Ruin: Slay Two

by Laurelin Paige

  It was a bit overstated, but I had a feeling her cry of “urgent” was as well.

  “There’s a delivery,” she said, her tone clipped.

  “Then accept it.” But I already knew it was more. I’d hoped Camilla wouldn’t have been there when it arrived, that Jeremy could have taken care of it all, but she’d canceled her planned photography outing when Freddie had woken up with a fever.

  “It’s from the States,” she went on. “An entire moving truck. And it’s addressed to Celia Fasbender. Do you want to tell me what I’m supposed to do with an entire moving truck worth of items? The deliverers are asking.”

  She was exaggerating. It was a small moving truck. I’d read the manifest before I’d approved the shipping.

  But I knew the amount of items wasn’t really the concern—it was what they were. That I’d had them shipped at all.

  “Tell them to take them upstairs to Celia’s room.” Jeremy would have already said that. Camilla wanted reassurance from me. “I’ll take care of them later.”

  “But what are they, Eddie? They’re her things, aren’t they? Why are you bringing them here? Do you realize you called it her room?”

  “Because it is her room.” I sat forward, my voice sharp. “There’s not anyone else using it. And what would you prefer I do with her things? She’s my wife. What would you prefer?”

  “I’d prefer that you stick to the plan. You said marrying her was simply a door in. That I would never have to deal with her. You led me to believe that you would be leading very separate lives. Moving her things in is not separate. This wasn’t the plan we’d discussed.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said, but I hadn’t been completely honest with her. I hadn’t wanted her involved with the gritty details. Camilla was too good. She would have rightly objected, even though it was the surest way to where we meant to end.

  I felt guilty about that, more than I wanted to admit. About not being honest with her. About the horrible thing I’d planned to do. About changing my strategy midstream. About getting so fucking twisted by Celia’s blue eyes and tenacity and the way she opened up when she began to truly give in.

  My guilt made me angry. Angry with myself.

  But also angry about being challenged. “Let’s not forget that it was my plan, Camilla. My idea. I’m the one who orchestrated it, all of it. And that makes it my plan to change.” Then, before she could argue further, “Let Jeremy deal with the deliverers. I’ll worry about the rest. Like I always do.”

  I hung up before she could say another word. I didn’t need to hear what else she had to say. I already knew, already felt the anxiety of having lost control of the reins.

  What the fuck was I doing bringing her things to my house? As though she wanted them here. As though she meant to live on with me as husband and wife. As though I planned to keep her.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face then held them there. Light slipped in through my fingers, gleaming off the band on my left hand. I pulled them down so I could stare at it. My father’s wedding ring, now my own. His marriage had been everything to him. His wife had been his very reason for living. The ring was a reminder of my reasons, why I’d pursued vengeance with single-minded dedication.

  But I’d put the matching ring on Celia’s finger, and that had changed everything.

  That was a lie. She’d changed everything. It was why I’d put the ring there, not the other way around.

  I reached out and slid the journal toward me. Using the tiny key attached, I unlocked the fasten and opened it to the first lined page in the book. I grabbed a pen and wrote the short note.

  Little Bird,

  I told you privacy is a privilege. This is yours to keep to yourself. Fill the pages or don’t, the words belong only to you. You’ve earned it.

  Edward

  I read the words again, disgusted with myself. Disgusted by the flood of warmth that filled my body just from writing my pet name for her. Disgusted that I even purchased the gift and more so that I would still send it anyway.

  The plan had always been to ruin Celia Werner.

  But she was well on her way to ruining me.

  Twelve

  Celia

  The first time Edward had left me on the island, I’d been angry. I’d spent the days with him gone trying to smother the fire of rage inside me, or at least trying to tame it down to a manageable simmer. Weeks passed, and by the time he’d returned, the fury had subsided. Still there, but not quite as much of a focal point as it had once been. Still the thing that motivated me, but the flames calm enough that I could concentrate on how to get what I wanted—away from the island—instead of dwelling on the person who had put me there.

  It was still what I wanted most. Even as the winter turned to spring and the weather on Amelie blossomed to perfection, even as I felt myself blossoming along with the new season, even as the place felt more like home and less like a vacation spot, I still wanted to leave.

  But it wasn’t what occupied my thoughts anymore, and the anger had become so distant that I forgot it for days at a stretch.

  This time in his absence, my emotions changed. I wondered about him more—what he was doing, what he was thinking, if he was reading before bed or finishing last minute details for work. They were day-dreamy kinds of thoughts for the most part, wistful and curious. Had he gotten a good night’s sleep? Was he driving himself to the office or using his driver?

  When they threatened to take over, I pushed the thoughts aside by throwing myself into the project he’d left for me—redesigning my bedroom. It had been an unexpected gift, one I should have been allowed to pursue without his permission, but nevertheless I was grateful. It had been a long time since I’d really gotten into my work. It had been an even longer stretch since I’d done something for myself, and it was fun to discover what I liked again and how my tastes had changed. Most importantly, it helped the days pass while also making them remarkable. I began to look forward to what the sun would bring in the mornings. I no longer lingered in bed bemoaning my existence.

  It wasn’t until I moved out of the room that the jealousy began to trickle in.

  The work had gotten to such a point that it was impossible to continue to sleep there. The house had several suitable bedrooms upstairs, and I considered taking one of those for all the obvious reasons, but, in the end, it was more practical to stay on the main floor, near the living areas and the pool, and, frankly, I liked the idea of invading Edward’s bedroom, even if he wasn’t there. I’d been surprised when, after I told Lou and Joette that was where I wanted to move, they’d actually complied. I’d expected a bunch of hemming and hawing and stalling until the idea was proposed to their boss, but there had been none of it at all. They’d simply nodded and began the task of packing up my belongings and shuffling them to the opposite side of the house.

  Of course the lack of argument insinuated that Edward was already fully aware of what I was doing, that he’d possibly suggested it himself, but I tried not to think about that too much. I was successful too, until I was lying in his bed that first night, smelling the decorative pillows for any trace of his scent, and the wondering about him became much more personal. Was he thinking about me? Did he know where I was sleeping? Did he like thinking about me in his bed?

  I liked the way these new thoughts made my heart trip and my stomach flutter. I closed my eyes, letting them take me where they would, expecting them to morph into something sexual in nature, and they did, just not the way I’d hoped. Because, a dose of reality seeped in, and all of a sudden it occurred to me to not just wonder what Edward was doing but who he was with.

  Who was he with?

  Was he sleeping alone like I was?

  Was he fucking around?

  The idea made me sit up with a start and clutch my stomach while wave after wave of nausea rolled through me.

  It wasn’t just possible he was with someone else—it was likely. In our negotiations before marriage, he’d assured me he’d be dis
creet, but that he’d have whatever side action he wanted to and that it was none of my business if he did. I’d been bothered by the arrangement, but I’d been more bothered that it bothered me so I hadn’t fought it more. Besides, fighting him at all had proved futile. He’d gotten everything he’d asked for in that discussion.

  At the time, I’d been determined to make sure he never had need of a side piece. My game had required his sexual attention, but, also, I’d wanted him. More than I had wanted to admit.

  I still wanted him. More than I wanted to admit.

  And now my game was long over, and I wasn’t with him, and he could be fucking anyone and everyone, and I’d never be the wiser.

  I tried not to throw up.

  After that, a constant ache lived in the pit of my stomach. My mouth tasted permanently bitter, and jealousy shadowed every other emotion that passed through me. I was even more grateful for the design project then, a distraction that I’d come to depend on, but it wasn’t enough. So I doubled my time doing yoga. I played more chess. When Eliana wasn’t available, I taught Mateo’s oldest daughter, Tanya. When Tanya had schoolwork to do, I moved the pieces along the board myself.

  Reading was hard. Even when the story engrossed me, there was always something that brought my thoughts back to him, back to who he might be with. Any book with any sort of romantic storyline was impossible to get through, but even the others would catch me off guard—an orphaned character, a misunderstood hero, an asshole of a villian. Soon, I was as scared to pick up a book as I was to be alone with my own thoughts.

  Then, the diary came.

  It was the last thing I needed, and I definitely didn’t trust it, even with the two keys and the lock and his promise inside not to read it. The lock could be easily picked or busted, and Edward’s word felt as unreliable as the wind. Though, he hadn’t really lied about anything so far. Tricked me, deceived me, but hadn’t quite lied.

  But I’d always had a thing for blank lined paper, an itching desire to fill the pages with whatever words came to mind. I’d kept a diary all through my youth for that very reason, and then later, when Hudson had invited me into his experiments, I’d taken over recording the observations. He’d been quite scientific with his journaling before I’d come along, referring to people as subjects and proposing an expected outcome from the beginning. Mine were more story form. While I’d kept Hudson’s name out of them, referring to him only as A—because it was the first letter of the alphabet, and he was definitely the alpha of the games—I’d mentioned our victims by name and noted and evaluated their emotions in prose.

  I missed that, I realized. Not the playing of the games, though maybe I missed parts of that too, but, more, I missed the telling about them.

  And so, six weeks after he’d left, when I was bored out of my mind and unable to ignore the thoughts in my head and the journal on my nightstand, I picked it up and began recording him. Began recording everything I’d had planned for him and how my game had come about, sure to include every one of his nasty assholish quips and misogynistic demands. If he picked it up and read it, he could hear about how much I hated him. How terrible he was. How easily I’d schemed against him. I wouldn’t care. In fact, I hoped he did.

  But the writing morphed as I went on, and I found it impossible to write with the detached voice that I had in the stacks of journals sitting in the closet of my condo back in New York. Edward had stirred too many emotions. They’d leaked through small punctures in the Teflon walls I’d so carefully built inside. Punctures I hadn’t known he’d made. Emotions I hadn’t known still existed. I had a lot of feelings about my parents, apparently. I missed them, but not as much as I thought I did. I resented them. I wanted their approval. Their affection. I hated them a little, too.

  And there were other feelings, about other people. Hudson, his father, my uncle Ron.

  Edward.

  So much about Edward.

  Most of the emotions were still shapeless blobs, too complicated to call one color or another, but they were there, oozing out of me. They trickled out into my words even as I tried to hold them back, and soon I wasn’t just telling about the devil who’d inspired me to play him and then took me into captivity, but the man I’d begun to glimpse underneath. How he affected me. How I longed to affect him.

  How I suspected I did affect him.

  It was cathartic to have a space to pour it all out, a place to line up the stray feelings and examine them properly. It was like he’d chipped away at a big stone wall inside of me, with his demands and his smirk and his I’m-gonna-break-you sessions, and now I was collecting the pieces, attempting to figure out the picture they made if they were whole.

  It gave my life meaning. Not because it was one of the only activities available to me on the island, but because of how it let me look at myself. It didn’t just give meaning to the life I lived here but to the life I lived before. I began to understand things about myself, things I’d never known, things I hadn’t wanted to know. Like how much I enjoyed the power struggles. How they made me feel alive, even when it was exactly that type of struggle that had landed me captive on an island by a man who easily dominated me.

  I liked that too. Being topped. Being cared for. Being seen.

  There was more he brought out in me, and writing about it, I started to become more comfortable with those feelings—the desire, the anger, the longing, the jealousy.

  I found myself in the words. Things I’d buried, I wanted to uncover. Things I’d held back, I wanted to share. Things I’d suppressed, I wanted to feel.

  The most shocking part was how much I wanted those things with Edward.

  Because he’d started this whole journey, probably. Because I associated this self-reformation with him. Because I was lonely and confused, and he’d brainwashed me. That was likely too.

  It was part of his plan, I was sure. Little by little, he was breaking me down, like he had been all along, like he was still doing from afar.

  Only difference from before was that now, I wasn’t just letting it happen.

  Now, I wanted it to.

  Thirteen

  I consciously fought not to hold my breath as I watched Edward move around my bedroom. It was the beginning of May, almost three months since he’d last been on Amelie, which had been just enough time to have the new design of my bedroom implemented. It had been finished so recently, in fact, that I’d only slept in it two nights.

  Like before, Edward had shown up without any warning. One minute I was capturing Eliana’s queen, and the next, my husband was standing over us, criticizing my winning move.

  I was so excited to see him, I hadn’t minded. I’d jumped up, given him a kiss that he might have assumed was for our guest, then tugged him out of the library to my bedroom to show off what I’d done. There was a momentary coldness before he accepted my grip around his hand, a split second where he’d felt cut off and callous like he’d been when he’d threatened to kill me instead of the coy and almost charming man who’d said he’d miss me, but it disappeared so quickly, I decided I may have imagined it.

  And then I forgot about it entirely because I was too eager for him to see my room.

  It didn’t make him special. I’d cajoled everyone on the island into coming by and seeing the finished product three days ago. That was half the fun of completing a design project—showing it off.

  I hadn’t been nearly as nervous when any of the others had checked it out though. Maybe because everyone else had walked around with smiles on their faces, complimenting each and every detail.

  Edward strolled through silently, tracing the beading on the plush gold settee as he walked by it, studying the mural behind the bed and the newly plastered walls. His expression was stoic, his lips drawn in a tight line, his eyes guarded.

  “The curtains are purposefully heavy,” I said, as he lifted a panel from the ground, as though testing the weight. “It adds drama to the room.”

  He nodded then sauntered over to the an
tique curtained yellow and filigree cabinet. He fingered the curvature of the cutout without saying a word.

  “It’s Louis XV period. Some of the metal adornment has tarnished, but I really wanted an authentic piece in the room.”

  Again he nodded.

  The knot in my chest tightened as I thought about the small decorative decisions I’d implemented in his room. Would he hate those too? Would he tear down the tufted wall I’d added behind his bed? Would he get angry when he smelled me in his bedding?

  The last one was stupid. He probably wouldn’t even recognize my smell, and surely Sanyjah had changed the sheets on his arrival.

  Edward continued on to the other authentic piece in the room—the bronze gilded writing desk I’d discovered in one of the antique catalogs he’d left me. It was small and ornate, and it locked and had been exactly what I’d been looking for when I’d found it.

  It was quite unlike anything that had been in the room previously.

  “I suppose I have different tastes than Marion,” I remarked when my husband had almost made a full circle of the area and still hadn’t said anything. His last wife had decorated the space, or rather, stuck furniture in the room and called it good. It was possible the changes were a shock.

  I stared at his profile as he carefully examined the rope molding I’d added along the top of the walls, expecting to see him nod again.

  “Better taste,” he said, surprising me.

  His voice was even and his posture unremarkable, and the only reason I noticed the subtle twitch of his eye was because I’d been staring, which meant he hadn’t wanted it to be seen, but I had noticed it.

  And I wondered what it meant.

  Then I was sure I knew. He’d never talked to me about his former wife, but Blanche Martin, a woman I’d involved in one of my cons who had also once worked for Edward, had told me he’d been heartbroken when Marion left him. Devastated.