by Jennie Lucas
Kassius’s soul felt hollow as he looked up at the ostentatious pink villa, the villa that he’d intended to take for his own and throw the former owner into the gutter to starve, as he’d left Kassius and his mother so long ago. A lump rose in his throat.
He’d already heard from his business manager that his father had canceled the last pending loan. Kassius could take possession of all the other homes Boris Kuznetsov had signed over as collateral. But who cared about those? This—he looked up with a sharp pain in his throat—this pink mansion, made of spun sugar and fairy-tale dreams, was the only one that mattered. And he’d failed, through no fault of his own.
That was a lie. It was entirely his fault, for trusting Laney. For letting himself be vulnerable to her. If he hadn’t taken her to his mother’s childhood home the night of their wedding, it was unlikely any private investigator could have made the connection. He’d covered his tracks too well. He’d been careful.
Until Laney had gotten under his skin and left him open for attack.
He walked up to the front door, which opened before he could knock. A tiny elderly woman, nearly bent over with osteoporosis, motioned to the right hall. “They’re in the salon, monsieur,” she said grandly in French. “I’ll show you the way...”
But seeing how she hobbled painfully in front of him, he said hastily, “No, merci, I can easily find my own way, madame.”
Tossing him a grateful look, she gave a nod. Kassius walked down the empty hallway to a high-ceilinged, elegant room in cream and pale blue, with sparse antique furniture and walls devoid of decoration. And at the center of it all, his traitorous dark-haired wife sat at a small table with the man who’d destroyed Kassius’s childhood and driven his mother into an early grave, the two of them cozily drinking tea from an electric samovar.
“Kassius!” his wife exclaimed, rising to her feet and coming forward, holding out her hands to him as if she expected an embrace, as if she expected him to thank her for destroying his life. It was cruel, he thought, that she’d never looked more beautiful than now, even dressed in a plain sundress and sandals. With her lush breasts and belly, and the sparkle in her brown eyes and bounce in her dark hair, she was loving and warm. Laney Henry Black was everything he’d ever wanted in a wife.
Everything he should have known would ultimately destroy him.
“Laney,” he responded coldly, not touching her. He turned his attention to the older man who’d risen from the chair beside her. His face was haggard and pale, and he was staring at Kassius with stricken dark eyes exactly like his own.
“Is it true?” Boris Kuznetsov whispered, looking at him searchingly. “You’re my son?” He choked out, “My little Cash? Can it really be?”
Cash. A blast of memory went through Kassius like the heat of a fiery explosion. No one had called him that in a long, long time.
All his years as a child, he’d yearned for his father’s acknowledgment, his acceptance. Just his presence. And now, at last, they were in the same room, but now Kassius no longer wanted anything from him—but justice.
“It’s true, old man.” Turning to Laney, Kassius said blandly, “Why don’t you wait outside?”
“Really?” Her forehead crinkled uncertainly.
“My father and I have much to discuss.”
Laney bit her lip. “If you’re sure—”
“I’m sure.”
She looked up at him anxiously. “Please don’t be mad at me for this,” she said. “I know you didn’t want me to tell him, but it was the only way to save you from making a horrible mistake.”
“I understand.” And he did. Laney being who she was, she’d actually believed she could change him. That she could save him. That he could become like her—someone who believed in love. “You couldn’t have done any differently.”
“Exactly.” Laney looked at him with a tearful smile. “I love you,” she whispered, reaching up a hand to caress his cheek. “So much.”
Kassius shuddered beneath her touch. He felt choked by competing emotions of fury, regret, agonizing desire and loss—such deep loss!
Looking down at her, he savored the beauty of her lovely face, the curve of her cheek, her full lips. Her warm, loving brown eyes, deep enough for a man to drown in. He took a picture of memory. He knew this would be the very last time he’d ever look upon Laney’s face.
“Benito is outside. You can wait in the car.” He forced himself to give her an encouraging smile. “There’s air-conditioning.”
“Ooh,” she said happily, as he’d known she would. “All right, I’ll wait outside.” She squeezed his hand. “Just let him explain. Give him a chance!”
He gave a single nod. It was hard to speak over the lump in his throat. “Goodbye, Laney.”
Patting him on the shoulder, she left. Going to the far window, Kassius drew back the curtain and watched her go out into the courtyard. He saw Benito come up and talk to her.
Dropping the curtain, Kassius turned away. He couldn’t watch what would happen next.
“Cash?”
He turned sharply to his father.
“What happened to you?” the man whispered. He was staring at Kassius as if looking at a ghost he was afraid to touch. “When I finally got your letters, I rushed to Istanbul, but no one knew where you were...”
“Oh, did you finally come looking?” he replied coldly. “I sent letters for five years.”
“My wife hid them from me. She only gave them to me at our divorce—”
“Yes,” Kassius ground out. “Your wife.” His lip curled. “Mama always defended you, did you know that? In spite of the way you seduced her with promises of love and marriage, when you knew you were capable of neither.”
The older man took a single staggering step back.
“You’re—right,” he said finally, running his hand over his forehead. “When I fell in love with Emmaline, I was already trapped in a loveless marriage. I hid it from Emmaline, because I knew she never would have looked at me...”
“You’re right about that,” he said scornfully. “She would have told you to go to hell. But unlike you, my mother had a soul.”
“I wanted to marry her,” Boris whispered. “I wanted it desperately. But my wife refused to divorce me.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true.” The older man’s voice trembled. “I begged her. But even though Tania already had taken many lovers of her own, she wouldn’t let me go. She knew that with my position I had the opportunity to make a lot of money in the breakup of the Soviet Union. She told me I’d have to pay her millions of rubles to agree to divorce me.” He took a shuddering breath. “I tried to make money as fast as I could. But it wasn’t fast enough.”
Kassius looked contemptuously around the front room, with its faded wallpaper, its missing furniture, its dust. “All the while talking to my mother of the fantastical villa you would someday buy her.”
The man swallowed. “I wanted to buy Emmaline her villa. I wanted to live with you, be your father. Your hero.” He gave a weak smile. “Do you remember, when you were young, how we used to pretend to be Roman gladiators, fighting with wooden swords? We sometimes knocked over the furniture. You loved it when I told you stories about the Roman Empire, far past your bedtime, until your mother was furious at both of us...”
A memory floated back to Kassius. It had been his father who’d told him stories of the Romans? Pain went through him. The pain of a boy who’d loved his father, only to be rejected by him, abandoned. It was pain he’d thought he was past feeling, and fury filled him that he was not.
“And you left us,” he said hoarsely. “You left my mother to die without help. For five years, you could have come back to help us—could have phoned, sent a letter—”
“She wouldn’t let me,” his father cried. “When you were eleven, your mother found out I’d been married to another woman since before we’d even met. It didn’t matter to her that we’d been estranged for fifteen years, or that my wife had a lover
but wouldn’t divorce me until I had made a fortune to pay her off. After Emmaline found out, nothing I could say or do would persuade her to let me visit again—or even send her money! She told me to get out and never come back, never try to contact either of you again until I was free to love you both. So I went back to Moscow, determined to finally get the divorce Tania had denied me.” His voice broke. “I never imagined it would take me five years to earn enough, because each time my business grew, she only became greedier for more. The only reason she finally agreed to the divorce was that she fell pregnant by her longtime lover. And by then, it was too late.” His voice was hollow. “Your mother had already died.”
Kassius wouldn’t show mercy. “Because of you.”
He clawed his hand through his gray hair. “I never knew Emmaline was ill,” he whispered. “Not until it was too late.”
Kassius reminded himself of the pain he’d felt when he’d seen Boris with his wife in Moscow, living in a mansion, apparently without a care in the world—while his own mother lay dying in poverty in Istanbul. He said tightly, “You still deserve to be punished.”
His father looked at him.
“I have been,” he said in a low voice. “I spent all those lonely years desperately missing you. When I finally rushed to Istanbul, you both were gone. All I found was your mother’s grave. I’ve spent all these years looking for you. I thought you were dead.”
“You destroyed her life.”
Tears filled the old man’s eyes. Blinking fast, he looked away, staring blindly out the windows. “I thought we’d grow old together. She was the only woman I ever loved. I always meant to go back to her. I just thought we’d have more time—”
His voice choked off.
Kassius stared at him, refusing to feel sympathy.
“Forgive me, Cash,” he whispered. His knees collapsed beneath him, and he fell back on the chair. “I never loved anyone again after I lost her—and you. I never wanted another wife, another child. You were both everything I ever wanted, but it was based on a lie, so I lost it all. I tried to keep the business going for the sake of my employees, but to tell you the truth, I never had the heart for business. All I have left—” he looked around the half-empty room “—is this villa. It’s all I had left of her. Keeping that promise I’d made to her...”
His voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands. Kassius stared down at the weeping old man.
It was his moment of vengeance, just as he’d dreamed about. He should have felt a sense of triumph.
Instead, all he felt was empty. Boris Kuznetsov was old now. He’d committed the crime of falling in love with a young, idealistic stewardess and pretending he was free to marry her, when he was not. For that, he’d lost everything.
So much had been lost, by everyone.
Kassius had the faint memory he hadn’t let himself think of in a long time. His father teaching him in the Istanbul street, when he was a young boy, how to play fight with a sword. How to be a gladiator. How all the other kids who lived on the street had been jealous and fought to be included. How happy he’d been. How proud of his father. His hero.
I was so unhappy. So awfully unhappy. I didn’t want to feel that way. So I decided to forgive her. To remember the good times. I chose love...
No. His stomach clenched. He couldn’t think about Laney now, on top of everything else.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He saw Laney’s number. Repressing his churning emotions, he lifted it to his ear. “Yes?”
“What’s going on?” Laney sounded frightened. “Benito pushed me into the car. He says they’re taking me to the airport then sending me back to New Orleans. I don’t understand.”
Kassius set his jaw. He made his heart very small.
“It’s over,” he said coldly. “As I told you. I will pay money for your support and nothing more. My lawyer is drawing up the paperwork for our divorce.”
In the room, he heard his father’s intake of breath at the same time as Laney’s.
“Divorce?” she whispered.
“I told you what would happen if you betrayed me. I will never see you again, or the baby.”
She gave a long, brittle, anguished gasp. It rattled and echoed across the line. “I don’t believe it,” she choked out. “You wouldn’t be so...so heartless.”
“You did this, Laney. You did this.”
“Kassius—”
Then her voice cut off with a scream. He heard a squeal of tires, a scream, a crack. And then nothing. A moment of silence, and then a busy signal. Frowning, he stared down at the phone in his hand. Was it a trick? He had to suppress the intense desire to call her back. It had to be a trick. But he couldn’t be manipulated so easily.
“You are wrong to treat her so badly,” his father said behind him. “All she’s done is love you and try to bring us together.”
Kassius put his phone in his pocket and faced him with a cold sneer. “Love? What do you know about that?”
“I know how it feels to lose it.” His father looked at him with tears in his eyes. “I know how it feels to make one bad choice that ruins everything. When Emmaline told me to leave and not come back until I was free, I tried so hard to do it. I told myself I could make up for all the lost years. But the truth is that time is all we possess. Time and love. Choose carefully.” His voice broke. “Before you throw it away.”
Kassius shook his head coldly.
“My business manager informed me you already canceled the loan you were going to take on this villa. You might have managed to keep this place for now, but I have taken over your bankrupt company and I’ll be selling it off for parts. Along with everything else I’ve taken from you. This villa will be small comfort to you when...”
“It’s yours.”
Kassius’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I give it to you freely,” his father said quietly. “The last thing I possess. I built it for your mother, after she died. You are all that we have left. The last memory of our love. Cash, this villa is yours.”
For a moment, Kassius couldn’t find a voice to answer. Kuznetsov simply giving him the villa was the last thing he’d expected. The last thing he’d wanted.
“Keep it while you can,” Kassius bit out, turning away. “My lawyers will be in touch.”
Outside the villa, dark clouds had covered the sun. From far away, he heard a low rumble of rolling thunder as a cold wind rose from the sea. He turned his face up to the first drops of rain, relishing the feel of it on his hot skin.
As ordered, his men had taken his wife away in the limo and he was left with the sports car, the key beside it. He was grateful to be the one driving the two-seater, since with the rear-wheel drive and performance tires, it could be a little dodgy on slick, wet roads. He wouldn’t want Laney to be taking any risks—
Then he remembered Laney was no longer his problem, since he was never going to see her again. He’d never even see his son born. A pang ripped through his heart. He was leaving her and the baby.
Just like her mother had done to her.
Just like his father had done to him.
Kassius took his phone out of his pocket, testing himself against the savage temptation. He couldn’t call her. He couldn’t. That would be breaking his vow. Revealing his own weakness. He couldn’t be weak. He couldn’t break his word.
Like a miracle, his phone suddenly rang in his palm. He saw his bodyguard’s number and snatched it up. “Yes?”
“Boss, we’ve had an accident,” Benito said hoarsely. “A truck collided into us on the road. Police and ambulance just got here. Lamont’s dead...that flask smelled of alcohol. I think it slowed his reflexes...”
Kassius gripped the phone. “Let me talk to Laney.”
There was a long silence. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“The truck plowed into her side. I wasn’t touched. She and Lamont got the worst of it.” The man’s voice was a whisper. “They’re loading her into a
helicopter to take her to the Hôpital Princesse Florestine. They’re not sure...” His voice broke. “I’m sorry, boss. They’re not sure if she and the baby will make it.”
Not sure she and the baby will make it...
A haze went over Kassius’s eyes. A memory of everything Laney had tried to do for him...trying to love him, to convince him to love her, to even love himself. Trying to make him a better man.
And for that he’d ripped out her heart and sent her and his child away, unknowingly to their deaths...
He staggered against his car. He dimly noticed that his father had followed him out of the villa and now stood beside him in the rain, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Boss?” His bodyguard sounded panic-stricken.
“The main hospital in Monaco?” Kassius whispered.
“Take the north road. Get here as fast as you can.”
Turning from his father, Kassius flung himself into the car. Starting the engine, he drove as fast as he could, focusing with hellish intensity on the drive beneath the rain, pushing the sports car to the limit. He crossed the border into Monaco and then roared up to the hospital, parking beneath the portico, leaving his car helter-skelter in front with the door still open.
He ran inside, and his shout carried up and down the hallway. “Where is she? Where is my wife?” he cried. “Where is my son?”
“Monsieur, calm down!”
“Please, monsieur, this is a hospital! Show some respect!” the nurses tried to hush him.
“Where is she?”
“If you don’t stop yelling, we’ll have you thrown out of this hospital!”
Kassius saw the nearest nurse motion to a hospital security guard, who came forward. He gritted his teeth. Where was Benito when he needed him? Where was Laney?
He took a deep breath, trying to force himself to remain calm when he felt like screaming and grabbing the nurse by her scrawny neck and forcing her to cough up the information he needed. Wiping his eyes hard, he spoke over the jagged razor blade in his throat. “Please,” he said tightly. “My wife was in a car accident on the coast. She is thirty-six weeks pregnant. I was told she was brought here via helicopter...”