by Corri Lee
“Emmeline?” Blaze’s voice at the bathroom door made me jump. “Henry’s here.”
“Be right out.” Because going to a meeting about someone else defrauding my father with Blaze’s name in mind was just what I needed, naturally.
This is your life now. Get used to it and suck it up. Shaking my head, I steeled myself with a sigh and set to work on drying my hair. There was no time to stand around debating the purpose of my imposed existence when one of my reasons for being alive was waiting for me to attend. I’d worked too damn hard while I was in New York to become a credible business woman and that wasn’t a responsibility I could just shirk over a wobble in my mental health—that was probably the easiest way to explain it. Hell, I might have been able to believe it myself; I’d have to have been out of my mind to take a life.
At least that’s what I hoped. It wasn’t nice to think that ‘murderer’ came as a standard personality trait for me. I kept looking for signs of change or corruption in my behaviour and appearance but what was I really expecting? Horns, a pointy tail and a newfound interest in Enochian scripture? No, the most unpleasant and drastic transformations were the ones nobody could detect; the constant replay of the moment I killed Natasha that would push me to the limits of my sanity, self-control and morality.
Blaze’s comedic outfit choice for me didn’t really seem appropriate anymore. Barely dry, I paced into the bedroom to find something a little more professional and a little less... revealing. I understood that he was encouraging me to stand up to the world and say I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done to myself but I was. Deeply ashamed. And I didn’t want to flaunt it.
The only shirts hanging up in the wardrobe had shorter sleeves like the blazer he’d picked and the only other jacket was a little short in the wrists. With no time to search through my boxes for something else and find a way to iron out the creases, I conscientiously kept tugging the cuffs, always conscious of a little glimpse of scar poking free.
So distracted was I, that I almost missed the hushed conversation going on between the two big male figureheads in my life.
“I’m going out of my mind, Henry. I’ve been acting like a fool and forgetting myself.”
“I’d be worried if you weren’t, lad.” Catching myself just in time, I took a step back out of view to eavesdrop.
“I really feel like I should tell her. Get it off my chest, you know. She’d understand, wouldn’t she? I can’t go on like this.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The anxiety in Blaze’s tone topped by the vagueness of what I was hearing was just enough to make me jump to the conclusion that I was about to lose him.
“Emmy is a good girl, Blaze. She’d stand by you through anything but you shouldn’t push your luck. Don’t weigh her down to appease your own sense of responsibility. Plausible deniability, yes?”
“But she deserves to know.”
“I deserve to know what?” I couldn’t stand it anymore. Pushing up from the wall behind me, I walked right into the conversation wanting answers. If something was being kept from me—something that could effect my future—Blaze was right. I deserved to know.
Their nervousness didn’t do them any favours. There was an edginess between them I’d never seen before, the distinct atmosphere of two cohorts in on a scheme together. I knew they must have had a fairly close relationship in the previous years but partners in crime?
“I... um...” Blaze looked at me, to Henry, then down at his feet. Stuck for words, he evaded eye contact. Why did he have to start lying? Why now?
“What he’s trying to tell you,” Henry interjected, “and what I was trying to avoid him telling you, is that he’s agreed to go to Natasha’s funeral tomorrow.”
“Oh.” All that fuss over a funeral? “Is that all?”
“He wants you to go with him for moral support.”
Okay, now that made a little more sense. Slightly. There was something more that they weren’t telling me, something bigger than asking me to go back to the place that had sent my life into a downward spiral. Luckily for them, I was so preoccupied with the idea of being stood over the grave I’d metaphorically dug that I was going to let it slide.
Putting aside the fact I’d murdered Natasha, I was also the woman who’d marched in and stolen her ill-gotten husband, seen through her lies and disturbed what must have been a finely tuned life of deception all round. Her family wouldn’t be happy to see me there. Factoring the whole suffocation thing back in, I was sure going to the funeral was what they call ‘returning to the scene of the crime’, something said to be a common trait in fiends like me.
‘Like me’. Heaven renounce my tattered soul. Henry was right to say I’d stand by Blaze through anything but hovering around his wife’s wake under a premise of innocence might just have been a step too far into Hell.
“Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Almost shoving Henry aside, Blaze charged towards me and crushed me against his chest. “I don’t want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
“Wish you’d said that before I did you.”
“What? Oh...” Slackening his grip, he took a step back and looked me over. His eyes hovered a little too long over my revised outfit but he didn’t seem to disapprove. He must have realised his choice was a little tactless, too. “Are you sure you’re up for this meeting?”
“Um...” Honestly, I didn’t feel up to much of anything. It seemed like the day had started off on the wrong, uneven footing and it didn’t give me much hope for the rest of it. But despite having been trying to shun it when we’d first met, normalcy was something I was starting to crave. The longer I stayed cut off from the world, the easier it would be to become a complete recluse. “Let me at it. I might need some help getting downstairs, though.”
“You want the wheelchair?”
“Hell no.” There was no way I was letting him bash me around in that god-awful contraption again. “Not after your threat to escort me if I’m in it. A steady arm will do—unless you wanted to come?” As much as he tried to resist it, he couldn’t stop his shoulders inching up to his ears at the suggestion. Okay, he didn’t want to come with me. I didn’t want to dwell on the reason why but I wasn’t going to force him or take advantage of his reluctance to go back on his own threat, either. “It’s not going to kill me if you say no.”
“My agent called.” Blaze’s hands squeezed the tops of my arms restlessly. “He wants to meet me, but if you need me—”
“Go. You have to.” For the first time in years, he had the freedom to progress his career. The fact anyone still had an interest in him professionally, being a thirty year old male model and all, meant he had true skill and talent that had been restricted by Natasha’s ‘needs’. I wasn’t going to be the next in a line of crazy-ass women who kept him leashed.
“You’re sure?” It took him a moment to accept, but I’d never seen him look more overjoyed. “Thank you. I’ll call you when I’m done and take you out somewhere nice for dinner, okay?”
“Out?”
“Sure. We’ll call everyone. I’m pretty sure we’ll have something to celebrate after your meeting.”
I nodded my agreement, even though the idea of going out with family and friends to laugh and celebrate made me feel dirty—like a crook. How dare I socialise and rejoice after what I’d done, when Natasha should be able to still enjoy the same frivolous things herself? What right did I have to go on with life in such a way when I’d ensured that it wasn’t what I deserved?
“We may need your assistance after all, Blaze. Reporters are outside.”
Blaze tensed but kept his cool as he released me and urged me towards the coat rack by the small of my back. “Are they definitely here for us?”
Henry had the decency to look concerned when he scanned through an email on his smartphone. His driver, Oscar, was also his bodyguard, detective and general go-to guy. He’d been protecting our family for years and had his own dedicated e
mail account—the only one programmed to push new mail through to Henry’s personal phone. If anything came through to that handset, you could guarantee it wasn’t good news.
“It seems that someone from the hospital has leaked Emmeline’s recent admission. The circumstances remain a public mystery and that’s what they seeking to rectify.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
“Blaze...” Henry sighed and lowered his voice to a whisper I was probably supposed to pretend I didn’t hear. “Her past... difficulties came out into the media spotlight when she went to New York and became a prominent figure. She walks out of this hotel for the first time since being discharged without you and with no immediate signs of injury, all it takes is a little speculation and curiosity for them to start digging around.”
“I see...” So did I. If I went out there alone and upright, they’d wonder why I’d been hospitalised. It wouldn’t take much for them to find out I’d attempted suicide and the first conclusion would be that it was because Blaze had left me. They’d want to know why and if they dug too deep... “So what’s your plan?”
“If she’s in the chair, she can keep her arms down and out of view. The collar would increase the suggestion of a back injury. Oscar can take you to your agent afterwards.
“Okay. Emmeline?”
Oh, you’ve remembered I’m here. No matter how hard I willed it, it seemed some things would always stay the same; listening to my loved ones planning out my life in particular. But for once, I didn’t resent it. I was glad that they were protecting my dignity, even if they didn’t know what else it was they were shielding from exposure.
“I’m so sorry.”
Henry smiled serenely in my direction and shook his head. “Never apologise for being my daughter, Emmy.”
“I wasn’t—” I stalled myself because that’s exactly what I was doing. Having me as a daughter caused him a great deal of stress, compromise and complication, yet he could still look at me with all that fatherly reverence.
If only he knew what kind of devil he was really worshipping—I wasn’t sure he’d be so eager to care for me. Nobody would.
Stepping out of Henry’s meeting room—or his ‘war room’ as he preferred to call it—I forgot all about the crowd of reporters hustling around me outside the hotel with no respect for my personal space. The flurry of notepads and camera flashes was a distant memory pushed to the back of my mind by the swell of success.
In the extra week they’d had before our meeting, our best financiers and sleuths had found out exactly where Henry’s money had gone, even down to how anyone had found it possible to remove it. The man responsible hadn’t yet been tracked down and arrested but it was only a matter of time.
And nobody would have known it was him if it hadn’t been for me.
The culprit was one of Henry’s personal accountants, a man known as Tobias. He’d been working for The Tudor Initiative since the early days and had always been respectable and trustworthy, right up until he’d suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. He’d been lucky to live through it but had started acting bizarrely; drinking to excess, gambling and cheating on his loyal wife.
Almost seven years passed, his repeated sexual harassment of the female staff in the company had forced Henry to take the regrettable action of firing Tobias. Warnings seemed to do nothing more than incite—the man wasn’t just ruining his life, but starting to drag down others, too. Disgruntled, he went back to his office to empty his desk and that was when the years of fraud began. It was really quite impressive that we’d found out how he’d done it.
Stricken from payroll while he was in his discharge meeting with Henry, nobody noticed nor cared whether or not if he was in the building. He’d made enough enemies that in an emergency, nobody would want to report him missing or care if he was burned to the ground with the building. This disdain was something he knew of and exploited.
The running and maintenance of all finances relating to Blaze and Connie had been his baby from the very start. Originally, all money withdrew from Henry’s personal bank accounts but at some point he’d made the decision to start classing them as business expenses. From that, I had to assume he’d planned to have Blaze work for him some day. That was the only way I could logically reason him forking out for university fees.
Anyway, with Blaze in a position of financial security, one of the many jobs Henry’s now ex-accountant had been putting off was the cancellation of the routine payments to him. It was extraordinary how much money was siphoned out to him over just one month; an allowance, a bonus for studying, an additional element for the upkeep and maintenance of Connie and her property—unthinkable private medical costs, tuition, insurance... Many of those payments had already ceased but Blaze had still been receiving an allowance for himself and Connie, and her every need was catered to. In fact, it looked as though they’d each received the same amount I had when I’d left the family home.
Bitter and dissatisfied with the severance pay he was lucky to even be getting, Tobias must have looked at his chore list and wanted revenge. Over the next hour, he reinstated many of the payments and adjusted their frequencies, changing the receiving account details to an overseas bank account of his own. Fees marked to Cambridge University and the payment of Connie’s cottage in Wales were made monthly under their names but into his pockets. Every penny they’d once been given started going to him.
And how did he get away with it? The moment he decided to take that money, he took advantage of the universal hatred towards him and called in an anonymous bomb threat to clear the building. Huge as The Parr was, he had plenty of time to do his work as the security team did a clean sweep of the building from the ground floor up. Beyond sneaking out of the building afterwards, who would question the long-standing debits if there was no hint that they should no longer be there?
Nobody but someone subconsciously looking for the names ‘Blaze’ and ‘Valentine’, of course. Henry believed that they’d been cancelled and didn’t trust anyone else to know about them, for some reason. He wasn’t losing enough money to suspect anything was amiss and I suppose to him, the amount was buttons. But to anyone else who had their feet firmly planted down on Earth with the rest of us, it was the kind of money most people only dreamt of.
“We’d never have discovered this if you hadn’t come aboard, Emmeline.” Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Henry passed me half a glass of champagne and winked slyly. It almost made me smile to be a daughter having small amounts of alcohol sneaked to me by my dad. I felt almost normal, there again, it also made me feel incredibly immature. “I’m so proud and grateful of you right now.”
Jeez. I didn’t deserve either his pride or gratitude, not now. “It’s no big deal. I just had a hunch, that’s all. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing while someone stole from us.”
“ ‘Us’.” He enunciated the word like it was foreign. “I think I like the sound of that.”
“I meant our family. Calm down.”
With a booming laugh, he dismissed my rebuff like a racist joke at an Amnesty International meeting. “I’ve always admired your lust for independence, my girl. And I always knew you were destined for great things. I have my fingers crossed that you’ll continue to contribute now you’re about to be a married woman. You don’t need the name to be part of the family, please remember that.”
“Like Blaze would let me renounce the Tudor name.” No matter if I didn’t like it, his relationship with my family meant he’d always encourage me to keep an active role within their strange dynamic. “If you recall, he’s sort of the catalyst for this discovery.”
Topping up my glass, Henry tapped his nose and winked again. Our little secret. Both of us knew I shouldn’t be drinking but neither of us cared. Our relationship had been strained for the longest time and to interact so casually now, like partners... No. Like friends. “I do remember the unfortunate circumstances, yes. And I know you only agreed to join forces with me out of desperation. You’ve a
lways been blatant about your belief that this business is corrupt but I want to assure you; I’ve never done anything to justify larceny.”
“It’s okay, you don’t need to say that. I’m starting to understand that things aren’t always as clean cut and hollow as they look.” I was living proof of the adage, ‘the road to Hell is pathed with good intentions’. It would be hypocritical for me to ever judge him for anything he’d done to ensure his future was comfortable and full of the things he loved and desired. Maybe we were more alike than I cared to admit. “This is a lot of money, though—a hell of a lot to give to your best friend’s family.”
“I suppose.” Henry carelessly scanned the printouts Blaze and I had sat and painstakingly highlighted just hours before everything had gone awry. Just the payments from the past twelve months totted up to an astronomical amount. “It was the least I could do to look after them when he was gone...
“As I was the one who took him away.”
Regis Lundy was a professional liar. His charm, good looks and crooked smile made him extraordinarily gifted in deception. Maybe all of his truths had been passed on to his painfully honest son. Who knew?
He’d fallen into drug dealing as an unruly teen, which ultimately led to him being part of a gang of what I suppose you’d call ‘drug barons’. And my father was one of them, too.
They’d been as thick as thieves as boys, so it could have been that one followed the other into a life of immorality. That much I couldn’t tell. All I knew for definite from the unfortunate, ghastly tale laid out in front of me was that their friendship had been used as a weapon.
Like any bunch of idiots who got themselves involved with something illegal, the gang had their enemies. Rival dealers with even less scruples formed a gang of their own and sought to put Regis and Henry’s men out of business. There were threats, fights, thefts, kidnapping... Regis had been one such captive but had used his ‘talent’ to successfully deny any association with his fellows. They welcomed him in with open arms afterwards and thus, he became the mole.