The Angel (The Original Sinners)

by Reisz, Tiffany

  “Suz. Goddammit. Where have you been? Is everything okay?’

  “It is. I think so. Better anyway. Can you do me a favor? I’m driving and I need to look something up.”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “Can you see if a woman named Elizabeth Stearns from New Hampshire has any kind of criminal record?”

  “Google won’t help much with that. Let me call my NYPD friend. He can look it up.”

  Suzanne hung up and waited. But she didn’t have to wait long.

  “So?” she said when she answered.

  “Arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Father fell to his death down several flights of stairs. He was notoriously healthy and virile for an old geezer, so no one believed that he’d just fallen.”

  “No conviction?”

  “Nope. No witnesses. Spotty evidence. The only really incriminating thing Elizabeth Stearns did the day after Daddy’s death was head straight for Wakefield to talk to her priest-brother.”

  “The cops thought she confessed the crime to him.”

  “They did. Tried to get him to talk. Wouldn’t say a word even though the sister’s not Catholic. Apparently only baptized Catholics are supposed to go to confession so they leaned on him pretty heavily to spill it. Even the diocese wanted him to spill it. He refused on theological grounds.”

  “And on the grounds of covering his sister’s ass. Knowing what her bastard of a father did to her, I don’t blame him at all.”

  Patrick exhaled and the phone buzzed in her ear from the force of his breath. She smiled. Patrick…what would she do without him?

  “So you’re done, right? This is done? You’re coming home now, right? Right?”

  Suzanne grinned into the dark.

  “Got one more thing to do first.”

  “Then you’re coming home, right?”

  “Right. But don’t wait up. This might take a while.”

  “I’ll wait up.”

  The smile lingered on Suzanne’s face long after she’d hung up. At about ten o’clock she arrived in Wakefield and Sacred Heart. A few lights still burned in the church and set the stained-glass windows subtly glowing. How beautiful the church looked by night…how peaceful, how sacred. She still didn’t really believe in God. Nothing would ever convince her that some man in the sky was running the show down here on Earth. But for once she started to believe a little in one of His believers.

  She entered the church and found it empty. But surely Søren would return before long to turn off the lights and lock up. Søren… She realized all of a sudden that he’d become Søren again in her mind. But although she knew his name, knew his secrets, she didn’t feel quite worthy to call him by the name only his most trusted intimates knew him by.

  “Father Stearns…” she whispered aloud as she stared at the altar at the front of the church. She’d never call him Søren to his face or in her heart and mind again. Glancing around, Suzanne saw a small staircase that led to the choir loft. She climbed the stairs and stood at the edge of the balcony area and surveyed the entire sanctuary.

  Sanctuary. In olden times she knew that criminals and runaways would seek real sanctuary inside the walls of churches. The church was holy ground, sanctified, and the authorities treated it as a place of real power not to be meddled with. For the first time since childhood, Suzanne felt safe in a church and safe with a priest. She used to think the only cure for the ailments of the Catholic Church was wholesale destruction. It gave her pleasure to quote Denis Diderot’s words, “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” She’d met both a king and priest in her investigation and had to admit that while the world might not be better off with them in it, it certainly was more interesting.

  Below her she heard the door open and Father Stearns strode down the center aisle toward the altar. She watched him a moment and smiled as he crossed himself, gave a quick, elegant bow next to a pew and sat down to pray. In his hands he held rosary beads, and she had to wonder for what special intention he prayed. She started to call out a greeting to him, but she heard the door below her open again.

  “Søren!” A man’s angry voice echoed throughout the sanctuary. Suzanne took a step back from the edge of the railing and hid herself in the shadows. Father Stearns stood up and turned around.

  “Griffin…how nice to see you in church.”

  Suzanne’s inhaled in shock. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but from his muscular build and the photos that she’d seen, she recognized Griffin Fiske, the son of the chair of the New York Stock Exchange.

  What the hell…

  “None of that,” Griffin said, his voice flush with fury. “Don’t pull any of the bullshit mind-fuck stuff on me. You know why I’m here.”

  “I don’t actually.” Father Stearns stood in the center of the aisle and gave Griffin a placid smile. “But tell me. We can discuss whatever you like.”

  “Let’s discuss how my love life is none of your fucking business. Let’s discuss what an arrogant, pretentious asshole you are for thinking you can tell me or anyone who they can or cannot be with.”

  “Eleanor is very fond of you, Griffin. I’ve yet to discern why.”

  Griffin took a menacing step forward.

  “Maybe because unlike you, I don’t try to control her every move.”

  “Yes, Eleanor is utterly oppressed, isn’t she?” Father Stearns’s voice dripped with mockery. “Eleanor acts like a child because she’s full of childlike joy. You simply are a child, Griffin. A spoiled child who has never had a real relationship in his life. I’ve watched you use people up and discard them over and over again. If you think for one moment I would allow you to use up and discard someone I love—”

  “Me?” Griffin laughed bitterly. “Me? I use people up and discard them? Are you blind? Are you deaf? Your precious Eleanor uses men like fucking tissues. One good hard blow and she tosses them out. Her editor? Her intern? Her thousand ex-lovers? Jesus Christ, Søren, even—”

  Whatever name Griffin Fiske started to name went unuttered. And it all happened so quickly Suzanne couldn’t even reconstruct in her mind the series of motions she’d witnessed. She knew it began with Griffin pointing his finger at Father Stearns’s chest and ended with Griffin on the floor of the church with his arm pinned behind his back. Father Stearns had moved with such brutal force and efficiency Suzanne could only cover her mouth in shock.

  “Griffin…” Father Stearns spoke the name with cold, calculating, utterly terrifying calm. “You are in God’s House. And Eleanor is His Child. And when you dare speak of her in my presence or in His, you will do so with the utmost respect. Are we understood?”

  Suzanne could only stare at the scene. It appeared that if Father Stearns pulled on Griffin’s arm any harder, he would dislocate the shoulder. Griffin grimaced and took a pained breath.

  “Yes, sir,” he finally said.

  “Good.” Father Stearns released Griffin’s arm and stood up. Griffin quickly came to his feet. “Now shall we continue brawling like schoolboys? Or should we discuss this somewhere like gentleman?”

  Griffin nodded. “The Circle?”

  Father Stearns sighed heavily.

  “If you insist.”

  “I do. This ends tonight. You know what I want and who I want.”

  “I do, in fact. Are you prepared to earn what you want?”

  Griffin’s back straightened.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes. Last thing I want is to
cause that kid any more pain. Not the bad kind of pain, anyway.”

  The kid? Suzanne thought that was an odd way to refer to Nora Sutherlin. From what little she knew of the infamous Griffin Fiske, he was slightly younger than Nora. And what the hell did he mean by the bad kind of pain? Was there a good kind of pain?

  “Nor I. Which is why I set the conditions I do.”

  “Fine. Let’s get this over with. I’m not going to waste another night sleeping alone if I don’t have to.”

  Suzanne saw Father Stearns’s eyes narrow as Griffin stormed out of the church. However pure his feelings for Nora Sutherlin were, surely he didn’t want to hear about her in bed with some other guy. Obviously Father Stearns had considerable sway over her if Griffin Fiske had to come fighting her priest to be with her. That night at the rectory when he’d dropped his guard and talked about how he’d had to rescue Eleanor Schreiber from herself as a teenager, how he’d practically had to raise her after her home life imploded…maybe Father Stearns was to her exactly what he’d said he was—a father.

  Father Stearns left the church and Suzanne collapsed into a pew, her heart still racing from the strange scene she’d witnessed. Father Stearns had nearly gotten into a fistfight with New York’s biggest trust fund baby over Nora Sutherlin. Bizarre… Suzanne had so many questions, but she apparently wouldn’t get to ask them that night. Why didn’t Father Stearns want Griffin Fiske and Nora Sutherlin together? Why did Griffin call her “the kid”?

  And what the hell was The Circle?

  * * *

  Nora took Michael up to his bedroom and sat him down in the window seat. She ordered him to stay while she went to her room to retrieve something. When she came back, she found him up and pacing.

  “So you’ve just given up following any of my orders, I see,” she teased as she sat on the bench in the window. “Hopefully Griffin will be able to train you better than I have.”

  Michael blushed and collapsed miserably onto the bench across from Nora.

  “Oh, God, I’m in love with a guy…” he groaned. “This sucks.”

  “It also blows.”

  Michael groaned again and Nora could only laugh at him.

  “Aah…teenagers,” she said, reaching out for Michael and dragging him to her. He curled up in her lap with his head on her thigh. “Everything is life-and-death when you’re seventeen. Especially love.”

  “It isn’t life-and-death?”

  Nora closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

  “No, it is actually. Life and death are less life-and-death than love is. When I fell in love with your priest, I felt as though I had this open wound. I was so raw, so tender. And it hurt. But I didn’t care. Love is the open wound that you hope never heals.”

  “Love will hurt a shit metric ton if my dad finds out about this.”

  “Your father is an asshole, Angel,” Nora reminded him. “Why do you care what he thinks?”

  Michael shook his head.

  “He makes Mom miserable about me. Anything I do, he turns on her. He dumped us, divorced her, and he still comes around and gives her shit for every single thing he hates about me. And that’s a lot of shit.”

  “Your father has terrible taste in sons.” Nora ran her hands through Michael’s long hair and brushed it off his forehead. “I’d be thrilled if I’d ended up with a kid like you.”

  Nora gazed out at the manicured lawn and the empty driveway. Griffin probably wouldn’t be home until morning. God only knew what Søren would put him through tonight. Nothing truly terrible, of course. Nothing he hadn’t done to Nora a time or two. Just some mind-fucking and probably a hefty dose of pain. It would do Griffin good, actually. There was something to be said for fighting for the one you loved. Especially if the one you loved was a seventeen-year-old boy who didn’t think he deserved that love.

  “What happened to the kid?” Michael whispered and Nora pulled her eyes away from the evening sky.

  “What kid?”

  Michael raised his head off her lap and simply stared at her. Nora sighed heavily.

  “Oh, that kid.”

  “I don’t talk much, but I do listen.”

  “Too damn well apparently,” Nora said, laughing without joy or mirth. God, this was about the last thing she ever wanted to talk about. “You really want to know?”

  Michael nodded.

  “Maybe it’ll distract me from worrying about Griffin.” Michael sat up and pulled his knees tight into his chest.

  Poor thing…love shouldn’t have to hurt this much, Nora thought before realizing what blasphemy such a sentiment was in their world. Would she ever know what love without pain felt like? Did such a thing even exist?

  “I was twenty-seven,” she began, turning her eyes back to the setting sun. “And so in love with your priest I couldn’t see straight. But for a long time, I’d felt…incomplete, I guess is the best word for it. I hung out at Kingsley’s a lot in my twenties—it was the only place your priest and I could really be ourselves together. You remember that hot French guy who came on to you in the Rolls Royce?”

  Michael grinned. “Won’t ever forget that guy.”

  “That guy owns New York. At least the Underground parts of it. He’s got the hottest submissives, doms and dominatrixes in the world on his payroll. They’re in and out of his town house all the time. And I would watch the dominatrixes and just stare at them. They were so beautiful, so powerful. Even the male dominants gave them a wide berth. You expect men to be tough and strong and in charge. But when you meet a woman like that? It’s mind-blowing. I ached for what they had. Don’t get me wrong, I love submitting to your priest. It fulfilled me like nothing else. But it never fulfilled me completely.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Michael said with a shrug. “I guess I don’t have a dominant bone in my body.”

  “You don’t. I’m sure of it. And that’s fine. I envy you. Being a switch is no party. The doms don’t quite trust you. The subs don’t quite get you. Just being one thing or the other would be so simple… It’s like being bisexual. Best of both worlds. Worst of both worlds.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Nora squeezed Michael’s knee.

  “You know your priest has not one but two PhDs.”

  Michael blinked. “Really? In what?”

  “Got his first one in his twenties in theology, of course. But when I was twenty-six, twenty-seven, he was working on PhD number two in Canon Law. Søren is, to say the least, a nerd.”

  Michael’s eyes went wide just before he burst into laughter. What a wonderful sound, hearing Michael laugh like that—so loud, so boisterous, so open. At the very least, the summer at Griffin’s had made him learn to speak up a little.

  “So your sexy nerd priest went to Rome to finish his dissertation at the Gregorianum. He never left me alone when he went away for his trips. He’d always leave me with another dominant to keep an eye on me. I didn’t really understand that then. First time he did I was only twenty-three years old and he drops me off as this mansion in butt-fucking nowhere New England with this brutally hot widowed librarian.”

  “Seriously?”

  Nora rolled her eyes. “Seriously. Søren told me he knew I’d be good for this guy, Daniel. And I was. And he was good for me too. Being with him that week made me realize how much I truly loved your priest and that being with him was worth the sacrifices. And that was the plan. Every time Søren left me, it was a test. Would I still be ther
e when he came back?”

  “So what happened when you were twenty-seven?”

  “He left me with Kingsley for three months.” Nora closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to that time. She remembered the hot tears on her face as Søren had kissed her goodbye and warned her to be a good girl and do whatever Kingsley said. He promised her a hundred presents from Rome, a letter every week… She couldn’t bear being apart from him for so long. Her stomach ached at the very thought of it and continued to ache for weeks. Well, she thought it was his absence that caused the pain in her lower stomach. “I was sick,” she said, opening her eyes. “Kidney infection. Two-week course of very strong antibiotics. Didn’t think anything of it. Sort of forgot that birth control pills and antibiotics don’t mix.”

  Michael didn’t speak and Nora didn’t want to. But she took a breath and carried on.

  “It was just a few days before your priest was supposed to return from Rome. I woke up in Kingsley’s bed sick as a damn dog. I barely made it to the bathroom in time. Puked so hard I thought my ribs would splinter.”

  Michael winced so dramatically Nora almost laughed.

  “Yeah, pregnancy isn’t the glorious and beautiful thing the movies make it out to be. It’s gross and painful and miserable. And no one in their right mind would ever do it on purpose. So I did it for all of…well, about one day.”

  “What did you do?”

  Nora would never forget rolling onto the floor and curling up in the fetal position after throwing up for a solid ten minutes. The cool tiles felt like heaven on her fevered clammy skin.

  Slowly her eyes fluttered open and she found Kingsley staring at her with his dark, knowing eyes.

  “Chérie…” he’d whispered, whipping a swath of sweat-soaked hair off her forehead. “What have we done?”

  “I think we know,” she’d whispered in reply, her voice hoarse from the force of her retching. She didn’t need any tests, any doctor’s visits. She simply knew. And so did Kingsley.