by Zara Cox
He stops when I hold up my hand. His gaze locks in on the tests.
He grabs my hand and turns the tiny screens to read the verdict for himself. He stops breathing for several long seconds, and then his breath punches out. Hard. “Cleo? Are you…is it real?” His voice is a hoarse, shaky croak.
Filled with elation. Hope. Apprehension. More elation.
“Yes, it’s real. I’m pregnant.” Emotions tumble from my own voice, but I can’t name which one is paramount.
I watch stunned as his trembling hands cup my face. He rains kisses amid shocked laughter, harsh breathing.
Then he falls to his knees.
Gentle hands cradle my hips, tug me close. Reverent lips kiss my flat belly. When he looks up, his eyes are shining. “God, I love you, Cleo. I love you so much. And I love this baby. Our baby. I love…” he slows to a stop when he glances back up at me. “You’re not happy.”
“I…I don’t know what I am,” I reply honestly.
His face goes slack. Pale. He swallows and climbs back to his feet. “What does that mean?”
“I just found out. I’m thrilled you feel this way—”
“But you’re not? You don’t want the baby?” His voice is a charred mess.
“Yes, I do.” That is a certainly that blazes in my heart.
But he goes paler. “But you’re not thrilled about it because I’m the father.”
Oh God. “No, that’s not—”
“Try that again. And look into my eyes when you deny it.”
My chest burns with love. With anguish. “Axel.”
He staggers back a step. Then another. I can’t work out how his eyes can be both desolate and fierce. His voice commanding but oh, so vulnerable.
“Okay, before we go further I need to say this. I love you. But it’s not the kind of love that is selfless enough to let you go. My love is the fucking selfish kind. The kind that will demand to have you in my arms when I go to sleep at night. The kind that will insist on seeing your face every morning, no matter what. The kind that will shatter kingdoms for the right to be a father to this baby. I’m the selfish bastard who needs you to breathe. So tell me what penance you demand and let me pay it. I will spend the rest of my life paying if need be. Because we need to learn to live with this together. Because nothing but death will cut it for me.”
My mouth drops open, but no words emerge. He stares at me for a rigid second before he veers away, his stride jerky with the same agony twisting through me. A second later, he leaves the room.
I sag onto the bed, the tests still clutched in my hand. Opening the nightstand drawer, I drop them in, then I lie back on the bed.
My hand finds my belly.
It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, I lie to my child. To myself.
Because what else can I do? I love Axel Rutherford with everything that I am. But I’m terrified that microscopic bubble of darkness that abhors what he’s done will one day explode.
Can I live with that darkness? Smother it with the love fused with my soul for him? Buy us both time for a chance at the happiness that is owed to us?
Yes…Yes. I swallow. Rise.
I find him in his office. He watches me cross the room, his face a twisted mask of hope and desperation as I crawl into his lap, my arms sliding around his neck. Strong arms bind me to him. His lips find my crown. And he stays there, shuddering, breathing me in.
“I love you,” he vows. It’s a promise and a sentence.
I bask in both.
We stay there for an hour. Or maybe it’s a minute.
We have time.
We have time.
We have time.
Boy, am I wrong.
* * *
Axel is standing at the side of the bed when I emerge from the bathroom. The pair of low-riding sweatpants hugging his lean hips sends a pulse of electricity through me. It’s good to know my sexuality hasn’t up and died. Every other part of me may as well have. Axel hasn’t fucked me in two days. I feel like shit, and I haven’t stopped throwing up for forty-eight hours straight.
It’s as if my body was waiting for acknowledgement of my condition before going to town. Because right on the heels of finding out I’m pregnant, I’m fully installed in Hurl Town.
Axel is out here only because I banned him from watching me throw up over and over. What I don’t know is why he looks like all the ghosts of hell are stabbing his soul with ice picks.
I shut the bathroom door behind me, leaving the room in semi-darkness. “Axel?”
The head he raises is heavy. The expression in his eyes rips me apart. “Why are you getting calls from Greenwich Memorial Hospital?”
My heart…stops. “What?”
“I put your phone on silent so you would get some sleep. I just un-muted it. It’s eight a.m., and they’ve been calling since midnight. Why?” His breathing alters, shallow pants that stroke the edge of hyperventilation. “Is it…is it the baby? You said it was just morning sickness.” His gaze flies over me, as if he’s developed X-ray powers. They return to linger on my stomach, to my long-healed ribs. His face goes pale. “I swear, if he caused permanent damage—”
“I’m fine, Axel. It’s not…The baby’s fine.”
He raises the phone clutched in his hand. “Everything’s not fine or the hospital wouldn’t have left you nine fucking messages! And why the hell would you book an appointment out of town when I’ve got you an ob-gyn right here in Manhattan?”
Terror and the shattering of my dreams rip through my soul. I stumble forward, hand outstretched. “Can you…give me my phone, please?”
His fingers tighten until his knuckles turn as white as his face. “Tell me why the hospital’s calling, Cleo.”
I shake my head. “No. Please don’t make me. If I do, we can never go back.”
Confusion furrows his brow. “Go back? Back where?”
“Back to this moment. Back to one minute ago, when I was okay with choosing your love over…”
He freezes. “Over what?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a fatalistic second. “Over the darkness in your soul.” The words are less than a whisper.
He hears them. His breathing stalls. The tendons on his neck stand out as his gaze goes from my face to the phone. Back again.
“Why would…I don’t…Tell me why the hospital’s calling.”
“Because that’s where my mother is!”
Silence. It sucks us into its grim chasm. I don’t want to fight it. Surrendering to it would be so good right now. My knees weaken. I sag against the wall, slide down it, and attempt to wrap my arms around my grief.
He doesn’t come to me. He doesn’t scoop me up into his arms. He shakes his head. Denying us both the numbing blackness that will end all this.
“Your mother is dead.”
The remnants of my ravaged soul refute that. So hard. “She’s not dead.”
“No. She and your father were officially declared dead two years ago.”
My heart bangs against my ribs, every single scenario I’ve ever envisaged for this moment playing out in macabre Technicolor. “Declared dead, but not dead. At least not my mother.”
“Why would you hide something like that—? Finnan? Did he threaten her?”
“He threatened her, yes, but with turning off her life support if I stepped out of line. He knew where she was because he was the one who paid for her care.”
He breaks from stasis and begins to pace. “So…if Finnan knew she was alive and wasn’t the one you were hiding her from, then—?”
“Stop. Please!” I realize I’m weeping when the hand I swipe across my cheeks comes away wet. “Are you seriously playing this game with me, Axel?”
He stops, looking at me like I’m an alien. “Why would I playing fucking games at a time like this?”
I open my mouth. The penthouse’s intercom buzzes loudly. I look toward it.
He steps in my line of sight. “We’re not getting that until you answer me, Cleo.”
“I made sure she was declared dead so you wouldn’t know she was still alive! So you wouldn’t find her and finish the job of killing her!” My broken voice joins my broken body and I lay my head on my knees.
The intercom continues to buzz. Our chasm grows wider. I shut my eyes against it all.
“You think…I tried to kill your mother?” His voice is a bleak, horrified rasp.
I’m spent. I don’t answer. The buzzing stops. The bedroom phone rings.
“Answer me, Cleo!”
He’s standing above me. Breathing hard. A sound tears from the beast within him. The phone continues to ring.
He lunges for it. “What?” A muffled voice at the end of the line. “No, I don’t want to talk to anyone…Yes, okay. Who? Fine, send them both up.”
He hangs up and returns to where I sit. I open my eyes and watch the fires of hell burn in his eyes. Bending, he lays my phone at my feet. His whole body is trembling. Without a word, he goes into the dressing room, pulls on a T-shirt, and leaves the room.
My hands shake as I place the call.
“Miss McCarthy, thank you for returning my call,” Dr. Denker answers.
“Is…is everything okay with my mother?”
“Yes, I mean there’s no change. The reason for my call is because we’ve had a query about your mother that I found a little odd.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t want to alarm you, but in light of what we talked about a while ago, about being ready to move her…”
“Yes?”
“Someone came to the hospital last night to discuss the same thing.”
Finnan. I surge to my feet. Sway against the wall. “You didn’t—”
“Of course not. She apologized profusely when she realized we wouldn’t proceed without your express authorization.”
“She?”
“Yes, she was quite gracious, actually. Very cheery. Dark brown hair…” Alarm bells scream at the back of my head. “Are you familiar with her, Miss McCarthy?”
“Yes. I am. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be in touch within the hour.”
I hang up, my mind in a deeper level of turmoil than I would have believed possible ten minutes ago.
He knew. All along he knew. Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent Fionnella Smith after my mother.
Going into the dressing room, I grab my tunic and drag it over my head.
It’s time to meet Axel Rutherford’s monster full-on.
* * *
Axel
I made sure she was declared dead so you wouldn’t know she was still alive! So you wouldn’t find her and finish the job of killing her!
I thought the terror in her eyes was for my other sins. Now I know better—
“I’m sorry if this is a bad time, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had since my other employer’s…issues. I thought you’d want to know immediately.”
I drag air into my useless lungs and focus on the two people seated in front of me. Fionnella Smith. And Bolton.
I stare at my brother. He stares back at me. I can’t even find the gear for confusion.
My gaze returns to Fionnella.
“What?” Is that my voice? It sounds like a stranger’s.
Her eyes narrow, flicking to the empty hallway and back again. “Is everything okay?”
She’s in there. In the bedroom where I thought my life could have meaning again.
Dear God. “You have a report to make. Make it.” My eyes return to Bolton. His gaze is steady. Direct. He’s either dialed down the drugs or he’s found the perfect cocktail to help him fire on all cylinders. I don’t have the mental capacity to decipher which.
She thinks I tried to kill her mother…
“I found out who moved the Camaro. And I…we know the identities of the victims.”
“We?”
“I’ll tell my part—it’s the easiest—then let your brother tell his. Your father had it moved and burned. I figured he wouldn’t use a local service so I trawled through nine hundred dredging companies on the eastern seaboard, and I lucked out.”
“Just like that?”
She smiles. “No, son. But I won’t bore you with the details. And this is where it gets interesting. According to the kind gentleman who manned said operation, there was only one body recovered from the trunk.”
“There were two bodies on the video. You saw them.”
She nods and glances at Bolton. “You wanna take it from here?”
My gaze shifts to my brother, every single hair on my nape erect.
He stares down at his balled fists for a minute before he exhales. “I didn’t know what Pa had told them to do, Axel. I swear. Not until we were on our way to Bearwood Lake. When I realized what they planned to get you to do…I…I just couldn’t. Knocking a few heads together for extortion money was one thing. Cold-blooded murder—”
“What did you do?”
“I told them I needed the restroom. They thought I was off my head—”
“You were off your head.”
He shrugs. “Maybe I was, but what does that matter now? Ronan was glad to get rid of me, and you guys were so scared to attract attention, you were driving so goddamn slow. I made it to your side of the lake just as you were leaving.”
“Then what?” I ask, but the puzzle is unraveling, faster than I can handle. I know what’s coming. What’s been coming for the last ten years.
I thought my life was over fifteen minutes ago.
I’m about to watch my own burial.
“The car was still sinking when I got to it. There was just enough daylight to see what I was doing.”
I shake my head. “But the trunk was shut.”
He shrugs. “Penknives aren’t just for snorting coke. Plus I may not have been a high school swimming champion then, but I could still hold my breath for three minutes and eleven seconds.”
Jesus.
“Why?” I ask my brother.
His face congeals with pain. “He didn’t love any of us. I know that now. But the depth of his hatred for you…I didn’t understand it. Still don’t. Maybe he knew you would become the best of us.”
Air shudders from my lungs. “Bolton—”
“It’s okay. I’m fine with admitting that we weren’t born equal. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of the man you’ve become, brother.”
The pain in my chest is expanding. I don’t know that I’ve moved until the back of my legs meet the sofa. I sink onto it, clutching my pounding head. When I finally raise it, they’re both staring at me.
“And for what it’s worth, I can corroborate everything he’s said,” Fionnella adds.
“How?”
“Jeez, where’s the trust? Okay, I know a guy at a cheeky little government offsite bunker that stores satellite archives. All he needed was a time and date.”
I swallow. Nod. Then ask the question that will seal the nail in my coffin. “Who…who were they?”
“Michael and Camilla.”
The torn gasp behind me sends me to my feet. Cleo stumbles forward from where she was leaning against the wall. Behind me, I hear Fionnella and Bolton charge to their feet too.
“Damn,” Fionnella says under her breath.
Desolate blue eyes, brimming with tears, meet mine. She’s deathly pale and won’t stop shaking. The tears spill down her face, and I die all over again. “Cleo…”
Her gaze shifts to Bolton. “You saved my mother?”
“Yes. I’m…I’m sorry I couldn’t save Michael.”
“Why…why did Finnan want them dead?” she asks.
Bolton snorts. “Why does he do anything? The returning-to-Boston thing was a ruse. Michael was planning to do another deal with General Courtland behind Pa’s back. I guess we all know the outcome.” Bolton’s gaze moves to Cleo. “I’m sorry.”
Agony contorts her face, and she sways where she stands. I catch her by the arms and exhale in relief when she doesn’t recoil from me. I walk her to a seat, an
d she sits but her attention remains on Bolton. “How did Finnan know my mother was alive?”
“He hit the roof when Ronan told him we hadn’t torched the car like he asked. He had it dredged up a few days later. I didn’t have a lot of options to save your mother’s life besides CPR so I called nine one one. They took her to Saint Jude’s. Tracking her there wasn’t difficult. Sorry.”
She nods, looking down at her linked fingers. “No. Thank you,” she murmurs. “For…for saving her life.” More tears fall.
I reach for her hands. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t engage.
“Cleo.” The eyes that meet mine are as dead as I feel. “I’m sorry, baby.”
She returns to watching her hands.
“Cleo, you have to know that, if Axel had known, he would’ve never driven the car into—”
“Bolton—” I warn.
“What? She needs to know, and you need to stop torturing yourself to death with that thirty-seven-minute piece of film.”
Cleo’s head snaps up. “What did you just say?”
Bolton doesn’t hear her. His gaze is still fixed on me. “You think you’re the only one he sent that video to? Or the only one he uses any of his videos to blackmail?”
Fury finds a way through my ashen void. “Fuck.”
“Wait…the video of my…the video was thirty-seven minutes?” Cleo asks.
“Yes,” Bolton and I say in unison.
The sound that rises from her throat is all wounded animal.
I caress my hand down her arm. Again she doesn’t react. “Cleo, what is it?”
“The video he sent me was twenty-one minutes,” she replies.
Fionnella moves toward her. “And let me guess. The footage makes Axel look guilty as hell?”
Cleo’s eyes meet mine. Shift away. Her mouth wobbles before she presses it tight.
Fionnella steps closer. “Just to be clear, you do know he’s not guilty, right—?”
“That’s enough,” I snarl.
“Son, I’m trying to help you. You’re not going to rest until this thing is behind you—”
“It’ll never be behind me.”
She mutters something under her breath about thick-headed alpha males with death wishes. “So, you’ll defend your country against assholes who deserve everything you dish out to them, but you won’t defend yourself?”