§§§
Ben had two options about the piss-up at Tim’s. Not tell Nikolas and go. Tell him and go. Well, he had other options, of course…not tell him and not go, tell him and not go…but both of these involved not going, so he’d discounted them, because he was…going. And it wasn’t because fondling a roomful of other men’s balls painted and decorated for Christmas was exactly his idea of fun. He’d rather go to the ballet with Nikolas than that to be honest, and that, clearly, was never going to happen. It was more the underlying meaning of going to this do that he knew he needed to focus on…that he could go to such a party. Because if he couldn’t, then what did that say about him?
Exactly.
But he knew he ought to tell Nikolas.
If he didn’t, the whole point of proving that he could go was nullified.
Sometimes, Ben tried to remember back to a time when the decisions in his life had consisted of which T-shirt to wear, and whether to watch TV or go to the pub.
He picked a good moment to tell Nikolas. Nikolas wasn’t the only one who could do this—Ben knew precisely what Nikolas was doing when he asked his bizarre questions while they were having sex.
It was easy then, as Ben was licking slowly up Nikolas’s cock that night, to ask, just after he gave a strong suck to the tip, “What are you doing Saturday?”
Nikolas didn’t reply, so Ben took the heavy cock deep into his mouth, gently massaging Nikolas’s balls, stroking them as if he were decorating them…When he felt Nikolas was very close, he withdrew and began to trail his tongue up the ridged belly, until Nikolas seized his head and pushed him lower once more. “Saturday?”
With an annoyed grunt, Nikolas replied, “Christian Tetzlaff is playing Brahms at the Barbican. I thought I might attend. Why?”
“I’m going to a party at Tim’s.” Best not mention Squeezy. It lowered the tone. Now, it could sound like a dinner party of professors, possibly.
“Is the moron going to be there?”
Did Nikolas not actually know that Tim and Squeezy lived together? It was possible. Only he got tagged, apparently. Did picking you up drunk from the pub, driving you home and holding you whilst you vomited up steak and kidney pudding balance out the tagging?
“I don’t know. But Kate is.”
There was an even longer silence at this. Finally, Nikolas rose from the bed and went to stand at the window. Ben loved it when he did this. He got to enjoy Nikolas walking around with his huge erection jutting out of his lean body, his powerful shoulder muscles…Nah, he was just focused on the cock.
“What would you say if I asked you not to go?”
“I don’t know. Ask me and I’ll see.”
“But if I ask you and you refuse then it will be awkward because I will perceive two offences and not just one.”
“Offences? I’m offending you by attending?”
“You have decided to attend then?”
“That’s what I said…I’m going to Tim’s party. I wasn’t asking permission, Nik. Do I need to do that?”
Nikolas shrugged, which was possibly the most irritating thing he could have done.
Ben disentangled himself from the sheets and went to the window, too. “You don’t trust me.”
Nikolas tipped his head to one side, regarding him, then shifted his gaze back to the darkness. “It’s not that. I promise, it’s not that. I do trust you. I love you.”
Ben’s brows rose until he realised his face must almost look comical. That was the most uncharacteristic thing Nikolas had ever said to him and only underlined how wrong things were. But at exactly the same time as he was thinking this, he was imagining trying to explain his worries to Tim.
“Everything’s wrong? Why? What did he say?”
“He said he trusted me and he loved me.”
“Oh.”
Yeah.
He stood closer and slipped his arms around Nikolas’s waist, bringing their erections together very pleasantly. Nikolas smiled faintly.
“So, if you trust me, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t trust her. You were right. What she did hurt me, and I didn’t see it at the time. All this armour, all my ability to keep the things that hurt me away, and I let her in through a crack, and she wounded me. It hurts to think of you at a party, being nice to her, liking her, telling her that you love her as you love your other friends.”
Ben backed away slowly, licking his lips. He swallowed. For one moment, he had the bizarre thought that this was a man acting the role of Nikolas Mikkelsen. That somehow, in that craziness in Louisiana, a replica had been made, an actor engaged, and the real Nikolas taken, but now, after these few months, the act was slipping. Mistakes creeping into the illusion. Nikolas was studying him, again. He murmured sadly, “I cannot win with you, Ben. When I lie, you do not like it. When I am entirely honest, you are afraid. How do you want me to be? Tell me, and I will try to be that for you.”
Ben heard as clear as if Nikolas had added it, “While I still can.”
His belly coiled with dread. He seized Nikolas’s chin, shaking him, which he regretted, given he was asking him, panicked, “Are you sick? Nik, are you…ill?”
Nikolas held his hand off and pulled him into a hug. “No, forget it. Go to your party. Say hello to Kate for me. She’ll like that. She’ll appreciate it.” Ben’s panic receded on the dry, sarcastic tone. The tiny, wicked glint of the real Nikolas was back. Ben swallowed again, not letting his gaze drop. Nikolas slapped his backside, hard, and on punishment for that, the strange conversation was forgotten.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The party was different.
Ben had to admit that.
It was Christmas, and everyone had made an effort to wear the required costume, but you could only appreciate these by…looking. The women seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as the men. Tim had fun friends.
Ben was, as usual, something of the star of the party. He was used to this and played his role for a while—famous, the most beautiful, the most desired—until he’d done his duty, and then he went to find Squeezy. This could be a risky business these days, as Squeezy had taken to his new hedonistic lifestyle with gusto since he’d been unshackled from the bonds of both heterosexuality and military discipline.
Ben found him in one of the bedrooms, extricated him, and dragged him into the kitchen, which was quiet. “Your balls are smeared.”
Squeezy shrugged. Apparently it wasn’t the strangest thing anyone had ever said to him.
“Do you have Kate’s new number? She’s not here yet. I want to call and see if she needs a lift.”
“You allowed to give Katie lifts?”
“Did you just elbow me suggestively and leer? Seriously?”
Squeezy tossed him his phone. Ben called but it just rang.
He tried again in an hour, and this time it picked up, and a man replied, “Yes, hello?”
Ben was about to apologise for getting the wrong number, but the voice added, “Who am I speaking to, please?”
Ben took the call out in the hallway away from the music. “Is this Kate Armstrong’s phone? Who are you?”
“Are you a friend, sir?”
Ben leant against the wall. He recognised that tone of voice. “Yes. What’s happened?”
“I’m sorry, sir, my name is Doctor Felix Arif. I’m in charge of St Mary’s A&E department. A young woman called Kate Armstrong was in an accident tonight. At Paddington Station.”
“Oh, God! Is she all right?”
“I’m sorry, although she was brought to our critical care department, she was declared dead on arrival. I am so sorry. We are contacting her next of kin. Her parents?”
“Dead. Kate? What—What accident? How? I mean—?”
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know…all I can say is that her injuries were consistent with a fall.”
“A fall? She fell to her death? What the—?”
“A train. She was taking the underground.”
; “Oh my God! I’m coming down. Is that okay? Can I come there?”
He rang off, not waiting for a reply and did the only thing it occurred to him to do. He called Nikolas. He couldn’t speak when Nikolas picked up.
He heard an annoyed sound, and the noise of Nikolas making apologies in a hushed voice, then after a few moments, “If you are drunk you can fucking well vomit over Tim and come home in the morning.”
Ben tried to speak without breaking down too much. It wasn’t made easy by the number of partygoers in the hallway, throwing him drunken, curious glances. “Kate’s dead.”
There was a very long silence on the other end of the phone, and Ben stared at it, as if that would help him understand why Nikolas wasn’t talking. Eventually, he got back, “I’ll come and get you. Stay there. Ring off now, Ben.”
“What?”
“Ben! Ring off. Stay there. Promise me?”
“Yeah, but Nik…” He checked the screen again. It didn’t help.
He went to find Tim.
It took them twenty minutes to empty the apartment and then they sat on the sofa, stunned.
“She fell under a train?” This was the third time Tim had asked this question, and he got the same answer as he’d got the other two times.
“That’s what he said. I think. I don’t know.”
“St Mary’s?”
“Yes.”
“A train?”
There was a sharp knock, and Ben grimaced at the other two before getting up and going out into the hallway. He shut the door to the sitting room carefully behind him and then went to the front door.
Nikolas was dressed for his concert in a long black cashmere overcoat and black tie. He was so utterly beautiful and so familiar and so…necessary…that Ben forgot everything except the need to hold him, be held. As Nikolas embraced him silently he could feel their hearts beating together.
Nikolas whispered into his neck, “I’m sorry.” Ben had the strangest feeling that Nikolas meant more in that apology than sorrow for the loss of someone who had meant a lot to him. “Tell me what happened.”
Ben drew him into the flat and shut the door. “A doctor from St Mary’s had her phone. Said she’d been in an accident on the underground. That’s all I know.”
Nikolas nodded. “Okay. Who is here?” He appeared to answer his own question. “Go get them. We’ll all go.”
Nikolas drove because although the other three felt entirely sober now, they probably weren’t. There was nowhere to park, of course. Nikolas just left the vehicle on double yellow lines, and they went in to the hospital’s A&E together.
§§§
The accident was witnessed by a number of people.
There had been a crush on the platform. An elderly man had tripped over and fallen. Several people had helped him up, but then the young woman had fallen—onto the track. A terrible crush and it had been so sudden. No suggestion of suicide, as the young woman had been chatting to someone on the platform she apparently knew, and laughing. Lots of witnesses. The man she’d been talking to hadn’t come forward yet. They would have released his CCTV picture, but the system had been down for refurbishment that night.
The funeral was to be held in her home city, St Albans.
She was an only child.
She lived for her job.
Thirty-seven years old.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The first funeral Nikolas had attended had been his great-grandmother’s. He’d been seven, and he’d loved her with the ferocity of all little boys who feel themselves entirely misunderstood by the rest of the world.
Three years later, he’d attended his mother’s service in the same church. In prison, they hadn’t had burials. They’d remembered the dead in their own way, but no last rites. Ceremonies for the dead were luxury items.
In the army, he’d attended so many he’d lost count—full dress uniform, solemn occasions for fallen comrades.
He hadn’t gone to his own funeral. Funny that, when you thought about it. Everyone should be at their own send off.
They were going in a group—ANGEL. Jackson Keane, Andrea Gillian, Tim Watson, Michael Heathcote and, of course, Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen. Nikolas’s people. Those he’d chosen to surround himself with. Those he’d chosen to trust.
And now one had fallen.
Nikolas had no doubt whatsoever why the man seen talking to Kate on the station had not come forward.
He’d chatted to many people in railway stations in his time, too.
He’d never come forward either.
He had killed Kate as surely as if he’d pushed her off that platform himself.
In trying to save her, he’d killed her.
§§§
They were going to travel up from the London house for the service and then home to Devon. He didn’t want to draw any additional attention to Kate’s parents and had refused their invitation to the do after the funeral.
He needed to distance her family from anything to do with him.
But he wanted to pay his respects.
He went secretly on his own a few days before the funeral, when Ben was at Tim’s apartment for the evening.
Kate’s parents had once accepted an invitation to Denmark for Christmas only a short time after he had nearly been killed and Ben had almost been lost to him, and Nikolas remembered their gracious kindness with genuine gratitude.
And he had now repaid them by murdering their only child.
§§§
The Armstrongs lived in a large Victorian house near the train station in St Albans. It was a short walk.
It was snowing.
Half a world away, Paradise would be in warm sunshine. It was a strange universe, he concluded. Upside-down in too many ways.
Kate’s father answered the door and clearly recognised Nikolas, despite the fact his face was, for once, not battered or bruised.
He ushered him in. Reginald Armstrong appeared to be a man glad of any distraction from pain and grief, and only too willing to have that diversion male and therefore less likely to add to the world of tears he seemed lately to have found himself in.
He took Nikolas into the sitting room, a large, spacious, and beautifully decorated space, overlooking a traditional long Victorian garden, and offered him a whisky.
Nikolas accepted gratefully.
He was at something of a loss now.
Kate’s father didn’t seem to find it at all odd that her employer had come to pay his respects, and Nikolas allowed the fiction to continue. What else could he do or say? He handed the man an envelope and repeated how sorry he was. He was struggling to remember his English, his mind swinging back dangerously to his childhood language. The language of his lost innocence.
Reginald took the offering with a shaking hand, made to open it, gesturing helplessly to the mantelpiece where there were dozens more, such helpless gestures of sympathy. “I’d better let Jennifer open this. She likes to, you know…She’s made a list. Replies. Eventually.” He indicated towards the stairs, the stiff paper still in his hand, unopened. “Hasn’t helped, of course…Although I think it might. In time. All been a bit of a shock.”
Nikolas nodded. He had no idea what to say. He had lost so much in his life—mother, father, grandparents, brother, friends. And a child he had never even seen.
“I’ll give her a shout. Well, whisper. It’s all whispers these days.”
Nikolas closed his eyes and wondered if he should have come.
He was to be given no absolution, and he was bringing nothing to them.
He heard a murmur and a pleased, female response.
Jennifer Armstrong came into the sitting room, following her husband.
She had a baby in her arms.
She smiled and came over to Nikolas, kissing him on his cheek. “Sir Nikolas. This is so very kind of you. I’m sorry…I was upstairs…with…” She looked down, her eyes welling over with tears, which had clearly not stopped flowing for many hours. “We had no idea. Kat
e just came home with her. And now this…” She shifted the baby to the other side while she searched for a tissue.
Wordlessly, Nikolas handed her an immaculate handkerchief.
She took it with a grateful, apologetic nod, and dabbed her eyes.
“We have no idea who the father is. She wouldn’t tell us. But my daughter was a grown woman and lived her own life, and we’ve always respected her decisions.”
Nikolas was watching the baby.
He knew exactly who the father was.
The jet-black hair and wide-set green eyes rather gave it away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Nikolas was well aware that his friends—Ben’s friends—thought he was a control freak. He would have liked to see what they would be like if they’d had his life. There had been many times when he had not been able to affect anything, so manipulating everything now was the only way he could cope. It wasn’t strength. It was weakness. He knew this really. Like a man with OCD, he was condemned by his obsessions, not freed by them, but, nevertheless, it was how he got through each day.
He’d applied that principle to Kate when she had been dating Ben all those years ago. He’d known everything about their relationship. Once Ben had moved in with him, he’d enfolded Kate in his suffocating grip, so she could not act independently. She owed everything she had to him and his money. He paid all his employees ridiculous sums for doing little more than being loyal to him and being willing to be controlled by him.
But she’d broken free.
She had stolen from him and now there was this.
This was beyond his control.
He could see this.
He couldn’t make it go away.
Ben’s daughter.
What the fuck was he supposed to do about this?
Kate had created something from Ben. How can you control the very act of creation? All he could do was destroy.
A sliver of Ben now existed separately and independently.
But that wasn’t tolerable.
He owned Ben Rider-Mikkelsen. He always had, and he always would. He was a very, very jealous owner.
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