Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire

by M. J. Lawless

  “I see you have learned to be more forthright.” Maria glanced down, fumbling with the clutch bag she had brought with her.

  “I don’t have time for any games, not anymore.” Kris was surprised at the tone of her voice. Barely an hour before she had been on the verge of collapse, despairing of what would happen to her, but now she felt her resolve stiffen, a hardness spreading through her very limbs, a toughness she would not have thought possible before. It was as though some of the strength she had witnessed in Daniel in court—a newly found, quiet purpose—was refracted through her, shining through her eyes and illuminating everything she saw.

  “No, of course not.” As Maria’s head dipped, for the briefest moment she caught a glimpse of those green eyes that had seduced and entrapped her before. Now, however, everything about the French woman indicated anxiety and nervousness, from the way she avoided Kris’s gaze to the constant play of her hands, fumbling with the clasp of her bag.

  “I don’t have much time, Maria,” Kris repeated, firmly. “Why are you here? To offer your services to Daniel? We have a very good lawyer, thank you.”

  At this, Maria’s head shot up. The smile that slowly crossed her lips was bitter, and even in the shadows of her sunglasses Kris could see that Maria’s eyes were flickering from side to side.

  “No, I’m not here to work for Daniel. God knows I would love to.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Maria paused before answering. “When Maximilian Roth sends for you, you don’t refuse.”

  Kris felt a tic forming in her lip, dragging it upwards in an irregular beat. “So,” she snarled at last, a sudden maliciousness overwhelming her, “you’re working for Roth. I’m sure you’ll perform a very good service for him in the courtroom.”

  She started to rise, but Maria’s hand shot out and grabbed hold of her wrist. For a second, Kris almost lashed out: part of her would have gladly have torn those glasses from this woman’s face, shredded those acid green eyes. She restrained herself, however. That was not what was required here.

  “You don’t understand,” Maria told her. “Please, sit down. Please. I don’t have much time, and you need to know this.”

  Reluctantly, Kris returned to her seat.

  “I’m not here to represent Francis,” Maria continued.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “As... as a witness.”

  Kris frowned at this. “A witness? Were you here, in San Francisco? I don’t understand.”

  Maria shook her head. “Not a witness to that. Of course not. I... I’m here to testify as to your... character, and to Daniel’s as well.”

  For a second, Kris sat in silence, then the anger inside her began to well up like a whirlwind. As her voice rose, Willard looked across to her, watching events carefully in case she would need him.

  “How dare you!” she almost shouted. “How dare you... you... bitch!” She yanked her hand away from Maria and stared at her with loathing. “One mistake, a mistake that you’ll never allow me to forget. Is that it?”

  Maria’s mouth was terse, her lips pursed. “I didn’t expect you to understand, but you’ve got to try.” As Kris opened her mouth to shout, she raised her hand and suddenly snapped. “Shut up! Just for one minute. This is important—and it isn’t about you, it’s about Daniel!”

  The effrontery of the woman did indeed cause Kris to pause for a few seconds, and Maria began to speak rapidly.

  “You don’t understand, but you need to try,” she repeated. “At this very moment Maximilian Roth is doing everything he can not just to free his son but to destroy Daniel. I don’t know why—I can guess some things, but I don’t know. But listen to me: if I stand up in court, and have to tell what... happened between us, along with the testimony of the women he’s bringing in from Victor’s, your reputation won’t stand a chance.”

  “What do you mean?” Kris asked, tersely. Her eyes were fixed on Maria’s face with a mean expression.

  “The club. The defence intends to testify as to yours and Daniel’s... perverse lifestyle. I don’t know exactly what they mean to say, but I’m sure that it will be to Francis’s benefit, not yours.”

  “Lies, all lies,” Kris hissed.

  “Do you think any of that matters? I told you that when a man such as Maximilian Roth commands, you obey—you had better remember that.” For a second, Kris felt that despite the antagonism of Maria’s words, her face looked truly afraid.

  “Listen! If Maximilian gets his way, your case will fall apart—fall apart entirely. You’ll be left with nothing, and your reputation will be in complete tatters, as will Daniel’s. What’s more,” at this, Kris heard genuine pain in Maria’s voice, “the Roths intend to exact the maximum sentence they can for Daniel’s assault. They want to see him rot in jail here.”

  “But... why?” Kris was astonished and confused by what she had just heard. Maria, however, was beginning to rise from the table.

  “I don’t know—I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be here, Kris. I’m sure you don’t believe me, but for the past six months I’ve tried to put... what happened behind me. I genuinely tried to live a life without Daniel Stone, and now...” Once more the tone of her speech was bitter as she considered how events were unfolding. “And now I’m here,” she finished, taking a step away from the table.

  “But you don’t have to testify,” Kris began to reply, hearing the folly in her voice even as she spoke. “Go back to Paris, leave here.”

  Maria’s laugh was harsh, humourless. Holding her bag, she nodded to Kris and glanced towards her security men. Just before she turned to leave she offered her final piece of advice: “Drop your case. Make a deal with Maximilian. Do it, for Daniel’s sake. There are some men in this world who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Maximilian Roth is one of them. I’m sure you were frightened of Francis. I... have met him. But he’s nothing, nothing at all compared to his father.”

  With that, she turned her back on Kris, her shoulders stiff like armour. As she left the lobby, pushing through the doors into the bright, Californian sunlight, she did not look back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  For two more days, Kris operated in a state of turmoil. Her contact with Daniel was restricted, with messages largely being passed through Nathan Armstrong. The dapper lawyer was always meticulously polite, but she could not help but feel that everything she was being told had been subtly censored in some way.

  In addition, the presence of her security guards was becoming oppressive. She was informed by the lawyer that Daniel had extended their contracts immediately—indefinitely if necessary—but while the three of them rotated their shifts now, and remained as discreet as possible within the hotel, the fact that she knew they were nearby was enough to make her feel as though she was the one in prison.

  Press attention in her had died away almost instantly, although one of the guards (was it Tony or Kurt? She was ashamed to admit that she could not remember) had manhandled a reporter who attempted to sneak past to her room for an interview. Fortunately, the airwaves and main news sites appeared to have lost interest in the story as it passed on, but whenever Kris searched online for any information she found increasingly salacious snippets of defamatory gossip about herself and Daniel.

  In other circumstances, she would have even found some of the stories amusing. Because they generally were so wildly off the mark with regard to her, she was also willing to suppose they missed their target when discussing Daniel. The stories of his harem made her raise an eyebrow—the truth was in many ways even more bizarre than the speculations of the gossips. However, old photos and snippets of news about the bad boy behaviour of playboy Daniel Stone did begin to emerge, and some of those presented an increasingly unflattering portrait of her husband that she could not entirely ignore. That was his past, however, long before he had met her.

  Although some of the images of him with incredibly beautiful women caused her heart to burn momentarily, it was the
look on Daniel’s face that caused her most pain. In those days, his reputation with the few paparazzi who encountered him was a grim one, and occasionally they suffered a broken camera—or worse. In those pictures that did make it into the public domain, his demeanour was inevitably sullen and recalcitrant, although that only made her desire him even more.

  But she also realised what else Daniel had given up for her. In recent years, he had become a virtual hermit as far as the world beyond the immediate concerns of Stone Enterprises was concerned, and even there he tended to operate more and more through proxies such as Felix Coltraine. He had girded himself about with a secure fortress of privacy—and now, with her insistence that he defend her, Kris had provided the wrecking ball that would bring down the walls that surrounded him.

  For her own part, she was grateful that she only had to deal with a very few people directly. Anne and Andrew, having heard garbled accounts of what had happened, called and emailed, and when she told them what was going on they begged her to return to London. Elaine Christiansen had also been in touch, though Kris found her messages more difficult to read, tinged as they were with a more proprietary concern for the young boy who had once been her ward. Still, she answered dutifully, but what she really wanted—more than anything—was to see Daniel.

  So when Nathan informed her that she would be allowed access to Daniel on the third day after he had appeared in court, her heart began to burn with longing for him. As she dressed that morning—increasingly taking care to present herself in the most conservative way she could imagine, so as not to feed the stories being inculcated about the English whore by a salivating, online Taliban—she gazed down at her body.

  Inside her now was a new life, and if she thought about it too much it would have caused her to despair that Daniel was not with her now. Instead, she concentrated her attention on how strong she would have to be for him. He was going to be with them, and she would do anything to make that possible.

  Stroking the flesh of her hips, feeling the sleekness of them, she realised that her pregnancy had resolved the final qualms she had towards Daniel. In the photographs she had seen of him, some slender, impossible model hanging from his arm, more and more she recognised the haunted expression in his eyes. Unbidden, a line came to her from Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.

  Retrieving a bra, she scooped it around her shoulders and cupped her breasts. The sensation of pressure in the soft flesh of her body made her draw in her breath and gasp in mundane pain. Damn it! she thought. She might consider herself morally superior to those bimbos who had sucked Daniel’s blood before, but at this moment she would have given the world for something as everyday as a decent fitting bra.

  All such concerns, and more, were cast to one side as she was driven to the south of the city. As they reached the city limits, the white housing trailing away and the paved hills opening up to green, wooded areas, she saw the county jail on Moreland Drive.

  The day had begun with sea mists, but as they drove along it became foggier, more so even than when they had arrived. As such, when the great, grey building of the prison loomed up before her it seemed like some monstrous entity, almost gothic and foreboding, an oppressive shape heavy in the landscape.

  Kurt was accompanying her today. “Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he told her. “It looks worse than it is, but this is the most state of the art facility in the whole of California. Mister Stone will be treated decently, I’m sure of it.”

  She nodded, not really listening as the driver took them through to their designated parking spot. When they arrived, Kurt got out of the car first and came round to open the door on her side. As she stepped out, she was astonished at how cold the air felt: she had become used to the warmth of the state, but this mist bled through to her bones.

  Accompanying her to the gate of the prison, Kurt nodded to one of the guards who responded casually, indicating that he knew the security officer. Standing to one side, Kurt let her pass through the gate first: as he did so, he pressed his hand to his ear and frowned slightly.

  “What is it?” Kris asked, nervous that for some reason she would be prevented from seeing Daniel.

  He shook his head. “Nothing, ma’am. I just need to attend to something while you’re inside with your husband.”

  After this brief exchange, the cold fog shrouding the bleak walls of the prison with tiny windows etched into the grey face, he led her to the office where her bag and clothing was searched and a few questions asked. After this, Kurt told her that he would wait for her outside by the car, and that for this first visit she would have an hour with Daniel.

  As she was led through the brightly lit, austere corridors by one of the guards, Kris felt her heart sinking and her anxieties rising. How long would Daniel remain here? What could she do to get him out?

  Eventually, she was brought to a large room divided into a series of booths or cubicles. A number of visitors were already present, a greater proportion of them women, talking to inmates who sat on the other side of a thick, Perspex screen. The guard motioned towards one of the empty seats and told her briskly: “Fifty minutes.”

  Kris wanted to remonstrate, but realised gloomily that the ten minute walk to this visitor’s area had been deducted from her time: any further arguments would simply result in less time to talk with Daniel.

  As she sat down, on the other side of the screen a cell door opened and she caught a flash of an orange jumpsuit. As she lifted her head, her heart swelled at the recognition of Daniel, filling the suit with his large frame, towering over the guard who had brought him in. His eyes were shining as he walked towards her, a smile on his lips, but as he sat down and lifted up the phone next to the window her own gaze went to the bruise and cut on his cheek.

  “How are you?” he began to ask. “It’s been frustrating having to communicate through Nathan, but they restricted access to outside communication while I was being processed.”

  “What happened to your face?” she blurted out, ignoring his own comments. “Who did that to you? Did one of the guards hit you?”

  His smile widened at this and he glanced across to the guard across from him. “No, they seem decent enough. I think if I don’t cause them too much trouble, they won’t bother me. As for this,” he gestured towards the cut. “I had a run-in with one of the inmates. I think he thought my old scars and size meant I needed to be taught some lessons, and I guess he’d come across my name on the news—thought I’d be an easy target.” Daniel’s smile suddenly became a wolfish grin. “My own counter-arguments were forceful enough to be effective.”

  “Oh my god,” Kris gasped, lifting her hand to her mouth. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “Don’t worry, please.” Daniel placed one hand on the Plexiglas as he spoke. “I’m more concerned about you. How are you coping? Are Willard and Nathan taking care of you?”

  She nodded, her own hand pressed to the glass now. “I couldn’t stand it, being away from you. I’ve just been desperate to get here as quickly as possible.”

  He smiled at this. “Well, it’s not the best position to find myself,” he murmured, looking around, “but actually it’s not as bad as I feared—no worse than some of the schools I was sent to as a nipper. I keep my spirits up wondering how Felix would cope in the showers. He’s kicking up a stink, apparently, but only to be expected.” Daniel’s face darkened as he said this, and his eyes flickered away to some private vendetta, but almost immediately they returned to hers and his expression became kinder, though still serious.

  “And how is he?” He nodded down to her abdomen. Still holding onto the phone next to her ear, she removed her other hand from the glass and placed it comfortingly across her belly.

  “How do you know it’s a he?” she asked, smiling. “It could very easily be a girl.”

  “I was just prompting you,” was his reply. “I don’t know—m
aybe you have female intuition or something that would let you know what was going on with your body.”

  This made her snort. “I was bloody pregnant for six weeks and, with one thing and another, hadn’t realised. It was Elaine Christiansen who spotted it first. I’d have been swelling up like some sodding heifer before I’d have noticed what was happening.”

  He laughed at this, the lines of concern easing across his face and his eyes shining as he shook his head at her, then his expression grew sad. “This is the worst thing, you know,” he told her. “If it wasn’t for you—if it wasn’t for both of you, I’d find this all easier to cope with.”

  Kris could not answer him immediately, but bowed her head in shame.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry? For what?”

  Again she paused. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you. That’s why you hesitated at first—when I wanted to go to the police. You knew that this was coming.”

  “Kris, look at me. Please.” His voice was firm and, as she lifted her eyes, he looked at her steadily, calm and loving. “I didn’t know that this would happen exactly, but... yes, I realised that Max Roth wouldn’t let things occur quietly. But I regret nothing. In fact, if anything I’m ashamed that I hesitated. Francis,” his face scowled as he said the name, “tried to rape you with that scumbag associate of his. They were going to rape my wife.” Suddenly his eyes glazed over slightly, looking into the distance somewhere as rage began to mottle his face.

  “He’s in here, somewhere,” he said, focussing on her again. “I’m sure of it, though I haven’t seen him. Well, I’m pretty sure Harvard didn’t prepare him for this, but if I get my hands on that little bastard, I’ll rip off his cock and shove it down his throat.”

  Daniel’s face was a rictus of anger and hatred now, and Kris, panicking slightly, lifted her hand to the glass once more. “No! No, Daniel. You mustn’t—you mustn’t do anything that will keep you in here a moment longer than you need to. I have to get you out. Don’t you dare do anything that stops you getting back to me—to us—as quickly as possible.”