do. Kimberly answered on the first ring. “Alyssa? Oh, my God, are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

  “I’m fine,” Alyssa said, turning away from Derek’s warning glare.

  “Where are you? Where have you been?”

  “There’s too much to go into right now. I’ll explain everything when I see you. But, Kimberly, I just wanted to tell you…some stuff is going to come out.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Kimberly asked, her tone wary. “Is it about you and the drugs?”

  “No, it’s about—” She halted as Derek gave her leg a warning squeeze.

  “Don’t,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Don’t tell her anything.”

  He was right. No matter how much she cared about Alyssa, Kimberly was loyal to Harold and loyal to the business. Alyssa didn’t want her to tip him off and ruin her surprise.

  “It’s too much to go into over the phone. Can we get together later tonight?” Alyssa felt a twinge of guilt. If everything happened the way she hoped, the shit would hit the fan in a big way before she had a chance to talk to her sister in person. She could only hope her sister would forgive her, or at least understand why Alyssa did what she was about to do.

  “I can’t,” Kimberly said, her voice clipped with tension. “I have to go to the Black-and-White Ball tonight. They’re doing a special tribute to Daddy, and Uncle Harold is giving a speech.”

  Alyssa’s stomach churned, and acid burned the back of her throat. After everything he’d done, Harold Van Weldt was going to stand up in front of hundreds of San Francisco’s elite and pretend to honor her father.

  “Perfect,” Alyssa said, feeling her eyes narrow and her lips curl into a shrewd smile. “I’ll see you there.”

  She hung up before Kimberly could respond and didn’t pick up when her sister called right back.

  Derek took his attention from the early evening city traffic to shoot her a suspicious look. “What’s with that look? Where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’re going to the Black-and-White Ball. And we’re going to let everyone know the truth about where Harold Van Weldt gets all his diamonds.”

  Hundreds of heads swiveled in their direction as Alyssa strode into the main ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, with Derek close on her heels. In her electric-blue satin mini dress, Alyssa stood out like a beacon amid a sea of black and white. They’d made a quick detour to Neiman’s, where Alyssa had dropped an astounding amount of money on the dress, shoes, and makeup. She donned them all with the deliberation of a knight preparing himself for battle. Within minutes she’d morphed into the glamorous creature who drew attention like moths to a flame.

  Derek stood out, too, the only guy not dressed in black tie. And Derek was willing to bet good money no one else in the room had a Sig Sauer .45 stashed under his jacket or a Randall Model 1 fighting knife strapped to his calf. Alyssa had given him a wide-eyed look when he pulled the weapons out of his trunk. He’d stashed them without a word and followed her closely through the parking garage, all the while keeping an eye out for anyone who looked remotely suspicious.

  What she was about to do was a cluster fuck in the making, and he cursed himself for the hundredth time for being stupid enough to let her talk him into it.

  “The hell you’re going!” he’d said when she announced her plans to crash the charity ball. “You’re not going to put yourself out in the open like that.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life hiding from him?”

  “Let the police do their job. In the meantime, I’ll protect you.”

  “We can’t stay in the cottage forever. I have a life to get back to.”

  When Derek had continued to protest, she’d backed him into a corner. “Fine,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I’ll tell my publicist to schedule a press conference at the safe house, how about that? Or maybe we should have it at your place? It won’t have the same impact as crashing the benefit, but I’ll get the information out anyway.”

  “Just be patient.”

  “Screw being patient! I want people to listen to me, to hear the truth before he has time to put his own spin on it and totally discredit me.”

  Derek had relented, but the tension between them seethed and churned until it was like a living beast. He knew she had a complicated relationship with the press. Sometimes using it to her advantage, sometimes getting screwed. But no one could deny her attention-grabbing antics had made her a star.

  She said she wanted to lower her profile. But that wasn’t the case right now when the need to spin the situation in her favor outweighed her sense of self-preservation.

  Her spine was ramrod straight as she made her way through the maze of tables.

  A ripple of whispers started across the room as the guests took notice and turned their attention from Harold Van Weldt, standing at the podium at the front of the room.

  Get in, let her do her thing, get her the fuck out.

  They’d deal with the other shit later when hundreds of people and dozens of cameras weren’t around.

  As Harold began his speech, Alyssa approached the guy running the slide show that accompanied the speech. She whispered something and gave him a dazzling smile. The guy looked skeptical, but, still, he accepted the CD from Alyssa and loaded it into the computer.

  Derek had to hand it to her. Even pissed off and scared for her life, Alyssa had something. A glow, a charisma that would make just about any man fall at her feet and do her bidding.

  Except for her uncle, whose constipated frown told
Derek he’d spotted her in the crowd. Still, Harold continued with his speech, singing his late brother’s praises, not noticing when the PowerPoint presentation on the screen behind him was replaced by startling photos of bone-thin men, women, and children covered in the mud of a pit mine and teenage boys holding guns bigger than they were.

  Murmurs and gasps filled the ballroom as the grainy video of Abbassi and Mekembe began to play. Finally Van Weldt got the clue something was up and looked behind him.

  Alyssa and Derek were next to the podium now, close enough to see the sweat bead across Harold’s lip and the vein pulse across his forehead. Kimberly Van Weldt stood just to the side, her garish red lipstick the only color in her chalk-white face.

  Harold stepped back a few inches from the podium and covered the microphone with his hands. “What do you think you are doing?”

  Derek moved out of the glare of the spotlight and scanned the crowd, his stomach clenching with dread. He didn’t really expect her uncle to try anything on Alyssa, not there with this crowd, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Alyssa’s public spectacle was about to go very wrong.

  “I’m telling the truth, Harold,” Alyssa said, leaning into the mic so her voice boomed across the crowd. “This is the truth about where the Van Weldt diamonds come from. Nine months ago, Harold Van Weldt and Richard Blaylock made a deal with Louis Abbassi—many of you already know him, but for those who don’t, he’s the dark-haired guy in the video—to buy diamonds exclusively from Louis’s diamond-cutting facility. They didn’t care where the diamonds were coming from, as long as Louis could save them money. They didn’t care that the diamonds are being used to fund wars that kill children and hurt innocent people.”

  Derek had to admit it. She had a great sense of timing, pausing her tirade as the camera showed the first-person perspective of Marie Laure as she was beaten by her captor.

  “Then my father found out the truth, but before he could do anything about it, Harold had him killed and framed my stepmother to make it look like a murder suicide.”

  Harold’s face pulled into a mask of fury, burning beat red as his mouth opened wide in an angry black hole.

  Alyssa barely caught a blur of movement before pain exploded in her cheekbone, radiating up and out until her entire head was filled with a dull roar. She stumbled on her high heels, landing in a heap on the dais.

  “You little bitch! Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” Harold Van Weldt stood over her. He looked like a rabid dog, his fine, aristocratic features unrecognizable as he screamed at her.

  Then Harold was flying through the air before landing on a table surrounded by stupefied philanthropists. Alyssa saw Derek on top of him, his fist crunching against Harold’s cheekbone. Three guards struggled to pull Derek off, who gave Harold one last backhand before he rose. “You come near her again and I’ll beat you so hard you’ll piss blood for the rest of your life.”

  Derek shook off the security guards and lifted Alyssa to her feet, ran his hands over her as all hell continued to break loose in the ballroom. Cameras flashed, the crowd rumbled, and the on-site security team struggled to control hundreds of guests trying to squeeze to the front of the room to get a better view of the scandal in progress.

  Derek tipped her face up to his. “Open and close your mouth for me,” he said, his voice tight and clipped. Okay, he was pissed. No surprise there. He’d been pissed since she’d backed him into a corner and forced him into bringing her there.

  Tough shit for him. As far as she was concerned, a bruised cheekbone was worth the public crucifixion her uncle would suffer in the next several weeks. Still, she tried to make light of the situation, compelled to ease the tension that knotted Derek’s shoulders and made the tendons stand out on his neck. “Wow. I didn’t think Uncle Harold had that in him. Goes to show you even a little guy can pack a mean bitch slap.”

  A few guests standing nearby chuckled uncomfortably, but Derek’s stone-cold visage didn’t crack.

  He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her aside, though there was no privacy to be had. Over his shoulder Alyssa saw someone pointing a cell phone at them, no doubt videotaping the exchange, while several other guests used their phones to document Harold being escorted out by the hotel’s security staff, struggling and spitting like a deranged tomcat.

  “You think this is fucking funny? That this is a fucking joke?”

  Alyssa looked into Derek’s dark eyes, feeling herself shrink at the fury simmering there. “It’s not a joke—”

  He gave her a rough shake. “He could have really hurt you.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I was dumb enough to let you talk me into this stupid idea.”

  “It wasn’t stupid. Now people will know the truth—”

  “This isn’t about the truth. This is about your need to spin things in your favor. You accuse Harold of being wrapped up in the family’s image, but look at what you’re doing. You’re so concerned about getting the press on your side you don’t care that you’re putting your life at risk. It’s called common sense, Alyssa, and you don’t have a goddamn lick of it.”

  Alyssa wanted to cover her ears, run and cower in a corner as every word hit her like a blow. Stupid. Pathological need for attention. No common sense. Stupid.

  “That’s enough.” She forced the words through numb lips. “That’s enough.”

  “And the hell of it is, you got me to go along with it. I knew you were trouble the first time I looked at you, but it’s like I drop IQ points just from being around you.”

  She shivered as goose bumps broke out on her bare arms. Her peripheral vision disappeared, and suddenly she wasn’t aware of anything but Derek, his angry, disapproving face, his devastating words.

  His words struck her like physical blows, stunning in their viciousness and unfairness. The urge to cower away fled in the face of rage, rage like nothing she’d ever known boiling up inside her. She was sick of trying to please people, only to get ground into the dust. Sick of loving and trusting people, only to have them screw her over.

  She yanked her arm from his hold, drew her arm back, and put all her weight behind the slap that caught him squarely in the cheek. He jerked his head back, and as flashbulbs popped, she could see the imprint of her small hand appear in his face.

  “Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?” she said, paying no attention to the dangerous narrowing of his eyes. “You think I’m stupid? You’re the one who didn’t believe me, who thought I was making it all up until I was kidnapped and drugged. You’re the one who was duped by Richard and my uncle until it was almost too late.”

  “Alyssa,” he said, his voice a low, warning growl, “don’t do this here.”

  She ignored him and swatted him across the chest with her handbag. “You’re the one who’s wasting his life pining after his mommy who left him, pushing away anyone who’s idiot enough to try to get close to you because you’re afraid they’ll leave, too.”

  His face froze. “Don’t go there,” he said through lips that barely moved. “You don’t want to go there.”

  “That’s right,” she said, her anger burning like acid in her throat. She was ashamed of herself for going for his jugular but was unable to stop herself. His knuckles showed white as his hands clenched into fists. “Push me away. Swat me down when you start to care too much. Well, don’t worry.” She planted her palms against his chest and gave him a shove. He didn’t move an inch. “I’m done throwing myself at people who treat me like garbage. If you’re too stupid to accept love when it’s given to you, that’s your loss.”

  She spun around and ran into another body. A slim arm wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Are you okay, honey? Did he hurt you badly?”

  Alyssa sighed with relief. Kimberly. She leaned into her sister for support.

  “Alyssa!” Derek called out, but she let herself be swallowed by the crowd, steered away by her sister’s firm arm across her back.

  “I’m sorry, Kimberly
,” she said, suddenly awash in guilt. Derek was right. This had been a horrible idea, but she hadn’t been able to see beyond her own need for vengeance to think about how this would spell disaster for Kimberly as well. Or, rather, she had considered it but had ultimately been too self-centered to care until it was too late. “I know this is going to make all kinds of problems for you and the business,” Alyssa said as Kimberly somehow guided her through the crowd.

  “Let’s find someplace quiet to talk,” said Kimberly, a slight tremor in her voice the only indication tonight’s events were anything out of the ordinary.

  She directed Alyssa to a door behind the dais and screen, and when they went through, Alyssa saw it was the entrance to a service hallway. A few waiters and a busboy walked by, barely sparing them a second glance.

  The adrenaline was wearing off. Her entire face throbbed from Harold’s blow, but the worst pain was from Derek’s words, ricocheting through her body like shrapnel, tearing everything to shreds. He thought she was a vain, stupid, attention-addicted idiot.

  What was wrong with her that she kept opening herself up to people who loved to smack her back down? Derek was right. She didn’t have an iota of common sense.

  No. She stiffened her spine. She was done being screwed over. Done being taken advantage of. Like she said to Derek, it was his loss.

  She blinked back her tears and focused on her sister, trying to find the words to apologize to her. “I know I should have handled this differently,” she said, avoiding Kimberly’s gaze. As supportive as Kimberly was, Alyssa knew she’d see censure in her sister’s eyes. “But I couldn’t sit on the truth anymore. I had to let everyone know what had really happened.”

  “It’s okay,” Kimberly said. “It’s good the truth is finally out there.” Her voice was calm. Too calm.

  Alyssa looked at Kimberly’s face, and she knew.

  She turned on her heel and started to run down the hall as fast as her spike heels would allow. Kimberly caught her by the hair and yanked. Alyssa screamed in anger and pain, hoping someone would hear. She wheeled on Kimberly and landed a closed-fist punch on the side of her sister’s head, but Kimberly’s grip didn’t ease.