Her confession hung in the air for long seconds. Did Sarah suspect there was more? What she didn’t say was how her present situation with Alexander felt all too familiar. She still felt lost and incapable of getting the ground under her feet.
“I know what it’s like to take on the tragedy of another, Rebecca.” Sarah sat back. “So, care for a little advice?”
“Please.”
“You’re taking on too much.” She raised her hands to stop a rising protest that must have shown on her face. “Submissives do that. You can’t live for another. You can only live with another. For you to be here, with Alexander, it’s important you have something for yourself, and not get lost inside another’s desires. He’d want that for you. If you don’t know how to ensure that, well, sometimes it’s better to be alone until you can.”
“Are you saying I should leave?”
“Not at all. I’m saying you need to find yourself and your place here. At Accendos, taking care of yourself is mandatory. Sacrificing yourself for someone else’s happiness, even if that someone is Alexander, isn’t allowed.”
“Not allowed.”
“Alexander built this place to be a safe haven. That means making sure everyone is true to themselves all the time. Honesty is imperative.”
The little bits she’d kept from Alexander gnawed at her insides, like her past with Marston. God, she was tired, but this little emotional breakdown? It wasn’t happening again. She’d come clean with Alexander tonight. She’d tell him everything and let the chips fall where they may. And, just like that, the planet righted itself around her. Why had she waited so long? Why did she think she could get away with not telling him?
“Thank you, Sarah.” She took in a stuttered breath and blew her nose, probably getting mascara all over her face. She didn’t care.
“Why don’t you go to your room to rest? I’ll let Alexander know.”
“That’s a great idea.” She nodded. She’d get herself together and then come down for dessert. Then, tonight, they’d talk—really talk.
Sarah rose. “I’ll tell him. Rebecca, remember, you have friends here. Remember, you’re allowed to take your time.”
That made her eyes prick even more, but blessedly, Sarah didn’t pry more and allowed her to sneak off.
Perhaps Sarah was right. She’d turned into someone she didn’t recognize—jealous, possessive, a martyr. She’d reclaim her backbone and talk to Alexander. It was time for them to have the talk she’d been avoiding. She also had some requests, such as slowing down. Her body seemed to agree with that plan because as soon as she was through the doorway of Alexander’s bedroom, his bed called. She tumbled onto the surface, taking a soft blanket draped at the end of the bed with her. Her plans to go back downstairs dissolved into a hazy dark.
37
“Sir,” Tony whispered to Alexander, his body throwing a shadow over him. “Can I talk to you outside?”
“Tony, sit. Have some pumpkin pie.”
“We have a bit of a problem.” Worry etched deep furrows in Tony’s brow. “Marston Wynter is here.”
Alexander threw down his napkin and stood. “Hallway.”
As soon as they strode into the hall, Sarah stepped around the corner.
“Ah, Alexander. Rebecca went to lie down. I think she’s a little tired.”
“Wine.” Eric’s voice snuck up behind him. He shrugged. “I’ve been watching. I can go up and see if she’s okay, but is everything okay here?”
“Thanks, Eric. I’ll meet you upstairs. Explain later.” He turned back to Tony. “Where?”
“Main entrance hall.”
Alexander didn’t hold back his strides, but Tony managed to keep apace. He nodded at the Ambassador from Spain who was in the hallway, but didn’t stop.
“How did he get past security?” He’d kept his voice down despite being out of earshot of anyone. Anyone who saw his face would know he was pissed as hell.
“With so many people coming and going today, he managed to get through the front gate, but we were able to intercept. He’s in the entranceway with the team.”
He’d been getting paranoid in his old age. Now he was glad of it. He had his personal security team, anyone available and wanting a double-pay shift, to surround the place, mostly to keep photographers at bay. That only made it doubly suspicious that Marston got inside.
“Harlan found Marston craning his neck into the windows, cigarette in hand.” Tony’s chest rose and fell in irritation. “When questioned he’d simply said, ‘Tell Alexander I’m here.’”
Marston stood in the portico staring up at a painting, hands in his pockets, legs wide, his back to the three men in all black. His stance was casual, irritatingly calm. The man should be shaking in his overpriced and environmentally incorrect alligator shoes.
“Marston.” Alexander crossed his arms.
“You do like your art.” He turned. “Wherever will you hang all of Mother’s? Every inch of this space seems taken up.”
“What do you want?” He be damned if he’d discuss his acquisitions with him.
“I need to speak with Rebecca.”
“You have no business with her.” Alexander’s legs carried him so close to Marston he could smell the guy’s cheap aftershave.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ryan’s voice sounded from behind.
Alexander flicked his gaze over his shoulder briefly to catch Ryan, Carson, Jonathan and Mark, filing into the room. They’d noticed his hasty exit. They were an unnecessary show of force, but he was still glad for Marston to see them.
One side of Marston’s mouth curled upward. “Is this the part where your gang threatens to take me to the basement and torture me?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I’ll simply hand you over to the police. They will hold you in jail overnight for trespassing.”
“Yet another unoriginal threat, but one quite familiar to you.”
Yes, he had been told those exact words by Marston himself, hadn’t he? Only that was forty years ago, and today was today.
“Tony, throw him out.” He was done wasting his time here.
Before Tony could place a hand on him, Marston, in that pompous, rich Bostonian accent spoke up again. “I’m surprised you took her in after you learned of our past together. Keeping her in a dungeon?”
“She’s none of your concern.” Alexander grasped the front door handle and opened it for him.
“Oh? I’d say my ex-wife is of much concern given your … habits.”
It took a minute for his words to pierce his irritation at the man showing up. When they did, Alexander let the door smash against the doorjamb.
“Oh.” Marston let the syllable glide into the space for several seconds. “She never told you we were married? Typical. The woman always was full of secrets.” He hung his head with a dramatic flair. “And, then there was the baby … ”
Time was a funny thing. It sped up. It slowed down. And, sometimes it hung in suspended animation—like now. Six words rattled in the space, but two lodged in his gut. The baby. Not “a” baby, the.
He had the man by the lapels. Hands grasped his arms, and shouts joined the thunder of blood in his ears. He was pulled off Marston. All of it blurred as every ounce of rage he’d tamped down over the years erupted.
38
She didn’t know exactly what woke her from a sound sleep. The door cracking open? Alexander’s voice?
“Eric, give us a moment.” Alexander stood in the doorway of his bedroom, face stone cold serious.
“Of course.” Eric extricated himself from the bed, grabbed his shoes and skirted past the man.
Alexander took two steps inside, turned, and clicked the door shut. He hesitated a moment, his hand on the door handle for a long second, before turning back to her.
She’d eased herself from the bed covers and sat on the side for a moment. Her head ached a little, probably from the wine and the interrupted nap. She’d fallen almost immediately into a deep sleep. A
nd, Eric? When had he arrived? She rose and slowly made her way to Alexander. “Alexander?” Her hug met a wall of concrete. His arms remained rigidly by his side as he glared down at her.
A shiver ran up her legs and back and across her scalp. His eyes were a cold fury. “I’m sorry I left the party—”
“Marston is here.”
What? Her head shook back and forth quickly as if trying to shake the words from her ears or wake up more. Marston. Here?
“When were you going to tell me?”
Tell him? Tell him what?
A cold bath of awareness flooded her body.
Marston didn’t. He’d promised he wouldn’t. It was part of their deal never to speak to anyone of that time, ever. She swallowed hard. Neither of them moved for long minutes. She searched his eyes but only found a deep blue nothingness, as if shutters had been pulled down.
She broke eye contact, went back to the bed, and sat praying, praying so hard. “Exactly what did Marston tell you?” She looked down at her fingers, white and blotchy from twisting them.
“Your ex-husband, the father of your child, told me many things.”
A spear of pain lanced her heart. All the breath blew so hard out of her body, her ribcage collapsed. “No.” She raised her gaze to him. Those blue eyes could have lit the room on fire. “He didn’t have a child.”
“You going to tell me he lied? You didn’t have a child? With Marston Wynter—”
“No. My baby was not his.” Her hand rubbed her collarbone, her fingers catching a little on her necklace chain. “It was yours.”
Oh, that bit of news registered. A flicker of shock crossed his face, but as quick as an ocean gust, it was gone again. His chest expanded in a long inhale. “Mine.”
“I was pregnant, Alexander. Eighteen and pregnant with your child and—”
“And, you didn’t tell me.”
Tell him? She couldn’t have, not after the Wynters threatened them both with so many things. Where would they go? Another greyhound bus to another city, penniless and … “No, Alexander … I …” How did she begin this?
His hand scrubbed down his face. “Keep going.”
She swallowed. “I found out a day before Charles’ funeral. Marston found me in the bathroom getting sick. It just came out. Then, the day we laid Charles to rest, Alice Wynter threatened me.”
“Threatened to do what?”
Jesus, his voice made the air drop ten degrees.
“What do you think? That heartless … callous woman threatened to take my child away from me.” With every word, an invisible vice squeezed tighter around her heart. “They didn’t do DNA back then. Alice said they would insist it was Charles’, and they’d take the baby away. I’d never see him again—”
“Him.”
How could one simple word—him—call up so much pain for so long? For thirty-eight years? Long seconds stretched between them as she tried, and failed, to read his face.
Suddenly, he started to pace with such intention, she sat back a little. “But Charles wasn’t the father, unless … ” He stopped and turned to her. A muscle in his cheek twitched.
“No, you know Charles and I were never together that way. But, given everyone knew we ran away together, Alice said their word would carry more weight than mine.”
“And you believed them?” His roar set her back on her hands.
She purposefully slowed her breaths. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?” All traces of warmth, love, anything she knew from this man, were gone from his eyes.
“Tonight, actually.” Hot tears blurred the room into an angry gold and red mass. She stood anyway. She had to keep going. “I made a deal with them. The Wynters were never to find you or hurt you in anyway, and I could keep him. But then Marston … ”
“He what?” He strode forward and grasped her biceps.
She winced, and he dropped his grip, stepped backward. Horror—that’s what she saw in his face.
“He offered to marry me, legitimize the heir, as Alice called him. The family would pay for everything. If not … ” Blood thrummed in her ears as the storm kicked up in his eyes.
“And you did it?”
Was he seriously angry? At her? From some corner of her soul, she grasped onto her last shred of courage. She could use it now. “I was eighteen. Alone.”
“You were never alone.”
There it was again. The thought he could save anything, anyone. “Oh, I was. You don’t remember things well, you know that? You could barely hold it together after Charles was whisked back to the East Coast.”
“I got us back to the East Coast.”
She shook her head. “No. I did. Where did you think the money I gave you came from? You knew we didn’t have more than twenty dollars to our names, but you never asked. When the Wynters took Charles off in their private plane without us, it was Marston who gave me—me—the bus fare to get us back to Connecticut.”
“Because of that you promised to marry him? The price for lying about my child was bus fare?”
How dare he? How could he fucking dare? She snapped her lips together and pointed at the door. When he didn’t move, she jerked her arm again for him to get a fucking clue that he had to leave right now. She couldn’t speak. The pain had made her mute. She’d bared her soul, despite the fact Marston beat her to it, and all he could see was how hurt he’d been.
His eyes glazed with fury. “Not leaving. It’s my house, and I want it all.”
“Because you always get everything you want, don’t you? Snap your fingers and people come running. Well, I’m not one of your staff.”
“No. You were the love of my life.”
Her insides seized. Were. He couldn’t love her anymore? She’d been afraid to tell him for exactly this reason. Certainly no love existed in this room right now. “Charles was the love of your life. It was never me.”
“No. You both were, but Charles is gone.” He closed the last remaining distance between them. “Where is he? The child?”
She shook her head and let all the bitterness she felt coat her words. “Lost. I miscarried.” Give him the details, she told herself. He was never going to forgive her anyway. “Twelve days after the funeral, and one day after marrying Marston in that powder blue front room where I could see where Charles lay, I lost him.”
Not since Charles died had she seen those blue eyes water. He turned away, his gaze dropping to the floor, shoulders slumped. She’d never, ever, in all the time she’d known him, seen his spine bend in what she registered as defeat.
His head shook from side to side. “I could have been there. I could have done so many things for you. If only … ”
“If only what, Alexander? You were twenty-one. You were shot at and spent the night in jail simply for trying to attend Charles’ funeral. We couldn’t have fought a family as powerful as the Wynters. We had nothing.”
He turned and instead of fire, she saw an unsettling despair. He gently grasped her wrist, brought her hand to his chest over his heart. The pain in his eyes was so intense, it would burn her soul if she kept looking. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. “We had everything.” His voice was nothing more than a harsh whisper. She didn’t see, as much as feel, his walls go up in an attempt to shut her out. He dropped her hand. “But you never saw it that way, did you?”
He turned and strode toward the door. Her mistake blazed like a billboard. She’d taken away his choice and his control over the situation—worse than death to a man like him.
“Oh, but I did,” she said. “More than.”
He paused, his face turned in profile. It was her last chance.
“I was responsible for everything bad that happened to us. I wrecked us,” she said to his back. “Wrecked me, for you. I was trying to fix things, all for you.”
That was something else he didn’t remember well. Running away to San Francisco with a sick Charles in tow? It had been her idea. It was all her fault, beginning with their recklessness t
hat got them discovered, to Charles’ disinheritance, to the deals she agreed to that spawned Alexander’s life-long pursuit to best the formidable Wynters. In the end, her poor choices had been responsible for it all, and telling him now was the worst thing she could have done. She’d hurt him then, and now she was hurting him all over again. Like amputees who have phantom pain, they would never have distance from what happened.
She collapsed, her knees burning against rough carpet, her hands slapping the ground so hard she felt a boom. She let out a wail, the one she’d been holding on to for this moment.
39
Her howl broke him. He spun and was on his knees, grabbing her, pulling her into him, so hard, he might have broken bones. Those sounds coming out of her … cries of pure agony.
His mouth was in her hair, his hand on the side of her head pressing her against his chest and still she wailed. He’d done this. He’d been unable to stop himself. Bitterness had risen up his gorge like a bad meal, until he was incapable of holding back those cutting words.
A child. They could have had a child together, but then … She had been alone, and he’d let it happen. He’d left her to those people.
His days of playing by the rules were over. The Wynters believed they’d seen how far he’d go for the woman going to pieces in his arms, but they hadn’t.
He scooped up her body, limp as a wilted rose. She didn’t fight him. He laid her on the bed and did the only thing he knew to do. He stripped her so they were skin to skin and made love to her until they were nothing but flesh molding over one another, their breath in each other’s mouths, their heartbeats pounding against one another.
He took his time to make love to her. Later there’d be time enough to crush the Wynter family out of existence, for that’s exactly what he was going to do. He was going to erase them.
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Invincible (Elite Doms of Washington Book 6) Page 18