Liar Liar

by Donna Alam

  ‘If I am his Emile’s daughter, then I wouldn’t just deserve a share. I would be owed it.’

  Like a child thwarted, he huffs unhappily. ‘It was a slip of the tongue. Good catch.’ ‘You’re not his child. Remy made sure of that, though not before he’d fucked you first.’ Suddenly, his face looms closer, spittle hitting my face as he rants. ‘You’re just the child of his whore of an ex!’ He releases me, but not before pushing me back down against the stone bench.

  ‘This had got nothing to do with me. I never met Emile—I don’t even want his money.’ Money I know nothing about. ‘Please Ben. Let me go.’ Tears track down my cheeks, my head feeling like it’s been split in two. And I’m scared. So scared.

  ‘No, you don’t need the money because now you have Remy.’ His head tilts to the side, his eyes feral. ‘Or you did. And now you’ll have me.’ His fingers trace my cheek and I do everything in my power not to move, not to show how his how repulsive I find his touch. ‘One way or another.’

  ‘No, Ben. Not like this, please.’

  ‘It’s not ideal, of course. But it shouldn’t have come to this, you know. I saw you first. In the office on your first day. Remember I told you that?’

  ‘At the club.’ I try to nod and wince and try to swallow my fear. My mouth dry is so dry, parched. Whatever he used to knock me out has left me with a terrible taste in my mouth. ‘You said I looked like a fish out of water.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He seems please that I remember, his hand retracting from my jaw. ‘I didn’t even know who you were then, but I wanted you. It’s just a shame I was already off my head when I saw you.’ His eyes fall to my chest as he readjusts my jacket by the lapels. ‘I think I frightened you off a little.’

  ‘No, that’s not it—’

  His sharp gaze rises, his expression sardonic. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, Rose. After I behaved the way I did, there was no turning the clock back. You were never going to see me in a favourable light. I could tell you were already smitten with him. Before my error, I could’ve courted you. You might have fallen in love with me. But he hid you from the start. He acted unfairly. He always did, even when we were kids.’

  I bite my tongue from yelling that’s not true—that the brute in front of me is just a pale facsimile of the man I love. That he’s crazy if he thinks for one solitary minute he ever had a chance. ‘You weren’t interested in me. Not really.’ I almost choke on my words.

  ‘Oh, you’re wrong.’ I screw my eyes tight shut as his lips brush my head. ‘But I blew my chance thanks to a little too much cocaine. So, I didn’t bother trying afterwards. At least, not romantically.’ His voice turns cold and I stiffen as his hands feather my shoulder, brushing the sides of my breasts, the touch testing yet blatant.

  And sickening.

  ‘You told me about Amelie—why would you tell me the engagement was fake if you didn’t want me to fall in love with Remy?’

  Disappointment ripples across his face, a look quickly replaced by distaste as he drops to the chair, his legs wide and relaxed, his arms dropped negligently to his thighs.

  ‘You really aren’t very bright, are you? Staying with him after he lied to you, still defending him after the proof I showed this afternoon? The way he’s lied to you again and again and yet you still would go back to him?’

  ‘I thought you were sincere when you didn’t hit on me. When you didn’t hang him out to dry.’ I try to remember what he showed me in the café; the photographs, documents, but my brain feels like an Etch A Sketch that’s been shaken to the max.

  ‘I believe you Americans call it playing the long game. Though I did think about fucking you, about getting you so drunk that afternoon that you couldn’t say no. But driving you farther way wouldn’t have helped my cause. And you might’ve told Remy, and excuse me for saying so, but one fuck wasn’t worth spoiling my plans. You’re not worth dying over.’

  ‘Then why am I here, Ben?’ I ask plaintively. My bottom lip begins to wobble. This is like something you see on TV, not something that happens to me.

  ‘Because I thought you’d be smarter. But you’re not. You’re just a dumb bitch sucked in by a rich man. And also because of bad luck.’ He suddenly stands. ‘The announcement of your engagement on top of his mother pledging her shares of Loup Industries to charity. My plans had to be accelerated. Your shares would become his,’ he snaps, pointing both hands left, then right. ‘His mother’s shares going to an outside party. Where did that leave me?’ he asks manically, pointing at himself this time. ‘I’ll tell you where. Farther away from controlling the company than ever.’ The echo of his low-pitched anger reverberates around the dank space.

  ‘I don’t understand. Josephine’s shares were never going to be yours. She would’ve left them to Remy if she left them to anyone.’

  ‘Josephine’s shares are not the issue. The issue is Remy getting his hands on your stake through marriage, making him more powerful. The issue is, that in killing him, his shares would then go to you.’

  ‘But we’re not even married yet.’

  ‘Ah, not so nice now Rose, huh? But I know what you’re thinking. Why not kill him before you’re married? Why not do so before you’d even met him, because then you’d just be a small stakeholder and his shares would be mine. Well, let me tell you, I. Have. Fucking. Tried!’

  ‘The motorbike and the yacht.’ Blood cools in my veins; he’s not just crazy. He’s a murderer.

  ‘And a couple of other times besides.’ He waves away the admission like batting off flies before linking his fingers behind his head as he stares at the ceiling as though the answer to all his problems are painted there. ‘Had that salaud done his job back in March, Remy would be dead by the side of the road and I wouldn’t have had to trash your bedroom to make it look like you packed with the hounds of hell on your heels.’

  ‘How can my share of the company be worth all this? Keeping me here? Making yourself a criminal—a murderer?’

  ‘It’s all a matter of perspective. Alone, your shares are worth nothing. But pair them with Remy and he becomes unstoppable. And unfortunately, ma petite, the point has come where I can’t try to kill him anymore. For a little while, at least. But I can stop him controlling your stake. You’re not married and therefore your shares aren’t his. You’ll go missing, driven away by grief of discovering his lies.’

  ‘He won’t believe that—he won’t stop looking for me.’

  ‘Good. If he’s otherwise engaged, that leaves more for me. You’ll stay missing, and probably presumed dead after five years have passed, and your shares, according to the Emile’s will, shall be divided between the Remy and myself. Except, he’ll already be dead by then.’

  ‘When his estate will go to Josephine.’

  ‘You underestimate the strength of our bond. I’m almost certain Remy will leave the company to me. there is such hubris and pride tied to the Wolf brand. He won’t want it to go to charity.’

  ‘No, it will all go to his mother,’ I hedge. ‘Not you. And then when Josephine passes, it’ll all go to charity.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. A widowed, childless woman, stricken with grief. She’ll need someone to lean on. Someone like me. And in time, she too will die, you’re right. Maybe sooner rather than later. Maybe not.’ He affects a shrug. ‘But she her charity wishes might not come into effect by that time, by my design or from sheer gratitude. Who is to know?’

  ‘You are crazy. This is so wild and fantastical; ifs and buts and maybes. And for what? Money? Haven’t you got enough—more than you could spend in a lifetime?’

  ‘It’s not about money, you stupid bitch. It’s about power! It’s about being promised something, about being groomed to run the largest company in France, only to find it ripped from your grasp at the very end.’

  ‘That’s it? Jealously? You drug and bring me here. Tell me I’m going to end my days here, and for what? Because you’re not happy your cousin got the better toys?’ I find I’m on my feet, angr
y that I’m caught up in this web of envious macho bullshit.

  ‘Oh, Rose. Don’t worry,’ he replies with a gleam. ‘You’re the toy of Remy’s I’m looking forward to playing with the most. In fact, you’re the toy I intend to break first.’

  50

  Remy

  ‘No, Remy. Stop for a minute. Just think.’

  ‘I am thinking,’ I growl as I stalk across the home office towards him. ‘I’m thinking I should tear off your balls and shove them down your fucking throat. You should’ve had her covered by full time security.’

  ‘Remote, you said. Until you’d squared it off with her. So that’s what she’s had. A fucking tail.’

  ‘Then why wasn’t there anyone tailing her today?’ My hands ball in his shirt as I push him up against the door.

  ‘We hacked into her planner.’ With his words, Rhett twists, coming out from under my grip. We’re too evenly matched for there to be any kind of victor, not that it matters when all I can see is red.

  ‘Explain.’ I rake a hand through my hair, my thoughts in disarray. How the fuck did she get into the safe? What prompted her to look? Why the hell has it come to this?

  ‘It was supposed to be a way we’d know where she was during the week. When she was tucked up safe in the office, and when she was out and about and needed to be watched.’

  ‘Protected,’ I correct. ‘She wasn’t under suspicion.’

  Rhett flicks a sardonic look at the desk, contradicting me. It’s covered in documents and photographs; items she wasn’t supposed to see yet.

  ‘Clearly, that hasn’t worked,’ I say, bulldozing on.’ Because she’s fucking missing, and she shouldn’t be!’ I roar, even though, beyond the red, angry haze, I know this is as much my fault as it is his. I wasn’t ready to talk to her about her security, conscious of her life having already changed in so many ways since we met. I’ve found it hard enough to admit to myself that I might be a target. I didn’t want to her know, let alone have to admit the possibility that the danger might extend to her.

  Bottom line, I was hiding things from her again.

  Ducking the hard conversations.

  And now she’s gone. The desk might be covered with why. The question now is who?

  ‘Jared’s going through the CCTV footage from here,’ Rhett shoots back. ‘Pierre and Jon are at Wolf tower going through the stuff from there. Her phone is off but we’re onto the network to see where and when it was last used.’

  I hear but I can’t comprehend, my mind awash with a million thoughts as I begin to sift through the intel I’d paid to be collected over the preceding months. Including the latest instalment I’d refused to acknowledge.

  Idiot.

  I trace my finger over a photograph. Place Massena in Nice, a well-known landmark and familiar to me, stands as a backdrop to a couple holding hands. The man I know, the woman I do not, though I can easily guess her part. So much time and energy has been spent wondering how Emile might’ve met Rose or her mother in the US, when in fact it had happened in France.

  There are other snapshots of proof. Employment contracts. Wage slips. Details of her mother’s immigration to the US.

  She was here, long before Rose was born, I think, flipping over a business card that, it seems, belongs to Carson Hayes. A fist with vice-like grip twists my innards.

  ‘She’s with him. With Carson Hayes.’ My low growl reverberates through my insides. ‘I saw the way he looked at her. I know the way he hates me. He has to be behind it.’

  I turn to find Rhett’s hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Listen there are a dozen things that might’ve happened. Don’t go off half-cocked at a rustle in the wind.

  Without answering, I rip his hand away as I make a path for the front door.

  I feel like someone has punched a hand into my chest and pulled out my heart while I wasn’t looking, the tattered remains discarded to rot on the ground. And I know I’ve brought this on myself. I know I should’ve told her about her inheritance, about the secrets I’ve kept—all of it. And now I look like a monster who proposed for power, not for love. And worse than that, as the final pieces of the puzzle slot into place, I realise the link between my life and hers.

  The reasons Emile left her a share of the company.

  Money touched with blood and innocence.

  If she never wants to take possession of it, I will forever understand.

  I stride out into the hall without giving Rhett or the mess I leave behind another thought, snatching up the car keys from the table. My shoes crunch against the gravel, the car alarm chiming as I approach it. I climb into the driver’s seat, my head whipping around as the passenger side slams.

  ‘You’re a hot-headed arsehole,’ Rhett asserts, yanking on his seatbelt. ‘But you’re not going alone.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s wise. The way I feel right now, I might kill him.’

  ‘That’s precisely the reason I am,’ he mutters. ‘Put your fucking belt on.’

  The tyres spray gravel as I swing around the turning circle and head for the gate.

  ‘All right, Lewis Fucking Hamilton! I’d like to get there in one piece,’ Rhett complains, invoking the Formula 1 racing driver’s name as he hangs onto the interior door handle. ‘I’d also like to know why we’re using my car.’

  ‘Because yours isn’t in the garage.’ The gates are already swinging open as I approach them.

  ‘Watch the fucking paintwork,’ he yells as I scrape through.

  But the Range Rover’s paintwork is not my concern as I swing out onto the road, my destination Fontvieille on the coast.

  I only have thoughts for Rose

  ROSE

  ‘Where are we, Ben?’

  ‘Nowhere anyone would think to look for you,’ he says, closing and locking the door behind him. In his hand, he has a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses—plastic glasses—and a loaf of bread. A boule, not a baguette.

  I’m still sitting on the stone bench where he left me, though I have investigated the place in the time he’s been gone . . . doing whatever he was doing.

  ‘I don’t mean where we are exactly. Just, what is this place?’ This windowless room that smells like earth and seems like the kind of place you’d put someone you want to forget.

  ‘It’s a cellar in a house I bought recently.’

  ‘I’m assuming Remy doesn’t know about it.’ Even as I ask, my heart constricts, and I send out a silent prayer that he does.

  ‘You assume correct. And like so many properties out here, it’s owned by a shell company operating out of the Cayman Islands. Completely untraceable. Here.’ He passes the bread to me, pulling out a lump of wax paper wrapped cheese from the pocket of his jacket and handing that over, too. I tamp back the bitter disappointment as I place them down on the bench next to me, quickly sitting on my hands again. My knuckles and fingernails are stained earth-brown from feeling my way around the gaps in the door, then along the walls and floors where they meet, frantically looking for something that night help my predicament.

  I become aware of my engagement ring digging into my thigh, its presence suddenly the comfort I need as I swallow over my hammering heart, not sure if it’s scarier being here alone or with Ben

  Ben, who is completely nuts, it would seem.

  ‘I’ll bring better food tomorrow. And blankets. You’ll forgive my hasty preparations,’ he says, using a small corkscrew attached to his keys to open the bottle of wine.

  ‘Is that one of those Swiss Army knives?’ He nods and I watch as he scores the seal before beginning to push the screw into the cork, as I aim to look either thirsty or thoughtful and not at all interested in where he puts his keys when he’s done.

  ‘You’ll come to see it’s not so bad being with me.’ Ben angles his head, and I become aware of how close I am to him right now. I immediately lean the opposite way.

  ‘Yeah, sure. A dank basement is totally the kind of place a girl wants to live.’

  ‘Better th
an dying in it,’ he murmurs, dragging the toe of his shoe along the earth packed floor. All the better for burying you in, the movement seems to say.

  ‘How am I going to use the bathroom?’ This isn’t a question. More a demand.

  ‘When I’m sure you can behave, I’ll take you. A couple of times a day, I should imagine.’ And he’ll be visiting me twice a day for what? I push away the thought. I’m not rotting away in this place. ‘I’ll bring you a bucket tomorrow,’ he adds. ‘For when I’m not here.’

  I bite back my answer to that. Now is not the time nor the place, no matter how scared I am. No matter how a scream seems to be clawing its way up my throat.

  I can’t stay here.

  I can’t wait to be rescued.

  What if Remy takes one look at the space where my suitcase was and decides I’m not worth chasing?

  No. That won’t happen, I tell myself. You don’t declare your love for someone and then let them walk away. He’ll want to hear me say the words myself. Not that I’m going to say anything like that. I’m going to listen to what he has to say. Listen to his reasons, his explanation. Listen to his love.

  But what happens if he never finds me?

  What happens if he never looks?

  My chest begins to heave, my sight going dim, everything narrowing in focus.

  The dirt floor. The door. The walls as they close in.

  Oh, God. Is this a panic attack? Drugs? Am I dying?

  ‘Rose?’

  At the sound of my name, my head lifts to Ben who watches me with a kind of peeled eyeball kind of intensity that’s chilling.

  ‘Breathe,’ he says, still watching me. ‘Everything will be okay. Unless you don’t co-operate and then it’ll be like hell.’

  He turns his back on me and splashes a little wine into the plastic glasses, handing one to me. I knock it back immediately without giving thought to what my dirty fingernails say. I don’t consider how the liquid could’ve been doctored, or the taste, or bouquet. I just throw it back, desperate for something to take away this sick feeling of dread.