I couldn’t blame my mother for edging me out of her will. She knew her daughter was blind and had to protect me the only way she knew how. What saddened me the most was that she’d prepared for my father’s wrath, because she knew all along he would try to kill her. If they ever had a loving relationship, it died quickly. I only wished I could remember the truth. All I saw was the best and the better times they had. Where did it all go wrong?
My father, on the other hand, had no will and was so deep in debt, they were going after his estate. There was nothing left to take.
Even though I was now legally married to Elias, I had barely a cent to my name. The money I earned at La Dentelle was funneled into the house my father rented and living expenses while we lived together. I continued to work, because I had no other choice. I was even considering taking on a second job so I had something to put in my bank account.
I was penniless, because I put so much money into exacting revenge. I wore a wedding set large enough to draw attention, but the route to get there was so clinical and cold it took less than fifteen minutes before I was declared Mrs. Cari.
It was a repeat of the scene I walked out on in Portugal. In Elias’s lawyer’s office, with two of his associates as witnesses and a man serving as an officiant who didn’t make us recite any sort of vows. Elias certainly wanted to make sure my ring was more extravagant than the actual "ceremony.”
It was completely sad, made sadder by the fact I’d lost two people in a matter of twenty-four hours; three if it counted my sister, who I finally realized, never really cared about me. When I tried to call her after my father’s death, her number had been disconnected. I even went so far as to track down an ex-girlfriend of hers whom I knew she was still friends with.
“Hanley, surprised to hear from you,” Sam greeted me warmly the moment she answered the phone.
“Hi, Samantha,” I said with a smile, trying to match the friendliness in her voice. “I’m trying to get a hold of Holden.”
“Oh, really? She’s not answering her phone? What did you need her for?” There was an unnatural delivery to her words, indicating she knew exactly where Holden was and why she was avoiding me.
“You don’t have to be so cryptic,” I told her. “I know she’s probably busy with a case.”
“Case? Holden doesn’t work for the FBI anymore… Shit!” In between elongated silences, I could hear Sam verbally beat herself up about disclosing the information to me that, I guess, I wasn’t supposed to know.
To push her to tell me more, I finally stated my purpose. “It’s fine. I’m not trying to bother her. I only wanted to tell her our father passed away.”
“Oh, Leina. I’m so sorry. I…” She sighed long and hard. “She was fired a while back for tampering with a case her department was building against your mother. She screwed with evidence, I think. They could’ve put her in prison, but for some reason, they just let her go. She and Whitney have been living in some tropical paradise they won’t even tell me the location of. Seems she’s doing pretty well. The last time I saw her in town, she was pretty happy, living off all the money your mother left her.”
“My mother left her a lot of money?”
“Well, you know. Those men left your mother all that money. Holden had more than one reason to make sure no one looked at your mom as a criminal. They would’ve taken the money away.” She exhaled again. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you. I’ve been keeping the secret for a long time. With your father gone, you should know.”
“Thank you. If you talk to Holden again, can you tell her about our father?”
“He died to her a long time ago. It would be redundant to bring her the news. Take care of yourself, Leina.”
I PROMISED ELIAS I would help with a mission I didn’t have the energy to finish. The woman I had devolved into was very foreign to me. I began to hate her and made sure I stayed busy to avoid dealing with her and her need to hold on to self-depreciating thoughts. It wasn’t the woman my parents raised to me to be—strong, phlegmatic, and practical—she was someone who was heart-broken and dying to be let out.
The house my father and I rented went back on the market seven days after I had officially moved out. It turned out the money I gave my father for rent never reached the landlord.
After I moved in with Elias, I barely saw him. There were times I thought he found out my schedule so he could be there when I wasn’t. We slept in the same bed, but we might as well have slept in separate bedrooms. In the week we’d lived together, we’d had one or two interactions that could be categorized as a conversation.
For work one day, I wore a revealing dress that was more in line with Skylar’s style. Elias let it be known I wasn’t leaving the house that way. Instead of pushing the issue, I changed my clothes. We hadn’t had another exchange since that day.
During the week we’d lived together since being legally married, only last night did we somehow wake up tangled around each other. But from Elias’s reaction, I wasn’t sure if it was a mistake, or if he was finally ready to forgive me in spite of his misgivings.
AT TEN-THIRTY on a Thursday, I’d finally made it to Elias’s house. A package addressed to me was at the door to the home. I wrestled with the package as I made my way inside. The house was entirely dark, implying that I was alone, as usual.
After flicking on the lights and heading into the living room, I set the box on the coffee table. Taking a switchblade out of my purse, I opened it. Wading through the bubble wrap and packing paper, I found what was inside—the gold-brushed urn containing my father’s remains.
Holding it in both hands, I looked around the room for a place to put it.
The second I placed it on the mantel of the fireplace, the door burst open, ushering in a stream of cold air.
“Hanley!” Elias called out in a panic, sending me into a state of further alarm.
I was also thrown by the fact he’d called me by the new name, when he seemed stuck on calling me Leina in a constantly cold manner. I caught his eye before he marched up the stairs.
Performing an about face, he walked up to me. Concern blanketed his face as he slipped his hands up my back, pulling me close to him. He kissed my forehead gently, calling my name as if asking if I was all right. “Why didn’t you pick up the phone?”
The warmth of his touch and the latent sizzle of his kiss on my forehead made it hard to function normally. I looked at my phone on the coffee table, remembering how many times it had lit up during the day while I was at work or doing errands. I blinked up at him in uncertainty.
I had no idea how I was supposed to be—how we were supposed to be. Were we in cahoots to reach the same goal, or two people fumbling around in a relationship alien to the both of us? He gave me whiplash with the way he behaved. I didn’t know which side I stood on anymore.
“I…was busy at work, and I didn’t realize it was you calling me, since…you don’t anymore. I—” I glanced at the urn on the mantel shelf, holding the ashes of one of the two people I never got to say goodbye to. I turned my gaze back on him. “Why were you so worried?”
Pressing his fingertips to my lips, he closed his eyes for a split second. “Don’t ever do that again. The second I call, pick up the phone. I thought the worst on the way here. Mental illness can be hereditary.”
“You thought I’d hurt myself?’ I asked, my words drawn out and filled with incredulity.
His chest heaved with a deep inhale. He released an exhaustive sigh he allowed to circle down my neck. His line of sight followed where I had glanced before. “I can’t pretend with you anymore,” he whispered.
“Pretend…what?”
Releasing me, he walked over to the fireplace mantel and fingered the urn. It was in his hands for a second before he threw it across the room. It slammed against a wall and slid down, sprinkling my father’s ashes to the ground.
I jerked the second the urn shattered. Gasping, I choked on my own saliva. Completely stunned he would behave star
tlingly mean toward me so soon after losing my father, I had trouble collecting my emotions. Taking deep wavering breaths, I staggered across the room to pick up the mess.
He grabbed my arm and pushed me up against the far wall. “Don’t pick that up. He didn’t deserve to be where you placed him. You should’ve thrown the remains out in the trash the minute you received them.”
“Elias!” I wheezed with my eyes wide in shock.
“How long are you going to keep this up, Hanley? I know you haven’t cried once over him. You’re going on with your life behaving as though you feel nothing. I know you feel it. Despite his failure at being a good father, you loved him. He used you. You were a puppet to him. Frankly, I don’t think that man was capable of loving anyone or anything.”
“No.” I shook my head with vehemence as my eyes clouded with tears. “My father loved me, Elias. Maybe he didn’t show it the way you think he should have, but he loved me.”
“He loved you so much…he killed himself and left you all alone? Does that make any sense to you? Because to me, it’s clear your father was a selfish bastard.”
“What…”—I choked up and had a difficult time continuing—“is wrong with you? Why are you being this way?”
“What is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you? He had your mother killed. He killed her husbands in cold blood. Does he seem like a man who deserves to be on anyone’s mantel?
“And your mother? Why does she deserve justice? I don’t know exactly how she was with you, but I can guess. She was probably worse than my mother, which is saying quite a bit. Why does she deserve retribution? Why are you avenging the death of a woman who probably cared even less about you than your father did?
“I know where your sister really is. She keeps her residence in Syracuse to fool people. But she really lives in a beach house in the Caribbean. She got everything your mother had while you got, what? A car?”
The reins I had on the hurt and pain he inflicted on me with his words began to fall from my grip. “I know my mother left Holden everything, and I know why she did it. I don’t blame her. You don’t understand.” I gulped down a sob. “I—”
“When are you going to stop looking at the both of them with childlike eyes? Can you distinguish between letting the past rule you and living in a fantastical version of it? Because you, Hanley, are doing the latter of those two.”
“W-why are you doing this to me?”
“Do you need to ask?” He clasped his hands to my face, holding me still. “I can’t stand seeing you this way. It’s worse than if you showed me the full extent of the pain I know you’re feeling. I can't fill every empty part of you if you keep pretending the spaces don't exist. No matter what you do or say to me, I will never stop wanting and doing everything I can to make up for the life you should’ve had.
“I know it hurts, Hanley. Show me how much it does so I can make it better for you. I need to make it better for you. Allow me to do that.” With his lips grazing mine, he whispered, “Let go.”
I pressed my lips together to abate another sob. My vision drifted, and he caught me, forcing me to look into his eyes.
Time crawled to standstill as thoughts made me think about what I’d barely digested. My father’s last conversation with me that sounded like a final goodbye. The sinking sensation that I’d been wrong all along about the cause of my father’s depression dissolved my strength. It was his guilt eating away at him. He had the lives of four men and my mother on his hands. Men he killed, not out of a possessive and crazed love for my mother but for money. The love I thought my parents had for one another was all a lie. It had to be.
The more I stared silently into Elias’s eyes, the less I was able to numb myself from everything. Sobbing, I clutched my stomach as it began to ache. His arms enveloped me, comforting me.
The feelings inside me continued to churn and bubble to the surface in an effusion of emotions. I remembered what I’d felt and suppressed when my father brought Holden and me inside my mother’s hospital room and told us she was brain dead. Holden cried for twenty-four hours straight, but I couldn’t shed a single tear. I recalled what I’d felt when I saw my father leap from the chair to hang himself. I further remembered the hurtful things said to me by Roth and the person I loved more than anything, my mother—the things I thought I’d erased from my mind.
In Elias’s arms, I cried the tears I never allowed myself to shed. The tears I kept away to be the strong woman I was berated into becoming.
He held my face, his eyes softer, looking at me in a way I missed. “Anything you need from me tonight, ask and it’s done."
I sobbed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “You have every right to be smug right now.”
Reaching down, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the tears from my eyes and the drainage from my nose. “I know your father manipulated you. I know he coerced you into doing what he was too much of a coward to do himself. When I realized that, I stopped trying to hate you.” He shoved the cloth into my hands and took a large step backward.
I found myself seeking his touch again. I stepped closer with my hands up, wanting to be near him. Slipping my empty hand into his, I pressed my body against him. “I missed you…so much. I couldn’t sleep at night, because I couldn’t sleep without you. Ten minutes after I went to sleep, I’d move over to the left side to try snuggle up next to you, but you weren’t there. I kept busy so I wouldn’t have to miss you. Turns out, there’s nothing I can do to stop what you make me feel when you’re here…and when you’re not. You have no idea how bad I feel about what I did to you. You are who you are and—”
Crashing into me, his warm and heavy body made my back meet the opposing wall. When he began to tremble, I reached out for him, placing my hands behind his head.
“I apologize for the things I put you through,” he whispered, “and the things I did to make you pay. I didn’t know what was true and what was false with you. A part of me doesn’t care as long as it means you’ll stay with me. But I will not make you out to be your mother.” As he repeated, “You're safe with me,” over and over again, I almost believed him.
I’d never been safe and was cognizant of the reason why. “I don't want to be safe; I want to be with you.”
He immediately pulled apart from me, searching my eyes for answers.
What's wrong with me? I questioned myself more times than I could count. There had to be something wrong with me when I continued to fall for a man who hurt me repeatedly and told me that I was the reason for it. The same man who hurt people without remorse. There was everything wrong with me for falling for someone like him.
I smiled to myself, more out of an uncomfortable realization than a true happiness. I turned my back against the worst things that occurred in my life and pretended they didn’t exist. He made me see some of the dark truths about my life and the people in it, and he unapologetically showed me the worst in his life.
My feet were surrounded in concrete blocks, stuck with nowhere else to go, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. “I’m such a fucking hypocrite, aren’t I?”
His brow furrowed as he took my hand to his heart, reacting as though he ached in the specific area and my touch was the cause. “You had all of me—things I didn’t want to give you. I tested you after I found out—and sometimes before—hoping each time I did, things would change and you would give me all of you and prove we were real. Every single time, you held back from me. Do you understand why I punished you?”
I nodded yes, because I finally understood what it was all for. He was scared of giving me pieces of him no one else had, and was deathly afraid I would destroy the most susceptible and human parts of him; the parts he gave me.
I closed my eyes, my posture sinking. “You haven’t been paying attention. Elias? You have it. All of it. I…would do anything you asked me to.”
“That was never a question. My question was why you would.”
“Because of the wa
y I feel about you.”
“Show me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He spun me off the wall, and with my back against his chest, he walked me toward the coffee table. When he spread my legs, I collapsed forward. My hands steadied me when they slammed down on the table and broke my fall. My knees hit the floor with a hard and painful slap. “Later.” The sound of his zipper came down and the rustle of clothing caused me to shudder in anticipation. “Tonight I want you in every way I can possibly fuck you.” He bent down to kneel behind me. Pulling up my skirt, he allowed it to bunch up at my waist.
He yanked down my panties and they pooled around my knees. He spread my thighs farther and pushed his hips against me. Spreading my ass, he flexed his hips and shoved his full length inside my sex, filling me to the hilt.
The full sensation made me squeal in contentment. Wrapping my hands around the edge of the table, I braced myself in preparation for the ride. He remained still, only his cock moved as it pulsed inside of me, expanding my walls. The walls of my sex contracted, holding him in a vice like grip, encouraging him to stop teasing me. Reaching around my neck, he placed his palm against my throat. His fingers surrounded my neck and forced my back to curve.
He inclined forward to bite my ear. “Never—ever—leave my side again.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “I can’t.”
He withdrew and slammed into me once. I cried out, firming my grip on the edge of the table. The tease rendered me into a pliable mess of desire and submission.
“Tell me how you feel,” he rasped, brushing his lips against the outer curve of my ear.
I remained silent.
He contracted his hips, withdrawing almost completely from inside of me. His fingers spread and tightened around my throat. My neck craned to accommodate the span of his fingers.
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