by Celia Aaron
The day droned on with story after story. With each witness, Dad slumped down farther in his chair, as if trying to melt away into the floor. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, tell him things could be fixed. Instead, I sat like a statue and listened.
The accusations stung me like a swarm of hornets. After the sixth or seventh witness, I went numb from their venom. Despite the breadth of the charges, I did not doubt my father. Not for a moment. Vinemont had done all this to ensure his re-election or for some other, similarly vile purpose.
When the last witness finally turned her walker around and shuffled back to her seat, the silence became a separate presence. Heavy, ominous, and draining, like a specter haunting the empty spaces of the room. My father remained hunched forward, his head bowed.
“Well, judge, I think you’ve heard enough.” Vinemont held his hands out beside him, the show at an end.
“I have. I’m going to need the evening to think on the sentence.” He glanced around the courtroom, his impassive gaze stopping on me for a moment longer than anyone else. “I’ll have my verdict in the morning.”
Vinemont turned to the judge and gave him a slight nod. Judge Montagnet returned the nod and then banged his gavel. “Court is adjourned.”
“Just let me make you feel better.” Dylan leaned over me, pushing me sideways onto the ancient leather sofa in my father’s library.
“I can’t do this right now.” I tried to push him off but he pressed harder, overcoming my balance so I fell on my back beneath him.
He put his mouth to my neck, sucking my skin between his teeth. He was large and well-muscled thanks to endless lacrosse and rowing. He crushed me and constricted my chest.
“Please, Dylan.” I gasped. I should have been afraid. I wasn’t. I was still dazed from the courthouse. Dylan was just adding to the long line of disappointments I’d suffered over the past six months.
He pushed his knee between my legs.
“I can make it all go away for you,” he murmured against me. “Just let me make you feel good for a minute. You need a break.”
He forced his hand up my skirt.
“Stella? Where are you?” My father’s voice calling my name had my stepbrother off me in a heartbeat.
Dylan gripped my hand and yanked me into a sitting position as he straightened his button-down and smoothed his blond hair. He winked at me. The bastard.
When Dad didn’t show up in the doorway, I knew it was the ‘come here’ sort of call.
“I have to go.”
“Later,” Dylan whispered.
Not if I can help it. Dylan had taken one youthful mistake committed years ago, and turned it into some sort of lifelong flame. No matter how many times I told him, he just didn’t believe that twenty-five-year-old me wasn’t the same as the foolish, needy nineteen-year-old I once was.
When my father and I had moved to Louisiana, we were despondent. Mom had left this world without saying goodbye or giving an explanation. Dad and I were adrift, trying to come up with some way to carry on even though our heart was gone, buried in the cold ground of a New York cemetery.
Dad eventually took a liking to Dylan’s mother and tried to make a new start with her, and admittedly, her family fortune. Neither venture worked out and they divorced after only six months. Dylan and I were mismatched step-siblings if ever there were any. I painted and read. He loved sports and abhorred learning of any sort if it didn’t have to do with X’s and O’s on a whiteboard.
Still, I was sad and desperately looking to feel something, anything, in the wake of my mother’s death. Dylan was there and more than willing. So, I did something foolish. It was my first time—my only time—and I didn’t exactly regret it afterward, I just didn’t think about it. It was a non-event for me. That wasn’t the case for Dylan, unfortunately.
I shook thoughts of him from my mind as I followed my father’s voice to the back of the house and into his study.
Dad had sunk our last few dimes into this turn-of-the-century Victorian home. The whimsical façade was charming. The leaking ceilings and drafty windows? Not so much. Even so, it had been a safe place until Vinemont’s tendrils had begun to invade, first with visits from investigators, then the arrest, then the searches. Vinemont had shown up each step of the way, reveling in the torment he inflicted.
For the millionth time that day, I hoped Vinemont would spontaneously combust. Then I strode into my dad’s study.
The fire was crackling, and the room smelled of my father’s pipe. The atmosphere in that room always had a way of putting me at ease, making me feel safe. Even now, after all we’d been through, I still felt a familiar comfort when I walked in.
Along the back wall near the high windows, he’d arranged the draft paintings and sketches I hadn’t sent to the local gallery. I’d caught him so many times just standing in front of whichever piece he’d decided to peruse for the moment, staring into it as if it held some sort of answer. My mother had taught me to paint. Maybe he was seeing her in the strokes and lines?
My feet hit the soft Persian rug that I used to play on as a child, bringing me back to the here and now. My father sat in his favorite wingback chair near the fire. The room felt fuller, somehow more occupied than usual, as if there was less air or not enough space.
Despite the crackling flames, the room was colder, darker. My familiar comfort drained away. Someone else was sitting in the matching chair facing my father, though I couldn’t see who it was.
My pace slowed as I saw my father’s stricken look. His wrinkled, yet still handsome face was pale, even in the flickering firelight. The first coils of dread snaked around my heart, constricting it slowly.
“Dad?”
Then I caught the scent of him. Whenever I passed him in the courthouse or when he came too close to where my father and I sat, I’d gotten a taste of this same scent. Woodsy and masculine with a hint of some sort of sophisticated tinge. My knees threatened to buckle but I kept going until I stood behind my father’s chair and faced my enemy.
Vinemont’s cold gaze appraised every inch of my body. “Stella.”
I’d never heard him say my name. He spoke it with his signature arrogance, as if just uttering the word was somehow beneath him.
I scowled. “What is this? What are you doing here?”
“I was just discussing a business arrangement with your father. He doesn’t seem inclined to accept my terms, so I thought I would run them past you. See if I got a different result.”
“Get out,” I hissed.
He smirked, though there was no joy in his eyes, just an inscrutable coldness that radiated out and made my skin tingle.
“I think you should leave.” Dad’s voice broke on the last word.
“Do you, now?” Vinemont never took his eyes from me. “Before I’ve had the chance to give Stella the particulars?”
I put my shaking hands on the back of my father’s chair. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Mr. Vinemont should be leaving.” My father’s voice grew a bit stronger.
“Y-you can’t be here talking to my father without his attorney.” I forced the tremor to leave my voice. “I know the law, Vinemont.”
Vinemont shrugged, his impeccable dark gray suit rising and falling with the movement. “If you aren’t interested in keeping your father out of prison, then I’ll go.”
He didn’t move, simply watched me with the same dark intensity. Goosebumps rose along the back of my neck and shoulders.
What is this?
“What do you mean?” I asked. “How?”
“As I was just explaining to your father, I have a certain deal to offer. If you accept it, then he’ll stay out of prison. If not, then he’ll be going away for the maximum sentence—fifteen years.”
“A plea deal? But you’ve refused this whole time to make any deal at all.” My voice rose, anger influencing every word. “You were in the papers, telling anyone and everyone that you would do nothing short of seeing
my father rotting in prison.”
“Plea deal? I never said anything about a plea deal. I didn’t realize you were this foolish.” He steepled his fingers and canted his head to the side. He looked like Satan, the firelight dancing along his strong features. “No, Stella. I already have a conviction, nothing left but sentencing for him. And I have no doubt he’ll get the max. I’ve made sure of it.”
He spoke as if I was a small, slow child in need of extra after-school help.
“Then what? What are you offering?” My hands fisted, my fingernails digging into my palms. “And what do you want in return?”
“Ding ding ding, she finally catches on.” His smirk grew into a wicked grin that chilled every chamber of my heart. His teeth were even and white. If there had been actual warmth in the smile, he would have been beautiful. Instead, he was the monster from my nightmares.
“The deal is simple. Even simple enough for you to understand, Stella.” He reached into his inner suit coat pocket and drew out a folded sheaf of papers with some sort of wax seal. “All you have to do is sign this and your father will never see the inside of a prison cell.”
“No. I’ve heard enough. Get out of my house.” My father stood and came around the chair to stand by my side.
Vinemont finally tore his gaze from me and glowered at my father. “Are you certain, Mr. Rousseau? You do realize that a Louisiana prison is hell on earth as it is, but I have ways to make it even more unbearable. Cell mates and such? It would be a shame for you to get paired with a violent—or amorous—sort, especially at your age. You wouldn’t last long. Maybe a month or two until you broke. And after you’re broken, well, let’s just say the prison system isn’t exactly known for spending medical dollars on old, decrepit thieves.”
“Get out!” My father’s voice rang out stronger than I’d ever heard it, even as he trembled next to me.
Vinemont’s smile never faltered. “Fine. See you in court.”
He tucked the papers back into his coat, rose, and strode from the room. Confidence permeated his movements as he stalked out like some big, dangerous animal. The sureness of his words, the conviction of his gait left me feeling at once chilled yet burning to know why he’d come.
What the hell is going on?
When he was gone, I was finally able to take a full breath. I clutched the back of the chair. “What was that?”
My father pulled me into his chest, his familiar smell of tobacco and books cutting through Vinemont’s more seductive scent. He was quaking violently. “No. Nothing. Forget about it. About him.”
“What did he want? What was in those papers?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. If it has anything to do with you, I don’t want it. I don’t want him near you.”
I leaned away and looked into my father’s eyes. He didn’t meet my gaze, only watched the fire behind me the same way he would stare into my paintings. He studied something far away, past the flames and the bricks and the mortar.
Fatigue was written in every line on his face. Not even the flickering orange glow could hide how drained, how frightened he truly was. He hadn’t looked this haunted since the night he found me lying on the floor, almost two years ago. I rubbed my eyes, trying to erase his fear and the memories from my mind.
He let out a labored groan and fell back against the chair.
“Dylan!” I called.
My stepbrother appeared in the doorway within moments. “What’s going on? Was that the dick prosecutor I passed in the hall?”
“It doesn’t matter, just please help Dad to his room. He needs to rest.”
“No, no. I’m fine.” Dad clutched me to him again, his grasp weaker, fading. “I love you, Stella. Don’t forget that. No matter what happens tomorrow.”
I forced my heart to stay together. If it shattered, I would be of no use. I couldn’t become a quivering heap of regret, not yet. Not until I found out what Sinclair Vinemont wanted from me.
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