Celia's eyes narrowed into tiny little slits as she moved her focus to the woman next to me. "I'm intrigued.” She studied my wife much more closely than I liked. “How are you, Laynie? It's been so long since we've seen each other face-to-face. You look… tired."
I felt Alayna tense next to me, and I put my hand on her thigh to steady her. This was a cat and mouse game, nothing more. Celia loved taunting. It was best to ignore her.
"What can we get you to drink, Celia?" I raised my hand to flag the bartender.
"Nothing. Water, I suppose." She angled herself in her seat, crossing one leg over the other.
"Really?" I dropped my hand to the table before the bartender noticed me. "You were the one who suggested we meet at a bar, and you’re not even having a drink?" Now I was letting her get to me.
I knew better than this.
"I'm nursing. I can't drink, unless I'm going to dump it all after, and I'm not." She reached over to my scotch glass and pushed it closer toward me. "But we all know you’re in a much more agreeable mood when you've had one of these. Hence, the bar."
It was meant exactly as it sounded—to plant a seed. Does Hudson Pierce have a drinking problem? Like his alcoholic mother? Like his wife's dead father?
I didn't want to do this.
"I changed my mind. We don’t need to meet with you. This isn’t going to get us anywhere. Alayna, grab your purse. We are leaving." I pulled out my wallet, digging for a fifty to leave on the table. Celia was trying to push my buttons, trying to prove she still could, but I didn't need this. Alayna didn't need this.
Apparently, my wife felt differently.
"Hudson," Alayna said, putting her hand firmly on my bicep. "We should stay." Her eyes were pleading, her voice measured, and I knew—I knew how hard it was for her to sit in the same room with Celia, let alone at the same table—and if she was telling me that we should stay, then we needed to stay.
I put my wallet back in my pocket, but left my money on the table, so we could leave when we needed to.
And Celia gloated, as though she'd won the first point. "Thank you. I would hate to have wasted this trip. Now, since Edward is not involved in this matter and Alayna is, I am assuming that we are not here to speak about the three-point alliance?"
It seemed Celia was as interested in getting to the point as I was.
"That is —" I was interrupted from concurring by my wife.
"Like Pierce Industries is going to sell you shares. Did you forget that we have the majority for a reason? Hudson needed to have something to hold —ow!"
The majority had been acquired to keep Celia in line. I wasn't sure this was the best time to remind her of that, when we were about to ask her a favor, so I silenced Alayna with a gentle pinch of her thigh.
"That is correct," I finished. "We are here to ask you for…" I couldn’t bring myself to say favor and chose a different word instead. "Assistance."
Celia tilted her head. "This is interesting. You must be mighty desperate if you’re asking me for help. You have to know that's going to indenture you to me."
I could feel Alayna's claws come out. Probably because she was digging them deeply into my upper thigh.
"Why don't you hear the situation out before you start bartering about payment?" I suggested, trying to ignore the fact that I was being treated like a pin cushion. “At one time, you and I helped each other with no strings attached. Especially when we found the outcome benefitted both of us. You might find this is one of those times.”
Celia opened her hand in a gesture of ambivalence. "Go on then. I’m listening."
I already regretted this. But we were here. And Alayna believed this was our best shot. "We have received a series of threats recently. Letters, addressed to me, containing menacing language toward my family."
Celia eyes went wide. "And you think I did it?"
"No, we didn’t—” I began.
"Well…" Alayna said softly.
I threw her a glare that clammed her up then returned my focus to Celia. "We didn’t come here to accuse you. But the threats reference the past. The time when you and I were…" I glanced at Alayna. It was much harder to have this discussion in front of her than I’d imagined.
"Playing together," Celia finished for me. The expression on my face must have told her what she needed to know. "I see. Do you have these letters with you? May I read them?"
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the photocopies I'd made. I paused, taking one last moment to doubt, then slid the papers across the table toward her. I finished off my drink in one swallow, ignoring the knowing look Celia shot me when I did.
She read through them quickly, her brows creased as her eyes skimmed the lines. I remembered suddenly that she'd always been a lover of words, always excelling in literary arts. Like my wife. In another lifetime, would they have been friends?
That was another future I'd once dreamed.
"This reference about the mask you wear," Celia said, now on the third letter, "could be referring to that masquerade party we went to." She went on reading and soon shook her head. "But none of the rest fits."
That was the problem—none of it fit one exact scenario, one precise dictum. Not that I could see, anyway.
She continued on through the letters when she got to the fifth one, I said, "That one contained a picture of Alayna in the park with the twins. She hadn't known she'd been photographed."
Any decent human being would have found that fact chilling. Celia merely looked up at me and said, "Hm."
Then she gathered all the letters together and handed them back over to me. "I do think you're right, that it’s someone from the past. But it's like a scavenger hunt. You have to do a lot of digging before you can figure out what these vague clues mean."
I didn't take the letters. "We were hoping that you would help us put those clues together."
She considered for possibly half a second, her hand moving in toward her body as though to keep the letters, but then suddenly she pushed them back in my direction. "I can't do that. I can't take these." When I didn’t take them, she set them in front of me on the table. "I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful, I just can't."
Alayna, who'd behaved very well in my opinion, practically bolted up from her seat to lean across the table toward her photo. "You can't? Or you won't?"
I put a soothing arm at the center of her back, ready to pull her down if need be. "We don't have to take up much of your time, Celie," I used her childhood nickname. Every manipulation tactic I had in my book was fair game at this moment. "If you even just allowed us access to the journals so we could piece together —"
"The journals?" This mention startled her. "I don't have them here. They’re in London. I'm sorry. It's not going to work. I can't help you.” She pulled her shoulder bag over her arm. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must be going."
She slid out of the booth and walked in a clipped pace toward the door.
"Dammit," I muttered, hurrying after her before I could change my mind.
"Celia, wait.” I managed to close in on her before she left the building. "This person could come after you, too. I might only be victim number one. You aren't innocent here. Your past is as tainted as mine."
"And I understand I'll be on my own if and when that happens. I can't help you, Hudson." She was stubborn. She was iron. I knew this about her. I'd made her like this.
But she had a kid.
I thought she'd found true love. I'd thought she'd changed. "I really thought you'd softened," I said, disappointed more in myself, in my erroneous optimism, than her.
Her expression twisted into something I couldn't read. "You know nothing about me, Hudson. Not anymore."
I felt Alayna walk up behind me, just as Celia turned again and walked out the door.
She was right. I didn’t know her anymore.
And that made us more lost in this investigation than ever.
"She's playing us," Alayna said the minute we were
alone in the penthouse. "She's the one behind all of this. She expected us to come straight to her and we played straight into her hands. We’re so stupid!"
We. Never mind that it had been Alayna who had wanted to meet with her. Alayna who had wanted to stay.
I followed my wife into the living room where she was already pacing back and forth. "Don't you think I've already considered this possibility?" My eyes wandered over to the wet bar, but after Celia's comment and my earlier glass of scotch, I decided to hold off.
"I know you considered it as a possibility. But now I'm saying that's what it is.” She flipped to face me. “Do you realize that's what it is too? Because what else is it? It's either that or she's just plain mean."
I sat down on the arm of the sofa and rubbed my hand over my chin. I’d thought about it during the silent ride home, thought about each of Celia's expressions and gestures and tried to analyze every single little detail. Perhaps I didn't know her anymore, but I knew people. I could read people. And if I had to try to read her…
"She seemed spooked," I said, remembering her reaction to the mention of the journals.
Alayna stopped suddenly, midstep. "Spooked? What do you think we are?"
I started to answer, but the elevator dinged.
"The kids are home.” I stood up to meet Payton and the security guards who had brought them back from my sister’s.
Payton was already walking toward the nursery when I stepped into the hall, a baby carrier in each hand. She turned toward me. "They’re all asleep," she said quietly. "You can take Mina from the bodyguard."
I nodded and went to the foyer to retrieve my daughter from the man who was protecting her.
Alayna appeared as I was tucking Mina into her bed. She leaned over our little girl and kissed her on the forehead. Then she threw herself in my arms.
"If it's Celia," she whispered, "that means we aren't really in danger, right? She just wants to scare us. She wouldn’t ever really hurt anybody. Right?"
I didn't answer.
I ushered her out of the room, and when the door clicked shut behind us, I told Alayna what I didn't think she wanted to hear at the moment. "I really don't think it’s Celia."
Her face fell, but she was distracted from her disappointment by Payton as she returned from the twins nursery.
"We had a great weekend. Mina really enjoyed the time with Aryn. I think Holden is getting a new tooth—he's been extra fussy and a little feverish. I gave him Tylenol two hours ago and he didn’t eat much tonight. I’ll check on him again before I leave." She checked our expressions to see if we needed anything else. "I’m going to go get their things from the car."
"Thank you, Payton," Alayna said, walking her toward the door.
"Oh, I almost forgot." I hadn't followed them so I didn't see what was being handed over, but I could hear rustling. "There was that birthday party on Friday afternoon. Mina got this from one of the parents. Probably an invitation to another one. You know how it's always the same kids invited to them."
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I started at a brisk pace to the foyer.
"Hudson…?" Alayna called, her voice lilting with concern.
"I'm here," I said, arriving next to her. She was holding a small red envelope. The kind used for thank-you cards and party invitations.
I took it from her hands. It was sealed, unopened. "Where did Mina get this?" I asked again.
"She said a parent gave it to her," Payton answered slowly, as though she were afraid she were in trouble. "One of the dads at the party."
I exchanged glances with my wife. A man.
"Where was this party?" I tried not to sound as concerned as I felt.
"At Central Park."
Outside. Accessible. Anyone could've been there.
"Thank you, Payton. Make sure one of the guards walks with you down to the garage." I waited until she was in the elevator and the doors were closed before I carefully opened the envelope. I wanted to preserve the flap, in case it had been licked instead of sealed with a envelope sealer. I pulled out the card inside. It had a monkey on the cover holding a single balloon.
Was I being paranoid? Was this really just a children's invitation to another birthday party?
But when I opened it, the words I found written in the familiar blocky handwriting chilled me to the bone. There is an enjoyment of correctly predicting how people will react.
Alayna looked up at me, puzzled. "But what does that mean?"
"It's something that I used to say," I said.
"Who would know that?"
Only one person. "Celia."
15
Alayna
"She can't get away with this," I said grabbing my purse from where I'd dropped it in the foyer. I opened it to make sure that my phone was inside. "What hotel is she staying at?"
Hudson was still holding the card, still ruminating on the words. He looked up at me, his eyes glazed, and blinked. "Alayna, you're not—"
I cut him off sharply. "Not going to talk to her? Oh yes I fucking am. What hotel is she staying at? I know you know, and if you don't tell me, I'm going to text Genevieve and ask her.”
Hudson tucked the card inside his suit jacket, next to the letters he’d photocopied for Celia that she hadn't taken.
"Confronting her is only going to play right into her hands. Just like you said earlier." Somehow my husband could remain cool and calm. I didn't know if I envied that, or wanted to smack him for it. "We'll take it to the police tomorrow and handle this the correct way. File a restraining order."
Like a restraining order was going to do anything. She hired people to deliver her messages.
I dug my phone out, and started to text Genevieve, my hands trembling. I was determined to get the answers I needed one way or another, but my fingers couldn’t seem to work properly.
After I made three errors in a row, I turned my frustration on Hudson. "She got my child involved. Our four-year-old little girl. Give me the fucking hotel name, Hudson, because I am going to go there and give her a fucking piece of my mind, and so help me, if you don't let me do it right now, you know that I will do it later. So you might as well just tell me."
He ran three fingers across his forehead, a sign that he was in a more agitated state than I’d given him credit for.
The elevator dinged, and Payton walked in, a diaper bag over one shoulder, Mina's backpack in her arms, as well as one of her favorite stuffed animals. She startled at the sight of us still in the foyer.
"Payton," Hudson said, turning to her. "Would you be able to stay a couple of extra hours? Alayna suddenly remembered an errand we needed to run."
An errand. At eight-thirty on a Sunday. That better be code for beating the crap out of an arch nemesis.
But I was grateful he was making the decision to do this with me rather than putting it off until Jordon could be involved.
"Sure. Mind if I borrow something from your library to read, since the kids are all sleeping?" she asked.
"Yeah, that's fine. Take your pick of whatever," I answered automatically, already pushing the button for the elevator to re-open so we could hurry. The thought of waiting even a second longer suddenly felt like a risk that grew with every moment we weren’t running toward the only real clue we had.
And if we were playing into her hands, well— at least I felt like I was doing something.
"Aren’t you coming?" I asked Hudson impatiently. No danger could truly exist with him by my side.
"Thank you, Payton. Make sure you set the alarm." He followed me into the elevator then hit the button for the doors to close as I fidgeted.
"You better not think you’re going to come up with some classic Hudson Pierce way to distract me from this. I am talking to her." That woman didn't frighten me. I'd given her a black eye once. I could take her down this time. There was no incentive on earth like protecting your children.
Hudson pulled his phone from his pocket and started typing. "Nope, I’m not try
ing to stop you. I'm texting the driver now. You reminded me that when you get your mind set on something, you don't let it go. But if you think I'm going to let you do this on your own, then you don’t know me. Besides, I have a feeling this will be entertaining. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Awesome. I was preparing to go into the ring, and he’d decided to just take a seat in the stands. I’d been hoping he’d be the guy who wiped the sweat off me and made me chug water in between rounds, but maybe that was pushing it.
Hudson spent the ride toward Celia's hotel on the phone with Jordan, catching him up on the latest. I listened, halfheartedly, but everything he said only worked me up more. Either his words reminded me of what happened, pissing me off all over again, pissing me off at her all over again, or they made me pissed at him.
I didn’t like to feel that way, so it was easier to try and fix my anger on Celia.
"Yes, I'm certain that Celia is the only one that I shared that quote with," Hudson said halfway through his phone call, "but something doesn't line up. This doesn't feel like her M.O. I can't put my finger on it, but I still don't think she's behind this."
"Oh, she's definitely behind this," I said, even though he wasn't speaking to me. "And I don't know what you mean by this isn't her M.O. Riling us up? Trying to scare me? That's totally her."
I knew she was behind it the minute she refused to help us find who was behind the letters. No one could read them—no mother could see a threat to another woman's children, and not want to help. Besides—the “coincidence” of her wanting to reclaim shares from our alliance just as this was happening was too much.
It was obvious to me now. She planned to use our family to benefit herself.
Over my dead body.
"She's usually trying to terrify you," Hudson said, moving his mouth away from the phone to placate me, to try and refute my certainty. To defend her. "She isn't usually trying to terrify me."
Whatever. Wasn’t that the same now that we were married? She’d just gotten more creative with her tactics. That's what people did over time—they changed up the game. They didn't stop playing.
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