And then, I died

by Sage, May

  He could think of nothing but the feel of that soft skin against his… but he thoroughly despised men unable to back off when a lady wasn't interested and he could tell: she really, really wasn't.

  Chapter 2:

  Swayed

  The sheets felt familiar on her skin. They weren't part of the newer sets purchased when she'd decorated; Linda obviously reserved those for the use of the occupant who actually slept in the apartment. Instead, she got the thick, luxurious, and slightly faded linen which still, somehow, smelt of citrus and seashore.

  Beth steered clear of such things. Reminders of the past were soothing to those who recalled a wholesome childhood. To her, they were oppressive.

  By dawn, she gave up and strolled towards the lounge. The white sofa suite – a three seater, a loveseat, and an armchair – hadn't been chosen for their comfort as much as the fact that they had been over seventy percent off at the time, but under the circumstances, they would do.

  After considering her options, Beth curled up on the armchair, folding her legs to her chest. It wasn't the most awkward makeshift bed she'd put up with, and the thick throw she'd wrapped herself under had, in lieu of recommendation, the valuable attribute of not reminding her of Nadia Martin-Carver.

  She would have to go shopping, if this place was supposed to feel like anything close to a home, and that meant a trip down to the bank. As much as she would have preferred to avoid the task, she needed to know how much she could spare.

  But first, she needed to catch up on some serious sleep.

  Just as Morpheus was finally granting her access to his kingdom, though, the dark apartment unexpectedly came to life. There were steps, then the sound of running water, music, and a mouthwatering scent of frying bacon mixed with freshly ground coffee. It shot straight to her stomach, waking her senses with a jolt.

  Damn. She couldn't very well get up and demand her share, dressed as she was, in an old pair of shorts and a flimsy tank top.

  The husky voice pleasantly buzzing in the background became clearer as her roommate approached:

  “Tell him we'll go with Stanley’s if he can't keep the deadline. One unreliable partner is all I can take.”

  Apparently, William Slate woke up a controlling ass.

  The lights went on, just as she felt a presence too close for comfort, but immediately dimmed down. When he talked again, it was little more than a whisper:

  “Give them twenty-four hours. Let it be known that I can be amenable.”

  Was he for real?

  In the silence, she should have heard the footsteps retreating from the room, yet seconds passed without a sound. Intrigued, she turned around, and had to take a sharp and somewhat out of character intake of breath.

  She wasn't likely to forget the view anytime soon.

  William stood in the doorway, staring straight down at her. He was, not unlike her, in his nightwear. In his case, they constituted in a pair of white trunks.

  Seriously?

  While she blushed, he didn't seem the slightest bit abashed, but then again, he had defined biceps, triceps, a six pack, and that coveted V line every woman chanted about. There wasn't much to be ashamed of.

  “That's all,” he finally barked into his odd, ultra-modern smartphone, before hanging up and walking away.

  "Ms. Carver, do you have a few minute to spare? We have been trying to get in touch with you, and as you popped in today, we'd like to have a chat."

  She'd heard a variation of that speech about two decades ago, after mom had gone to the old bank to enquire about her declined credit card. She'd been six, but she recalled it all: the face, the crooked teeth, everything about the man who's led Nadia at the back.

  Nodding stiffly, she followed the directions the enthusiastic cashier indicated, away from the counter, to a small, cosy waiting area.

  She'd chosen WnC finance because of the very couch on which she now sat.

  A month after closing everything she'd held with the bank in charge of the family estate, she'd been walking down from her flat towards the park one day and had remembered she needed an account when she'd passed the inviting new window displays.

  The savings rate had been uninspiring, the interest they charged on credit cards, atrocious, but the baby blue sofa rocked. At that point, back in 2009, it was as good a reason as any to choose a bank.

  The sofa was still beautiful and incredibly comfortable, but no furniture was going to distract her from the nausea.

  She didn't have any reason to be worried, though; the debts accumulated by every single arrogant Carver whose legacy she carried had been paid in full, hadn't they? Last she'd heard, Elaine and Cass, the only living relatives she willingly acknowledged, were keeping Uncle Pierce out of trouble.

  She was fine.

  Surely?

  A tall, dark-haired man many others would have found attractive greeted her by name and she cringed when he looked at her with some appreciation. Beth didn't relish in attention from members of his sex.

  Moreover, he was the typical corporate slime-ball, from his cufflinks, the golden wedding band that should have deterred the flirtatious smile, right down to his ultra-shiny shoes. She disliked him instinctively: he worked in finance, wore Armani, and was a man.

  "Elizabeth, I'm Jace Warden. A pleasure to see you today."

  It wasn't, but she nodded, determined to face whatever was coming.

  She wouldn't shake. She wouldn't bow her head in shame. She wouldn't cry and take one too many pills after dropping her six-year old daughter at school the next day. That was Nadia's MO, not hers.

  She shook the hand offered to her, grateful for the layer of leather covering her palms, and followed him to a rather spacious office where his aftershave assaulted most of her senses.

  It wasn't bad, really; she just normally did her best to avoid being locked in any sort of confined space with men, so the scent was unfamiliar, unsettling.

  She shut her eyes, imagining getting closer to him, jumping up, wrapping her legs around his neck, tighter and tighter...

  "As you haven't planned this meeting, I won't take much of your time.” A small grace. “Let me get directly to the reason why my colleague referred you to me today. I take it you are aware of the balance you hold in your accounts?"

  She wasn't.

  She wasn't careless with money, that gene had skipped her generation, but she'd been under the same cover for over five years and had, for all intents and purposes, become Natalia Maine. The identifications and the credit and debit cards she'd used bore that name, and everything she had purchased under those circumstances had been cleared through her expenses.

  She knew Natalia had under two hundred dollars in the bank. Elizabeth's financial situation, however, was a mystery.

  "Let's just get a printout," the man suggested, clicking away until a slow, noisy machine set up next to the window came to life.

  The paper he entrusted in her hand was the good stuff: heavy, so rough she could feel the grain underneath her fingertips as she turned it around.

  Beth had seen that sort of figure in the past. Some twos and sevens, a few fives and ones, forming a strange, foreign assortment of numbers. She could read the amount, but comprehending the monetary value behind such sums had always been beyond her skills.

  The last time she'd seen a dollar sign next to that sort of total, there had been a minus in front of it. She scrutinized the piece of paper, expecting the sign to appear any moment.

  “That balance,” Mr Finance said, pointing the first overwhelming number, “is what you hold in your checking account. And this,” he indicated, the black pen now hovering over a disturbingly long entry, “sits in savings, earning very little at the moment. If you'll allow me, I'd like to make your money work better for you.”

  Her money, apparently, was working fine on its own.

  She'd opened the accounts with five hundred dollars. Since, she'd given her details to exactly two people: Bonnie, the HR assistant at work, and Victo
ria, who was granted power of attorney to enable her to manage her tenants and pay her bills after accountants had worked their magic.

  “Could I get a statement? Going back a year, please.”

  After forty-nine seconds of squeakiness, she was presented with two bank statements. The first only showed a grand total of twelve entries, sporting a dozen incoherent digits she identified as her social security number. Each payment varied, the highest being in March 2014. The little scar above her right hip was a reminder of why the Agency had deemed it necessary to double her salary that month.

  Maths had never been her forte, but she added up a rough estimate of each entry and multiplied the total by five. Right. Give or take a few wounds, that made sense.

  The other statement was more obscure; there were various entries each month, but most of the money going in quoted addresses she recognized as their reference.

  Beth and Elaine didn't generally feel overcome with a need to thank their grandfather for much, but there had been one silver lining on the fateful day when they'd read his last will and testament: dear old George's pride.

  Despite the abysmal state his carelessness and his taste for luxuries had reduced their affairs to, he had not sold one single property ever owned by their family, not even the brothel down in Florida.

  The bank had accepted a dozen residences as collateral for his astronomical debt, but there had been plenty left to share.

  Unwilling to spend money they didn't have on a surveyor, they'd distributed them as fairly as two girls and an alcoholic could; Beth had claimed her favourite home and the four houses in Manhattan, Piece had taken the rest of the East Coast, and Elaine, everything else.

  That meant that Piece had twice as many houses as Beth, and Elle inherited more than twenty, but the value of the dilapidated estate had seemed irrelevant at the time. Beth had friends in New York City, Piece was into sailing, and Elaine was fond of horseback riding. Deal.

  Beth's spoils had been filled with antiques and original paintings, most of which she had promptly sold to cover the cost of converting the townhouses into flats.

  It hadn't been a financial decision. She'd just mulled over her options and determined that that one would be the most unbearably painful to old George, should he be granted a window to this world from the hell where he'd been sent to. The potential return had merely been a nebulous afterthought.

  It was proof of her complete inability to understand business that she had thought she wouldn't make much of an income from the rentals. Didn't landlords need to pay for maintenance, accounting, and humongous taxes? The statement showed just such bills recently deduced from her account, yet she was still, in short, filthy rich.

  She felt a pang of guilt as she yet again scanned the page. Was she really charging seven thousands a month for some of her flats?

  They were nice. Actually, really nice; she'd made sure to keep the natural beauty of the buildings as she mulled over each renovation.

  But seven thousand a month?

  “I'd like to make an appointment to discuss the possibility of investing...”

  “Can I leave it for now?”

  Investing was one those words, itching her mind like nail on a board.

  She'd heard of bad investments before. It had been whispered at her father's funeral, repeated at her mother’s, and all but shouted at George's.

  “Elizabeth, you must see that...”

  “It's Ms. Carver, and I see that I'm actually doing OK. But I'll keep you in mind.”

  They both knew she bloody wouldn't.

  As the day couldn't possibly get any worse, she decided to attend her one o'clock appointment. Up until then, she hadn't made a conscious choice as to whether she'd turn up for the meeting.

  It was compulsory and plausibly necessary, but no one had requested that she'd start seeing Doctor Francis straight away.

  The room was encouraging; no indoor plants, mini fountains, and knickknacks sowed here and there to cultivate a positive energy – whatever that meant. Three walls were covered by books – anything from biographies, to dictionaries and to popular novels – and the last one was a window overlooking the constant traffic; it wouldn't do as an escape route, from the tenth floor, but she saw it as a useful form of distraction.

  Annabel Francis had invited her to take a seat on a couch she had to share with a fat long-haired white cat. She'd also offered her a coffee, undoubtedly proving that, despite her job title, she wasn't a pod person.

  “I must admit I was surprised by your call.”

  Of course she was. Annabel treated Vick; there was a good chance she knew absolutely everything there was to know about Beth, including the fact that she'd never gone to a shrink.

  Not even after that.

  She probably shouldn't have looked up the psychologist Vick had mentioned in passing: her friend wasn't the poster child of mental well-being. But she'd immediately ruled out the suggestion given by her superior – a man – and Annabel Francis was the only other shrink she'd heard of.

  “I wouldn't be here if I had a choice,” she admitted.

  “I'm not going to take it to heart.”

  Annabel was rather plain, but her smile was something else. The woman seemed in her late thirties, until that monkey grin broke her features, giving her an injection of youth and beauty.

  “I meant no offense to you or your profession. I know I need to be here. I'd just rather not.”

  Beth wasn't blind to the fact that she needed therapy; some of her thoughts and behaviours weren't socially acceptable. She was fully aware of that, but did she want to change?

  “Why do you think you need to be here?”

  She only raised an ironic eyebrow.

  “Beth, if this is going to work, our sessions will need to be about you. Not about what I've heard of you through Victoria. It is evident to me that you are very different individuals. While she was present at the event that has, to an extent, defined you both, you haven't lived through the same ordeal and it hasn't affected you the same way. I need you to tell me why you need help.”

  So, careful to steer away from certain subjects, she kinda did.

  “Seven thousands!”

  “It's actually quite cheap. We got them fifteen percent off the area price as they work for me. It's two couples and they can definitely afford it. They host most of the after-work drinks.”

  “Humanizing the victims I skin every month is not helping.”

  Charles looked to her right for support, expecting a flood of statistics from Victoria, but the brunette stayed silent.

  It wasn't a good sign. Usually, the withdrawn, unfriendly one of the group was Beth and they all liked it that way.

  The three of them couldn't have hailed from more different backgrounds, but they'd all attended the same boarding school – Beth thanks to her birthrights, Victoria, her money, and Charlotte, her brains.

  Not a lot could have made the cheerleader, the geek, and the scholarship kid become as close as they'd been for the last decade. Probably nothing short of what Beth liked to refer as “the incident.”

  Charles hadn't been part of the incident in any way, but when Beth and Victoria had recovered, they'd seen their lives in a very different light. In the real world, they needed to get tough; they'd gravitated towards Charles, who had taught them that, and then some.

  The trio, as a result of one too many French martinis back in college, had ordered three copies of the most ridiculous group selfie online, in a personalized frame that read the Bitch, the Slut, and the Prude. Beth had been on the left, Charles on the right, Vick right in front.

  Predictably, Vick had been all for destroying the evidence when the oeuvre had been delivered from China, a couple of weeks later, but Beth had saved her copy. She was quite happy with her role.

  She had wanted nothing more than to become that bitch no one could get close to, and she'd succeeded. She was curt, dismissive, bordering on offensive, and made people so flustered they didn't get a chance
to realize how she felt in their presence. Threatened. Threatening.

  Now, though, the only uncomfortable one in the room was Vick.

  “OK, what is it?” she demanded, pinning her under her gaze until she met it.

  Brusque, but effective.

  Victoria had ended up with a mild form of PTSD after the incident and while she didn't outwardly display her distress, her episodes were worrisome. She didn't speak, didn't eat, and barely moved for days on end.

  “I'm fine. It's... I didn't know you banked with WnC. Let's just say I don't have the best experience with the W part of it. ”

  She sounded bitter, resentful, but she had talked so Beth nodded, reassured, and left it at that.

  Being closer than most twins didn't entitle them to every dark corner of each other's mind, thankfully. No matter how much they loved her, should they ever witness what happened in hers, they'd get her institutionalized at the very least.

  “Pizza tonight?”

  Since her arrival, they'd gone right back to the traditional girls-night-in routine, three times a week, unless an emergency such as a call from the CIA, a department store sale, or a very hot date prevented it. Clauses two and three, of course, respectively came from Charles and Vick.

  The rotation meant it was Charles' turn to sort out dinner, therefore they'd expected takeaway.

  It wasn't fair. Beth had never been so close to having an orgasm than when she'd tasted her scallops and pork belly with caramelised apple but Charlotte Knightly point blank refused to spend more than a couple of hours in the kitchen per year.

  “Alright, but none of this down-the-road nonsense: we're ordering from Ludo's.”

  She remembered a time when Ludo's had been a luxury to all of them. Victoria, the wealthiest of the lot, had been under a strict allowance, Charles used to save every penny to host her website, and Beth had, quite simply, been broke.

  “And I want my own super meat feast with extra cheese on top.”