by Blue Saffire
My guess is a bit of both.
“You’re trying to figure out where you know me from,” she says, shrugging a shoulder. “I’ve been a regular at most of your clubs for years now.”
Years? This girl looks barely old enough to drink now. Years ago, she would’ve practically been in diapers.
“How old are you?” I ask, eyes narrowed on her face. Long blonde hair. Sky blue eyes with the sort of dusky complexion that makes her look like she has a year-round tan. Her clothes are couture trash—skintight designer jeans and a t-shirt, both strategically ripped and faded to look like they were found in a dumpster. Both probably cost more than a family of six spends on groceries in a month.
“Old enough to hire someone to lop off your balls and toss ‘em in the Harbor if you hurt my sister again.” She smiles at me. “And rich enough to get away with it.”
Again.
She knows who I am.
What happened.
Which means, that for all her posturing to the contrary, Silver remembers me.
I open my mouth, not sure what’s going to come out, when a door opens down the hallway. Looking up and over, I watch as Silver comes toward me, her back stiff. Gaze straight ahead. Steps slow and measured, like someone’s marching her to the electric chair.
Jesus, this would be easier if she didn’t look so damn good. The dress is simple black jersey knit but I can tell from the cut its high-end and well-constructed, meant to hug and skim every curve. Compared to the last dress I saw her in, this one is practically a nun’s habit, but my cock doesn’t seem to recognize the difference.
Probably because it knows what’s underneath.
From the corner of my eye, I see the blonde round the chair to throw herself onto the sofa, leg over the arm of it like she’s been there the whole time and not threatening me with castration.
“Hello, Mr. Bright.” Silver’s gaze barely skims over me before she focuses on the blonde. “I’ll call if I’m going to be late,” she says, shrugging into a Navy pea coat. “Will you be here when I get back?”
I watch as she picks up the remote and turns on the television. The blonde shrugs. “Dunno. I might hit a few spots with Jordy and Liz, later on.”
Jordy and Liz. Jordan and Elizabeth Cramer. Twin trust fund babies and the scourge of the New York club scene. I’ve banned them from half my clubs for everything from dealing drugs to arson. Bad news doesn’t even begin to describe those two.
“They’re in Boston?” Silver frowns, looking around the room like she expects them to jump out from behind her curtains. She looks worried and I don’t blame her.
“Yeah.” She channel surfs, flipping through them fast enough to induce a seizure. “They’re this thing tonight in Seaport. Some warehouse, I guess. Anyway, it’s supposed to be lit.”
Silver has a million questions, I can see them on her face. Instead of asking them she says,
“Lilah, maybe you should just stay—”
I mentally flip through the dossier Logan build for me. Lilah—Delilah Fiorella. Silver’s half-sister and if TMZ and Celebrities Gone Crazy is any sort of judge, the Fiorella family wild child.
Settling on a channel, she tossed the remote on the coffee table in front of her. “Have fun you crazy kids,” she says, aiming her gaze at what looks like some sort of celebrity reality show—rich people screaming and flipping over tables. Probably friends of hers. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
23
Silver
I’m on a date with Noah’s father.
No, not a date.
This is a business dinner—and that’s all it is. Business.
It doesn’t matter how good he looks or how great he smells and it definitely doesn’t matter that my knees tried to give out on me when he pressed a hand to the small of my back while he helped me into the car.
Business.
That’s it.
Right.
We’ve been driving for a while now. Long enough for me to start to wonder where he’s taking me and what’s going to happen when we get there. I turn to ask him where we’re going but he beats me to it. “Your sister is… interesting,” he says, cutting me a quick look across the dark interior of the car. When he picked me up, I expected the same chauffeured Mercedes he showed up to Davino’s in this afternoon. Instead he led me to a Bugatti Chiron and climbed behind the wheel after seeing me safely inside the car. No Angus in sight.
I had a feeling that it was on purpose. That he intentionally drove himself to pick me up, so we would be alone together.
“Delilah? She means well.” I turn, angling my knees away from him like I did at the restaurant this afternoon. Hearing his voice is dangerous to my resolve to keep things strictly centered on business as it is. If I have to listen and look at him at the same time, I’ll be rendered me powerless. “She’s had a hard life.”
“She’s set to tap into a seven hundred and fifty-million-dollar trust fund when she turns twenty-five,” he says with a chuckle. “We have different definitions of hard life.”
I don’t ask him how he knows her trust fund. He’s a part of the New York elite, same as Lilah. I’m sure they all know each other’s business. “Our father has a proclivity for wealthy beautiful women, Mr. Bright. Not one of them over the age of twenty-five when he married them. Not one of them with the desire to be a mother when a camera wasn’t pointed in their direction.” I have no idea why I’m telling him this. I don’t mean to. Don’t want to but his snide remark about my sister broke something inside me and now the words won’t stop. “His current girlfriend is four years younger than me, so don’t assume you know anything about me or my sister.” I feel tears, hot and unexpected, prickling at the back of my eyelids. Sudden memories of being picked up in a private car and driven to my mother’s apartment. Of waiting for hours just to see her for a few minutes before she disappeared again. Of her taking me to Central Park for ice cream so paparazzi could follow us and snap our picture. Don’t look at the cameras, Argenta. Pretend they aren’t there. Pretend you’re having a good time. I didn’t understand at the time. I didn’t have to pretend. I was having a good time. I was with my beautiful mother and she was smiling at me. Holding my hand. Not handing me off to a nanny to me have my face and hands scrubbed clean. “Her life may not be your definition of hard, but you have no idea what it means to be raised by someone who doesn’t want you.”
“I’m sorry.”
That’s all he says. No backpedaling or justification for his remark. No arguing his position or defensive excuses.
Just I’m sorry.
The way he says it tells me I’m wrong. Tobias knows exactly what it means to be raised without love. Not so much an apology as an admission of commiseration.
It makes me remember the pictures I found in his drawer. Of him and the woman who had her arms around him. The woman with dark hair and blue eyes, just like his.
My mother died on my birthday.
I turn my head to look at him. His hands grip the steering wheel tight, his mouth a grim slash across his face. “I’m sorry too.”
As soon as I say it, his face softens. His hands relax. I don’t say another word until I see a sign attached to a chain-link fence topped with razor wire that drops my stomach to my feet.
The Bright Group
Private Airfield
Through my window I see a streamline Lear on the tarmac, The Bright Group logo splashed across its tail, its staircase unfurled, waiting to be boarded.
Fighting a rising tide of panic, I shift in my seat until I’m facing him completely. “You said we were going to dinner.”
“I did say that,” he says, offering me a quick flash of teeth as he pulls the Bugatti to a complete stop. “I just didn’t say where.” As soon as he shifts into park, my door opens and a hand appears in front of my face to help me from my seat while Tobias opens his own door.
I push the hand out of my face, any tender feelings I might have had for him moments ago, evaporating
under the heat of my irritation. “And where is that, Mr. Bright?”
He steps a foot out of the car before turning back to grin at me. “My place.”
24
Tobias
She’s pissed.
In all fairness, I’d be pissed to. I asked her to dinner and ended up kidnapping her. Even I have to admit that’s bad form.
As soon I dropped the my place bomb, I got out of the car and boarded the plane to hold my breath, half convinced I’d have to chase her down and carry her onto the plane myself.
Instead of giving in to the urge, I weigh on the side of civility. Pouring myself a few fingers of Dalmore 64, I settle into a seat near the back of the plane and wait her out.
Less than ten minutes later she appears at the top of the Lear’s aisle, cheeks flushed, her luminous gray eyes finding and skewering me with a sharp glare before stomping her way toward me. Behind her, the stewardess raises her eyebrows at me in silent question. Probably wondering if she’s going to be committing felony kidnapping if she closes up and tells the pilot we’re ready for takeoff. “Are we ready for takeoff, sir?”
“Yes.”
“No.” She bites the word in half and spits it at the poor stewardess before turning on me again. “I don’t know who you think I am, Mr. Bright,” she seethes at me, chest heaving. “But I’m not some wide-eyed—”
“Tobias.”
“What?”
“Tobias,” I say calmly before taking a sip of my drink. “You know my name and I want you to use it.”
She visibly bristles. “I prefer to keep our relationship as professional as possible.”
I laugh. Can’t help it. “Little late for that, isn’t it?” I watch her eyes narrow as one slim, dark brow arches over the heated glare she’s giving me.
Instant. Hard-on.
“As for who I think you are,” I say, fighting the urge to shift in my seat to make room for my rapidly growing cock. “I don’t think anything, Argenta. I know.”
“You know what?” she whispers, her face suddenly pale.
Instead of answering her I allow my gaze to slide over her, running down her frame until I catch onto her wrist. “Nice bracelet.”
She looks down, her mouth falling open in dismay and what looks a lot like surprise. She had no idea she was wearing it.
Behind her, the stewardess points to the plane’s door and I lift my chin just enough to signal her to close it up.
Like an animal sensing the snap of a trap, Silver whirls around and watches as the stewardess does as she’s told. Seconds later, we’re rolling down the runway.
“Dinner,” I say to her back. Calmly, rationally, when what I really want to do is beg and bargain. Negotiate and cajole. I forgot what she does to me. That just one look from her has me tossing out every rule I live by. “Just dinner and then I’ll bring you home.” Even as I say it, I know that I’m lying. I don’t want just dinner and I have no intention of bringing her back. Not in a few hours. Not in a few days.
Not ever.
She turns on me again. I can see it on her face, the way she’s running through her options. Admit. Deny. Pretend ignorance.
In the end, she doesn’t do any of those things. She simply slides into the seat across from me and stares out the window.
25
Silver
I haven’t been back to New York since I found out I was pregnant with Noah.
Poised to start my senior year, I sat in an exam room and listened to a campus doctor tell me that a pregnancy didn’t have to change my life. That I had options.
I left the NYU campus health office and took a cab to the train station. I bought a ticket to Boston. I cried. I told my father. I cried some more.
And then I adjusted.
I completed my senior year online and abandoned my dream of an MBA from Columbia and opening my own restaurant someday. I gave birth to Noah and attended Boston College. After graduation, I took over managing Davino’s for my father. Not my dream but when the nurse placed Noah in my arms, his sweet face scrunched up and red, mouth open wide on a trembling squall, I looked at him and I knew. I didn’t need dreams. Everything I needed was right there, nestled in my arms and screaming his lungs out.
Like I said, I adjusted.
Tobias hasn’t said a word since we left Boston, choosing to bury his head in a pile of work instead of acknowledging the fact that 1) he essentially kidnapped me and 2) he all but admitted to recognizing me. 3) He’s a liar because even though he said just dinner, we both know what’s going to happen if I let him take me to his apartment.
And I can’t do that again.
I can’t let him do that to me again.
Even though I know all this, even though I recognize that I’m practically begging him to cut out my heart and trample it all over again, here I am.
He used you. Tried to pay you for sex. Treated you like a whore. Took what he wanted from you and then sent his butler to sweep you out the door with his British accent and a fancy cup of coffee.
“Ma’am?”
I look up to see that the car is stopped in front of Tobias’ building and Angus has my door open, his hand offered in assistance. He met us at the airport with a car and if he recognizes me as the woman who played Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with his boss’s money before practically throwing hot coffee at him, his expression doesn’t let on.
I take his hand and let him help me from my seat to find Tobias already standing on the sidewalk, watching me like he fully expects me to bolt down the sidewalk in three-inch heels.
Because that’s exactly what I want to do, I don’t run. I take a deep breath and lift my chin, smoothing my hands down the front of my dress while letting it out slowly. That’s when it hits me.
I deserve to know what happened.
What went wrong.
What I did.
He owes me an explanation and he’s going to give it to me whether he wants to or not.
Tossing my hair over my shoulder, eyes straight ahead, I walk past him. Approaching the front of the building I see Teddy, the doorman and as soon as he sees me, his face splits into a grin so wide, I can see his tonsils. “Hey, Ted-o,” I say, stopping long enough to press a kiss to his wrinkly cheek. “Long time no see.” When I pull back I can see tears shining in his eyes.
“Miss Silver,” he says, reaching up to pat my cheek. “I was wondering when you were going to come see me.” His gaze darts past me and lands on Tobias. The smile on his face loses some of its shine. “Sir.” Teddy gives him a slight incline of his head before letting go of me to open the door, but despite the gesture, sir comes out sounding like a dirty word.
“Later, Ted-o,” I say, and he gives me a wink as I pass through the door, heading straight for the elevator.
Punching in my code for my mother’s apartment, I silently hold my breath. It’s been five years since I’ve been here and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d canceled it long ago. When the doors slide open, I let out a soft sigh of relief and turn just in time to watch Tobias follow me in.
Reaching out, he keys in the code for his penthouse and the door slide closed. As soon as they do, he turns to me. “You want to explain why I’ve been fielding dirty looks from my doorman for the past five years?”
“Because,” I say, reaching down to pull off one heel and then the other. “When I used to visit my mother, I would sneak down the elevator and play in the lobby.” I hook my fingers through the straps of my heels and let them dangle from my hand. “Because when my mother would send the nanny down to wrangle me and drag me back upstairs to the modern art museum she calls an apartment, Teddy would hide me until they gave up. Because I was six years old and a middle-aged doorman was my best friend.”
Before he can say anything else the doors slide open and I step through them into the dark. Turning, I set my heels on the floor just outside the elevator. “Because he saw me the morning after. Because he loves me, and he knows you broke my heart.”
26
Tobias
There are two things that keep people from giving in to their baser urges.
Remorse or fear.
Remorse over what succumbing could mean for those around you. Over doing something bad. Fear of getting caught. Of what giving in might cost you.
I’ve never felt either.
I’ve never thought twice about hurting people. Taking what I wanted. Needed.
Even in Brighton, without the insulation that billions of dollars has afforded me, consequences meant little to me. The only thing that kept me in line was the thought of being separated from my brothers. What would happen to them if I were gone. Who would protect them if I couldn’t.
I did what I had to do to protect and provide for my brothers and myself. In a world of Us or Them, it was always Us and I never lost a minute’s sleep over it.
I’ve lost a lot of sleep over Silver.
Now here she is, telling me I broke her heart. That I hurt her. And I feel guilty.
I follow her off the elevator, charging after her like a predator who’s caught the scent of the thing he’s hunting. The doors slide closed behind me, casting the place into deeper shadow but the dark doesn’t slow me down.
I can see her on the other side of the apartment, standing in front of the bank of windows, arms wrapped around her middle, staring out across the city.
Waiting for me.
Standing a few feet behind her, I watch her reflection in the window. Can see her face, backlit by city lights. Her eyes, glowing like moons, finding mine in the shadows. “I never expected more, you know,” she says, turning around to face me. “I knew what was happening. I knew what it was. You didn’t have to make me feels shitty to get me to leave.”
I think about that morning. Finding my pictures rearranged. Knowing she’s seen them. Knowing I’d opened up and told her things I’d never said out loud to another person. How I felt. Like my belly had been sliced open and my guts were hanging out. I’d assumed the worst. That it was a set-up.