Case closed.
Vengeance pending.
Fika’s jaw ticked when I pulled out my desk’s drawer, dropped the bills inside, and slammed it shut with an audible thud.
I believed in power over mercy. People possessed needs, and when you determined someone’s needs, you ruled him.
Fika’s need was money. His second cancer diagnosis arrived eighteen months ago. It sucked away the fat on his cheeks until he resembled something more like a ghoul than a man. Since his remission, he’d gained back some of his weight, along with medical debt that could fund a third-world coup d’état.
To be fair, I’d never had to pull the money card in the past. I’d done some less-than-legal things to become the C.E.O. and founder of a company Forbes valued at over a billion dollars last year, and Fika had done a stellar job of covering my tracks for me.
I’d stayed out of jail this long, a phenomenon in itself.
I asked him to do something. He did it. That was how transactions worked.
Until now.
“Did you swallow a bad batch of chemo?” I lifted a second stack of hundreds and tore at the edges of one bill because I could—and it left Fika on edge, a near miracle with the hippy bullshit he’d turned to after he’d beaten cancer the first time. “Have you forgotten the English dictionary? Transactions require an exchange, and for you to get this”—I rattled the stack of bills—“you have to give me what I asked for.”
“Look, man…” He eyed the money before shaking his head. “I get it. You’ve got a thing against the Winthrops, for good reason, but nothin’ good will come out of finding Gideon Winthrop. Trust me.”
I trusted no one, another reason Gideon needed to go. I didn’t mean die. Death was an easy route; long, drawn-out suffering pleased me more.
Movies like Taken and John Wick skewed the general public’s conceptions of revenge. It didn’t happen in a day. Like all things worth doing, revenge—true revenge, the type meant to annihilate its target—took time.
The Space Race, for instance, began in 1955. The Apollo 11 didn’t reach the moon until 1969. It took over fourteen years to land on the moon. Fourteen years. More than the average lifespan of a dog.
My revenge, on the other hand, had been in the making for a mere four years.
“I’m not looking for an ethics lecture, Fika.” His hands shook as I spoke, but I spared him no mercy. “You found Gideon.”
“I did.” He worried his bottom lip and swiped at the Jonas Brothers wig again until it sat slightly crooked on his head. “Sometimes people do bad things for good reasons.”
The argument of someone who’d taken bribes during his tenure as sheriff to pay for his cancer treatments.
How much evidence had he stolen? How many wealthy Eastridgers had he given a free pass? If Gideon had approached him, would he have brushed those crimes under a rug, too?
Unbuttoning my cuff plackets, I rolled up my sleeves on both sides until the tattoo on my left forearm peeked out.
penance
My bold, unapologetic truth.
Fika had misconstrued its meaning in the past, and I allowed him to do so again as his eyes dipped to the word then back to my face.
“I won’t bullshit you,” he began, his hands clasped together in the shape of a church steeple.
“Then don’t.”
“I found Gideon Winthrop.” Fika dropped a hand to his distressed jeans—a fucking fifty-something-year-old in distressed jeans—and toyed with the frayed strands at the knees. “He seems happy and thriving. He sends his daughter postcards through email often. He has new friends, new neighbors, and even a new Golden Retriever. They know of his past, yet they still befriended him. In return, he treats them well. I’ve never seen a man smile more. He’s discovered his own paradise, Nash.”
I wanted to raze it all to the ground.
Destroy his daughter.
Steal his money.
Break his friends.
Tear down his neighbors.
Kidnap the damned Golden Retriever.
If he owned it, I wanted to watch him suffer as I took it from him.
“That’s all good and dandy, but I didn’t pay you to give me the Hallmark summary of Gideon’s life.” I poured each of us a glass of Bowmore 1957 and slid one Fika’s way, knowing he craved it but couldn’t accept it thanks to the diet his doctor had him on. “I asked you to find him for me. Where. Is. He?”
He eyed the liquor, his hand twitching before he dug it into his Slim-Jim-thin thigh. “I can’t tell you that, kid.”
I’d turn thirty-three years old this year, and he still saw me as the twenty-five-year-old who had come to him sprouting wild accusations about the Winthrops.
Unbelievable.
“Why.”
A demand, not a question.
It slid past clenched teeth into stale air. I tapped the table, drawing his attention to a pack of cigarettes I’d left there for the sole purpose of keeping Fika off balance. I’d never smoked a day in my life, but they tempted me as I pictured the way they’d rile him up.
Seething didn’t begin to describe me. If I were a volcano, I’d be spewing lava, an ash cloud the size of the moon hovering above us as I burnt Fika to a crisp. I settled for pulling the ten-thousand dollars from my desk and tossing the money into my fireplace with the precision of someone who’d spent his teenage years throwing shit out of windows and running for it when husbands came home too early.
I had a hotel being built in Haling Cove, a contract to negotiate in Singapore, and four suppliers to fire by sunrise. Stopping by my house in Eastridge for a meeting with Fika sat low on my to-do list, and my time was too damned valuable to be jerked around by a corrupt ex-cop in a Jonas Brothers wig who had forgotten his place.
Fika leapt for the money, but the flames swallowed it, bright sparks shooting past the mantel at us. He whimpered as it burned, withering away to nothing but smoke and ashes.
Meaningless.
“I feel sad for you, kid.” When the last bill metamorphosed to dust, Fika turned to me and sat on the leather ottoman beside the fire, shaking his head like I was his son and my existence disappointed him. “Do you know what Fika means? It means to have a coffee, but it’s more than that. It’s a way of life. Stop. Have coffee. Enjoy your own company. Enjoy the company of others. You can’t appreciate what you have now if you’re fixated on what was taken from you in the past.”
I stood, pushing my chair with the backs of my thighs as I remembered the fourth sign I shouldn’t have trusted Fika. He answered to a moral compass skewed by his idiotic perspectives. He was, after all, the type of madman who played Christmas music year-round and, worse, sang out loud with the songs.
“Before you quote another CBD-laced fortune cookie, Hank Prescott isn’t the kind of man who can be forgotten.” I opened my office door and stared Fika down until he got the hint and left, sans the fifty-thousand dollars he would have received had he delivered Gideon Winthrop’s location as promised. “Learn your place.”
Slamming the door just as he exited so he felt the bite of the wood, I gathered documents into a briefcase for my trip to Haling Cove and considered the obvious. Emery knew where Gideon lived. Gideon and Virginia had separated soon after news of the scandal broke, but Gideon still sent messages to his daughter.
Stripping a man of his wealth, dignity, and happiness was an art form, and like all art forms, it required a great deal of patience and suffering. I had the patience, but I refused to suffer any more.
Emery Winthrop, on the other hand, made perfect collateral damage.
I could break her spirit in half and not feel a lick of guilt.
Sin number one.
She’d known about her dad’s extracurricular activities. I’d overheard her parents discussing it the night Reed almost went to jail.
Reed had run to the cottage, and Emery had hidden in her room, but I’d found myself against the tiger sculpture’s ass again, leaning behind Dionysus, listening in on Virgini
a, Gideon, and Able Small Dick Cartwright’s dad argue.
“If Emery finds out, I will cut you off, Virginia, and I will sue you for everything you own, Cartwright,” Gideon had warned, his voice steady and threat real.
“Please,” Virginia scoffed, unladylike without an audience, “she already knows. Why do you think I sent her to that shrink to set her straight?”
The ledger had only left my suit’s breast pocket once since I’d stolen it, and I felt the heat of it burn my chest. Emery Winthrop knew about her parents’ scam, and I… I’d made two mistakes tonight that I couldn’t take back.
Sin number two.
The day the F.B.I. and S.E.C. had raided Emery’s McMansion, she’d led an agent to my parents’ cottage, covering for her dad as she listed our names—Betty. Hank. Reed. Nash. They stood in front of the mailbox, staring at the door, but I’d heard enough.
I dipped into the maze and retrieved the ledger I’d hidden before some government smuck found it.
I had a plan to atone for my sins.
I had a plan to fix my parents, Eastridge, everything.
I had a plan.
Then, Dad died.
And I was just as guilty as the Winthrops.
Wealth.
I never realized it had a scent, but I’d been away from Eastridge for so long, I almost couldn’t recognize the familiar stench as it assaulted my nostrils. Prior to last week, I’d never been inside a Prescott Hotel before. I had no intention of stepping foot in another after I finished my internship.
It reeked of wealth I’d worked so hard to distance myself from.
So pretty. So fragile. So breakable.
It reminded me of a snow globe. A picture-perfect world trapped within delicate glass that would shatter if handled too roughly. Just like my world had shattered four years ago.
The features spoke of wealth. Marble lobby. High ceilings. Over-the-top chandeliers. A floating pool built one hundred feet into the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that I could picture my mother here had me looking over my shoulder as I dipped back into the ballroom from the restroom.
“Adagio for Strings” and the hushed sound of the country's top point-one-percenters living their best lives accosted my ears.
Most of the hotel remained in a partial construction stage, waiting for finishes, flooring, and paint. You wouldn’t know it if you stood inside the ballroom.
Over the past week, I’d helped furnish half of the suites on the sixteenth floor, the main part of the lobby, and the ballroom for a masquerade party my boss had dropped on us last minute.
We were designers, not event planners. But Chantilly viewed the masquerade as an opportunity to cement her name as America’s foremost designer. I saw a thinly veiled attempt at assuring the who’s who of North Carolina were on board with the fast-tracked creation of this hotel.
Worse, Reed had promised I wouldn’t be in the same room with Nash, yet I felt him here tonight with intimate, uncanny precision I had no business possessing. Dipping past a group of men discussing Chinese tariffs, my skin tingled from the sensation of being stared at.
I’d felt it all night, two eyes tracking each step I took. I needed to run. I also needed money for food, loans, and penance.
Pivoting abruptly, I gave the source no time to turn away as I tracked him down. Two brown orbs watched me from three tables over. Their owner lifted a glass to me. I struggled to place him beneath the distance and his distinct, emerald-colored masquerade mask, but I knew it wasn’t Nash.
The eyes were wrong.
The lashes too short.
The hair too orderly.
The goosebumps on my arms too absent.
Neither of us broke eye contact, even when my vision blurred and I spelled cryptoscopophilia in my head. The urge to secretly peer in windows of homes as one passes by. Except it was a mask my eyes itched to stare past.
The stranger unsettled me, like my brain knew something the rest of me didn’t. Reckless. Gutsy. Stupid. I wouldn’t argue against any of these descriptions of me as I planted my feet and tilted my chin up—daring him to approach me.
Reed always hated this side of me, but I could never fight it. I was made to go down swinging, which explained why I wouldn’t be the first to lose the stare-down, except an arm latched onto my hand and jerked me toward the wall.
Countless politicians canvassed the room with their Aubercy shoes and artificially whitened smiles, extracting votes from rich men who expected favors in exchange for money. Businessmen dressed in Dormeuil flipped from conversation to conversation, sealing investment deals and assuring business contacts of past opportunities.
Near the open bar, socialites gossiped about illicit affairs and unsuspecting victims wearing last-season gowns. Over a hundred people shared the room with me, yet Chantilly managed to isolate me in the corner. She harrowed me with problems I had no intention of solving.
My skin continued to prickle, and I fought the temptation to turn and see if the masked man still stared at me. Worse—I dared him to. I’d be the first to admit I’d grown more reckless in the past four years. (And I’d already been reckless to begin with.)
“Where the fuck is the caviar?” Chantilly waved her arms until the strap of her gown slid down her bony shoulders. Shifting with me as I tried to dodge her, she backed me into the wall. “Fuck me! We need the caviar.” Her wild hands gestured to the throngs of guests behind her. “Which one of us is fucked if someone complains that there’s no caviar? Me! I need the fucking caviar, Rhodes.”
She’d managed to use fuck as a noun, verb, and adjective. Her Vancouver accent sharpened with each shrieked syllable. She reminded me of Moaning Myrtle, and I couldn’t escape her on account of her being my boss.
I pictured myself as the storm outside, whipping around the room until dresses flowed with water and conversations halted. Until silence met my ears, and I found peace for the night. Until I wiped the ballroom of its occupants, except for myself and the food.
I spelled the word procellous on the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue and focused on my red-faced boss. Hunger pains pinched my sides. I fought them and lost, clenching onto Chantilly’s shoulders a little tighter than necessary. I turned her toward a waitress the modeling agency had sent to us.
Blonde hair rested in a severe bun on the top of her head, paired with dramatic black eye shadow and a suit dress she wore absent of a shirt or bra beneath. She held the tray out to guests, but she walked so slowly in her six-inch heels, she must have been new—to heels and to catering.
“Maybe one of the male models can take her place so she can rest her legs,” I suggested.
We both watched her skinny legs wobble.
They weren’t skinny in the way mine were. Hers spoke of intention, sculpted with lean muscles and a tan that looked natural but I knew from experience wasn’t. My legs resembled two sallow, vegetative twigs that told tales of poverty and malnourishment.
In the past four years, I’d lost weight off my already slender frame. My hip bones jutted out, taunting me with the food I craved but couldn’t afford. That was my mission tonight—binge eat free food. I had no doubt Chantilly would be an obstacle.
“We don’t pay for servers to take breaks.” Her head shook in furious waves. She lifted her hand to scrub at her face but stopped the instant her palms brushed her mascara-coated lashes. “No breaks,” she repeated. “That’s what the complimentary Red Bull and caffeine pills we provide are for.”
For a second, she abandoned her hatred of me and took off after the poor waitress, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but relief. Chantilly had done everything except take out an advertisement announcing her disdain for me.
My first day of employment had begun with a speech on nepotism as the eighth deadly sin and spiraled downward since. I didn’t dare mention that I’d never actually met or talked to Delilah, because knowing Delilah was infinitely better than knowing Reed or Nash. Chantilly’s head would probably explode if she learned I
knew the Prescott brothers.
I popped out my phone, rereading my messages from Ben. My lifeline. My single thread of sanity this past week.
Durga: Tell me not to quit. I need this job, but my boss is borderline abusive. It’s driving me insane.
Benkinersophobia: You—the woman who told me to guzzle a gallon of TheraFlu and suck it up when I thought I was dying from the fucking bird flu—want to quit? There’s a word for this. Irony? No… Oh, wait. Hypocrisy. That’s the word I’m looking for.
Durga: Ha. Ha. You’re so funny. Laugh it up. I’m miserable.
One text, and he’d cured me. I swore, he could bottle himself up, sell it, and become as rich as Nash.
Benkinersophobia: You aren’t miserable. You are the person who sees beauty in every situation. The one I turn to when I’m stressed and need someone to lift me up. Someone so strong, I marvel at your existence. You know what you’re not? You. Are. Not. A. Quitter. You are a warrior, but it’s okay not to feel like one all the time. Even warriors take breaks.
Durga: I almost don’t want to ever meet you. You’re too good to be true.
Benkinersophobia: I’m not. I’m a full-time dick. Just not to you.
Durga: No one else gets the Nice Ben treatment?
Benkinersophobia: My mom.
Durga: Ah. A mama’s boy. There’s the thread that pulls apart the hot man fantasy.
Durga: Thank you.
Benkinersophobia: If it’s any consolation, my night is shit. I’m spending it with uptight dicks whose favorite games include Whose Net Worth is Bigger? and How Punchable Can I Sound Without Actually Getting Punched?
Durga: Misery likes company. Have fun suffering.
Benkinersophobia: Ass.
I pocketed my phone, a smile on my face that Ben never failed to stamp there. With Chantilly gone, I pivoted in the other direction, narrowly avoiding this month’s Forbes 30 under 30 cover model.
Devious Lies: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Cruel Crown Book 1) Page 8