“Thank you, Ch … Mom.”
It was never clear how Charlotte would react to the M word. For the first half of her life, Ava was introduced to people as Charlotte’s niece, or a friend’s daughter. Ava had been given strict directions never to use the dreaded M word in public.
“I’m not old enough for that,” Charlotte would say.
John Paul had put a stop to that as soon as their relationship had gone public, just a week after the ink had dried on the divorce papers to husband number four. Ava had already been nine by that point, too old for such a drastic change, but she had done it—grudgingly—for his sake. Her mother had embraced the new reality of being a public mother as she did her beauty regiment—with grace, a martini, and two valiums. But it had turned out in her favor, because everyone applauded her for having a twenty-five-year-old daughter and still managing to look so young. Life was rainbows and sunshine once more.
John Paul joined them. His hand automatically went to the small of her mother’s back.
“You look lovely, Ava,” he said in the fluid lilt of a French diplomate.
She offered him a smile in thanks.
He glanced past her to Patrick, who looked seconds away from vomiting on his own shoes. “Carmichael?”
“Yes sir?” His voice only squeaked a little, but the green tinge had begun to climb up his throat to taint his cheeks.
“Everything all right?”
His throat muscles worked rapidly, like he was trying to swallow a large chunk of rubber. “Yes sir.” He squared his shoulders like that might help with the sweat that had begun to gather across his brow. “Congratulations … no! Wait … uh…” He squeezed his eyes shut tight, gave his head a little shake as though to clear it. “To you.” He gestured at Ava. “Congratulations … I mean, happy birthday.”
She started to reach for him again, but quickly caught herself. She offered him a sympathetic smile instead.
“Why don’t you get us drinks, hm?”
His shoulders lifted and dropped, possibly in relief, but he inclined his head in an almost bow before turning and practically bowling his way out of sight.
“He’s very nervous,” Ava said once he was gone. “I don’t think he understood the implications when I suggested we … go public.”
“It’s adorable,” Charlotte decided. “Being nervous just shows he cares.”
John Paul nodded slowly. “I was extremely nervous when I met your mother.”
“You were not!” Charlotte scolded him playfully. “I have never met a more confident man. You were shameless.”
“Only on the outside, love,” he assured her smoothly.
Ava cut in quickly before the pair could start kissing. “Would you mind talking to him? Maybe introduce him to some people and get him comfortable?”
John Paul turned his attention back to her. His gaze lifted over her head to where Patrick had disappeared.
“I suppose, but—”
“Thank you! I just—”
“Ava!” Myrtle Pearson bustled over, a short, round, pasty thing in a puffy princess dress and tiara. Her arms swung around Ava’s middle, nearly taking them both to the ground. “Happy birthday, darling!”
Stubbornly keeping her expression fixed in one of delight, Ava beamed and patted her lightly on the back in return, trying not to notice how clammy she was.
“Hello Mrs. Pearson! How are you?”
“Dreadful.” The woman immediately pulled back. “Have you heard the news? It’s dreadful.”
“The news…?”
“Perhaps we should save that for later—?”
John Paul’s suggestion went completely ignored, now that the woman was on a roll and had a captive audience.
“The Attaway’s were robbed last weekend,” Mrs. Pearson rushed on in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. “During their anniversary dinner. I wasn’t there, of course. Princess, that’s my Yorkie, was a bit under the weather, poor thing. The thief broke right into Bill Attaway’s office safe and made off with everything. Then left behind his signature red rose and the card with the D on it. Can you imagine? The Devil has struck again!”
“That’s terrible…” But even as the words escaped her out of habit, Ava’s gaze darted to John Paul’s. They were both thinking the same thing, but neither of them could say a word. “Are the Attaway’s all right?”
“Well, they won’t be throwing another party any time soon, if that’s what you mean, but they’ll recover. Mostly what was taken, from what I hear, were bundles of money, some jewels, and a few other useless things. Nothing that can’t be replaced.”
“Good,” she whispered. “That’s good. I’ll be sure to call Mrs. Attaway and see if she needs anything.”
Mrs. Pearson beamed, showing a smudge of bright, red lipstick on her two front teeth. “You’re a darling girl, Ava love. But this is exactly the type of thing that happened last month at the Livingston’s gala, and the Goldberg’s the month before that…” she trailed off, some type of realization beginning to dawn across her doughy face. “It’s a bit of a routine, isn’t it? Do you suppose the police know about this?”
“I’m sure they do,” John Paul assured her. “They are the police after all. It’s their job.”
Mrs. Pearson nodded slowly, her expression determined. “I’d better let them know, just in case.”
She was already digging into her purse when she turned away.
Ava shot John Paul a panicked glance, urging him silently to do something without alerting her mother.
“Mrs. Pearson?” He lightly took her arm. “Would you like to dance?”
The other woman blinked. “Oh, but I should—”
“It can wait.” He gave her most charming smile. “It’s a party after all and I would very much love a dance with you.”
“Oh!” Cheeks pinkening, Mrs. Pearson glanced hurriedly at Charlotte. “Would you mind?”
Her mother, having already spotted a group of her frenemies, had to work extra hard to focus on the question. “Hm? Oh, no, not at all.” She smiled widely. “I’ve just seen someone I must catch up with. I’ll see you in a bit, love,” she told John Paul.
Then she was gone. John Paul was hauled off to the next room where the band had been instructed to play all of Ava’s favorite melodies, all of which had been converted from hard rock to classical. She hadn’t thought it was possible and yet … but the important thing was that Mrs. Pearson had been properly diverted off mentions of The Devil. While the police had probably figured out something so simple, Ava wasn’t about to give them further assistance on the matter than necessary.
“These bits of cheese taste like rubber.” Robby appeared at her elbow, cheeks stuffed. “But they’re like mini squares of crack.” He popped two more bits of canapé into his already bloated mouth from the small heap on the plate he held.
“Are you really going to eat all that?”
Robby blinked. He garbled something that had wet bits of cracker spraying out.
“Ew!” Ava laughed. “Chew your food.”
He glowered at her, but said nothing else.
It was around that time she realized Patrick hadn’t returned. Normally, such a thing wouldn’t cause concern, but given his behavior earlier, she figured she ought to at least attempt to find him.
“Can you help me find Patrick?”
Mouth mostly empty, Robby looked up from the snack he was inspecting and raised an eyebrow. “Have you lost him already?”
“I haven’t lost him,” she argued. “I’m just worried he’s…”
“What? Hidden himself in a closet?”
Ava frowned at him. “Will you just help me find him, please?”
“Fine, but if he is in a closet, I am totally posting that on Facebook.”
Rolling her eyes, Ava turned and headed in the direction Patrick had taken, pausing every few steps to thank someone for coming or accept a birthday greeting. A few stopped to ask if she’d heard the news about the Attaway’s, or about the s
tring of other burglaries that had been taking place almost frequently since … the incident.
“I’m telling you,” Abigail Sinclair hissed at her husband. “It’s all been going rampant since what happened.”
As short as his wife was tall, Howard Sinclair pursed his fat lips in defiance. “That’s ridiculous. Crime has always been a thing of concern, even before his death.”
It was apparently an argument they’d had before, but now they realized they had a new, third party to assault with their bickering.
“What do you think, Ava?” Abigail demanded, peering at Ava with that long, narrow face of hers.
“I think…” She cleared her throat. “I really don’t have much of an opinion on the matter, honestly.”
“Of course you don’t,” Howard broke in. “It’s nasty business that was. The man was a criminal. He got what was coming to him.”
“An alleged criminal,” Abigail squawked. “He was a hero.”
“The man massacred twenty people.”
“Christ, Howard, it’s bad luck to talk about death at a birthday party!” Abigail cried, gray eyes enormous in her horror.
“You brought it up, Abigail!” Howard shot back. “The man’s been dead two bloody months. I don’t think it even counts as a real death anymore.”
“Of course it counts,” Abigail argued. “The man is dead. It’s a horrible tragedy.”
“He was rather an important person,” Ava piped in. “People respected him.”
“Yeah, for a criminal.” Howard snorted. “Ever met him?”
It had been years ago and only for a few seconds as he was leaving John Paul’s office, but Killian McClary had been the type of man women remembered vividly. Both gorgeous and terrifying, he’d done no more than incline his head in polite acknowledgement, but it had simultaneously made Ava want to giggle and run for cover. The conflicting emotions had been severely daunting for a seventeen-year-old.
“Once,” she admitted. “He seemed nice.”
Howard huffed as though she’d just insulted everything he stood for. “Nice,” he grumbled. “He was a murderer was what he was.”
Ava swallowed back her laugh. “He was never convicted of any crimes. Besides, I don’t know if I disagree with the things he allegedly did.”
Abigail beamed. She shot her husband a haughty smirk that was met with his face growing splotchy with color.
“You mean brutally slaughtering twenty people?”
“Allegedly!” Ava stressed. “He was never even questioned.”
Howard snorted into the rim of brandy glass. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. I mean, we all know he did.”
Ava opted to let it drop. Conversations like that always led to her asking, so what if he did? So what if a bunch of even worse criminals are dead. I think he was a hero. Not everyone agreed with her philosophy. They didn’t understand that sometimes evil was required to fight evil, because, in her society, the people in it enjoyed their blissful ignorance. They relished in the knowledge that the really bad things only happened to people just on the other side of Harrison River. People like her, good people with fat portfolios and Jimmy Choo shoes would never associate with the riffraff that called the underbelly home. All any of them knew was that there were unpleasant ripples in the water and they were all children, playing much too close to a sink hole. No one knew what to do, nor were they clever enough to pull away.
There weren’t many who would agree with her. Most would argue the law and who had the power to take another man’s life, but Ava wasn’t so sure the law was as black and white as that. Powerful men dodged justice every day. Bad men. The cancers of the world. So what if someone made them pay for their crimes when the courts turned a blind eye? Sometimes, it was necessary.
But maybe a lot of that mindset came from the fact that the man Ava loved more than anything was a member of that shadowy world. Not many knew, not even her mother, but Ava wasn’t so lost in her own needs not to recognize her stepfather for what he truly was. So, by condemning the city’s organized crime, it always felt like she was condemning him and that was inconceivable.
“I should actually go.” She began to dodge around the pair still bickering about the rights and wrongs of the world. “But it was lovely to see you both.”
She made her escape before either of them had a chance to react. She hurried through the room and back out into the hallway, gaze scanning every face for some signs of Patrick.
She was just beginning to think maybe he’d gone home when she spotted him. He stood in the midst of a group of men well into their fifties, chatting on as though they’d been friends for ages. Ava recognized most of them as judges and a couple of lawyers. She knew them by face, but their names completely escaped her. She opted to leave him there.
“Ava.” Her mother appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Ava felt the woman’s claws sink into her arm before she was there, propelling Ava from the room. “What are you doing?”
Dislodging her limb from the death grip, Ava faced Charlotte. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re just standing there, lost to the world … slouching!” Charlotte sucked in a quick, calming breath. “That is an original Valentino gown, Ava. You do not slouch in an original Valentino gown! What are you thinking?”
“I wasn’t slouching.” She totally was. She knew she was. But she’d never mastered the ability to shove a stick that far up her own ass to keep it from happening. “I’ll stop.”
“Do!” Charlotte’s nostrils flared. “And mingle, for Christ sakes. This is your party.”
Ava’s posture was the bane of her mother’s existence, along with a lengthy list of other imperfections, but her inability to remain straight-backed all night was the current topic of mortification for Charlotte Morel.
It never made sense to Ava why John Paul married the woman. There really wasn’t a more selfish person on the face of the planet, yet he’d put up with her for an astonishing fifteen years and he’d done it without losing his mind. That alone earned him Ava’s respect. He was clearly far stronger than she ever was. Her goal the first eighteen years of her life had been to get as far away from her mother as possible. She had saved every penny she came across, building a large enough nest to take her somewhere her mother wouldn’t be. It had all been meticulously planned until it wasn’t.
On her eighteenth birthday, she had lapsed into a false sense of unrealistic expectations that had cost her more than her plans. She had foolishly allowed herself a reason to stay, had embraced it for all it was worth, had cherished it and urged it to grow as high as any girl could allow those feelings to grow. But it failed her as those things usually did. She had, in those moments, actually believed she was worthy of another person’s affections and wound up waking up to an empty bed and no explanation. But it was that push that sent her packing that very day and leaving for Paris for a year. Then Australia, and finally returning two and a half years later a different person. Ava regretted nothing, except that she’d allowed her plans to be detoured in the first place.
She never would have returned. The occasional holiday visit was enough for her. Plus, John Paul flew out every month for a week or a weekend. It had all been fine, until the accident.
The memory still sent a cold chill through her. It was the singular most traumatic moment of her life. She would never forget picking up her mother’s call and hearing the hysterical woman tell her John Paul had been in an accident and was in the hospital. Ava couldn’t even recall the rest of the conversation. She might have dropped the phone or hung up. It was all a blur as she had left work without notice and caught the first flight back home, not even bothering to stop at her apartment for clothes.
It had taken twenty-five hours to get to him. Twenty-five hours of fretting and praying and crying. She had been as hysterical as her mother by the time she’d crashed through the hospital doors. But it was those hours that convinced her she was too far. Those were hours that she could have lost him. It didn’t even
matter that her mother had over exaggerated the diagnoses, that the car had barely tapped the back of John Paul’s. It was the fact that he could have died while she was waiting for the stupid plane to fly faster.
She’d packed up her apartment in Sydney a month later and moved back. She got a job at Chaud, a fashion and health magazine as an editor, an apartment a block from John Paul’s estate, and started her life in the city she’d grown up in. She didn’t regret that either.
“So, I didn’t find your boy toy.” Robby was back, a fresh plate of canapé’s in hand. “But they have these new crab things that I swear melt—”
Ava gawked, astounded. “Did you seriously go to get more food?”
Robby paused in the midst of stuffing another hors d’œuvre into his mouth. “This isn’t food. This is like … okay, don’t judge. I’m starving.” He shoved the cracker into his mouth and chewed. “So, what are we doing?”
Ava shrugged. “Just standing here, trying not to slouch.”
“Huh.” He swallowed. “Your mom was by, eh?” He offered her his plate. “I have crabs.”
Ava burst out laughing. It was a loud, horrible sound that rang over the chatter, the music, and the low snickers from Robby. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. Ava only laughed harder. It was mortifying, because unlike normal girls with their adorable giggles, Ava had a laugh too big for her size. It drew attention no matter where she was and she fought like hell to contain it, but Robby always thought it was hilarious and did his best to poke one out of her every chance he got.
“I hate you!” she wheezed, struggling to contain herself.
Robby merely smirked and shoved another canapé into his mouth.
John Paul appeared at Robby’s elbow, slightly more rumpled than normal. He glanced sideways at Robby’s chipmunk cheeks, raised an eyebrow, then must have decided it wasn’t worth asking, because he turned straight back to Ava.
“She’s very handsy for someone so short.” He rolled his shoulders as though to shake off the phantom touches of Mrs. Pearson’s hands. “Kept insisting it was because she couldn’t reach higher.”
“I’m sorry.” Ava struggled to contain her giggles. “But it was for a good cause.”
The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) Page 2