by Donna Alam
Sinister. Sinister.
‘Please let me go, Ben.’ My voice is small, my fear, by contrast, immense.
‘I’ve already explained why I can’t. After the lengths I’ve gone to, things must be so.’
‘Remy will know I haven’t gone anywhere. He-he’ll get someone to check the movement on my passport.’
‘Boats come and go from the port all of the time. You could’ve crossed over the border into France and gotten lost. There are all kinds of places you might go. All kinds of things that might happen to you, Rose.’ The menace in his softly delivered words rings loud and clear.
‘He won’t stop looking for me—he loves me.’
‘Except you left him after you discovered how he’d lied to you.’
‘I don’t care about any of that—you can have the shares. Everything! I just want to go.’
‘I can’t let you go. It’s better for you that you stop asking.’
‘Please.’ Tears trip and spill down my cheeks, my fear an all-encompassing thing. It’s not a walk where you can’t see the end of a dark alley, or a swim in the ocean where you lose sight of land. This isn’t the fear of the unknown. There’s no need to hypothesise what lies at the end of this for me.
Because I know.
51
Remy
Was she forced?
Did she leave on her own?
She left the gala without a word, though not really. She only went to gather her thoughts and came back at me, all guns blazing.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Rhett’s voice brings me back to the car.
‘Oui. CCTV. Work and home.’ Twisting the wheel hard right, I cut across the early evening traffic.
‘Much fucking good you’ll be to her dead. What about her friends? Could she be with them?’
‘She wouldn’t have taken a suitcase for a coffee,’ I grate out.
‘They might know where she is, though. Where she’s likely to be.’ He begins to type something out on his phone.
Shouldn’t I know better than them? Because the closer I get, the less certain I feel. The deeper my dread grows. The harder I grip the steering wheel. The more likely I am to grind my molars to dust.
Please, Rose. Tell me where you are. Tell me you’re okay.
‘Try her phone again.’ My gaze cuts to Rhett, moving back to the road instantly. Not for safety’s sakes but because of what I see there.
Pity.
‘I just did. It’s still off. Watch the . . .’ His arm shoots out, finger pointed, as I swerve around the motorcyclist. ‘Fucking hell. I’ll be grey before we get there.’
‘What have you got in the trunk?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Guns. Weapons. Firearms.’
‘Remy, man.’ He blows out a breath, rubbing a hand across the top of his head.
‘I want to know where I stand, Everett.’
‘On fucking trial, by the sounds of things.’
‘I’m not losing my head. Just preparing.’
His phone chimes with a text. ‘Right, according to one Castain, Charles, she left work around three this afternoon to go to Monaco One. She didn’t go back to the office. Apparently, he’s still waiting for a bubble tea.’
‘Did she have a meeting?’
‘No, she was picking a jacket up from Max Mara. What time did you last speak to her?’
‘At lunch time, a little after noon.’
I need to be inside you. Her response had been something between a breath and a groan as I’d trailed my hand up her thigh, bringing with it the hem of her skirt.
‘Ah, but not in the office.’ Her laugh was pure tease as she’d pressed herself against me. My whole body had ached and trembled, the need to be deep inside her always so powerful.
‘And she was okay then?’
I nod once, rather stiffly. ‘She was fine.’ As fine as a charcoal illustration drawn by an old master’s hand.
‘Less said about that, the better,’ he mutters as we pull into the private complex near Larvotto Beach, slowing for the boom gate.
‘You’ll need the security code, or the plastic policeman will pop out of his box to quiz you with his clipboard.’ He means the security guard, of course.
The window buzzes as it lowers. I lean out and enter the code.
‘Have you got a place in here?’ he splutters as the gate begins to rise
‘I’ve got places everywhere.’
I park in one of the visitor spots and climb out, ignoring, for now, the options a gun might bring to my hand. I know this complex well having lived here a decade ago. I already know he lives here, and my guess is he’ll be at home right now. He doesn’t strike me as the kind to be interested in happy hour drinks straight from the office. More like sundowners on the deck, I decide, as I approach the back of his townhouse, Rhett’s footsteps sounding from behind.
I open the low gate to his garden and stride up the path.
‘You know this isn’t the front of the house, right?’
Without answering, I slide open the glass patio door.
‘Fucking great,’ Rhett complains. ‘We’re adding breaking and entering to the list of your felonies today.’
‘Door was open. No breaking required. And no felonies to report today.’ Yet.
I stride deeper into the house, not giving a fuck that I’ve invaded someone’s home as need consumes me. A need to find him. A need to find her. A need to know what is going on.
Then he’s in front of me. Board shorts and a T-shirt, a towel in his hands.
‘What the fuck are you doing here? In my house?’ It’s almost as though the realisation that I am standing in his house seems to hit him as he speaks. ‘Get the fuck out!’
‘Sit down.’ The five points of my fingers at his chest, I push him into the chair that’s conveniently behind him. Convenient for him, at least.
‘Fuck you. Get the fuck out of my house.’ He’s immediately on his feet, squaring up to me.
‘I said sit down.’ I push him again, and Rhett chuckles from behind me. I see it the moment he realises I’m not alone.
‘Where is she?’ My voice sounds calm—too calm for these riotous feelings curling inside me. Curling. Twisting. Needing reassurance that she’s okay. Heading towards violence that she might not be.
‘Where’s who?’
‘Rose. I want to know where Rose is.’
‘She had the good sense to bail, did she?’ he crows. ‘Well, good for fucking her is all I have to say.’
‘I’ll give you one more chance to tell me where she is.’
‘Remy.’ Rhett’s tone is a warning, my fists already balled.
‘I don’t know where she is, and I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.’
‘Listen, pal.’ Rhett is suddenly between us. ‘We have other places we need to be. But the fact of the matter is, we just want to make sure Rose isn’t in danger.’ His tone turns conciliatory, his manner, too. ‘She’s gone missing and there was a lot of mess at the house. We think she might’ve been abducted.’
My veins flood with ice. I’m worried, yes. But I hadn’t considered the possibility, not truly, taking the blame squarely on my own shoulders. I fucked up, so she left. But now I see the danger. Now I see he might be right.
And if he is, Carson Hayes isn’t the man I’m looking for.
‘Well, I’m sorry for that,’ Carson answers. ‘She seems like a good person. But I’ve been in Turin all day; took a flight out early this morning. Knock yourself out, check the flight manifest if you don’t believe me. She wasn’t with me. And kidnap seems more your skillset.’
For a moment, I think he’s talking to Rhett—there’s no mistaking he’s military—as though he’s inclined to undertake such acts in a professional capacity.
A coldness settles around my shoulders when I realise he’s addressing me.
‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’
‘Acquiring companies by less than fair means. And by acquiring, I mean s
tealing. Blackmail. Threats. I can see kidnapping being added to the list real easy.’
‘What about rape?’ I say stepping into him, close enough to see his gaze flare. ‘What about sexual assault. Abuse of power. Are those on the great Carson Hayes’ list?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Not what, who. Just ask your grandfather.’
And with that, I plant my fist squarely in his gut.
‘Got it.’ Outside, Rhett ends the very brief call he’s just received, staring at the phone in his hand a beat longer than is normal.
‘What you said in there? You think—’ I swallow and start again. ‘You think she hasn’t left? Left me, I mean? You think she might’ve been taken? Kidnapped?’
‘Remy, mate, we need to look at this from all angles. But, I dunno, it just seems too convenient that she’s seen all the stuff from the safe, then pissed off. I reckon she’d be more likely to wait and speak to you about it. She might then run you over in her car, but at least you’d know.’
‘So who, Rhett? Where?’ Blood burns in my veins. ‘I need answers, and I pay you to get them.’
‘And we’re getting there,’ he asserts, not accepting the barb. ‘But, do you wanna tell me what that was all about?’ He lifts his thumb in the direction of the Hayes’ town house.
‘You know how I got my hands on Hayes Construction.’ I press my palms to my thighs and bend at the waist as I try to control my breathing. My heart hammers in my chest, my head feeling like it might burst at any minute.
‘Blackmail,’ Rhett’s asserts. He knows. He was party to it. ‘But that in there? That was personal. I saw the way you looked at him. I heard the way you wanted it to be him.’
I huff out a desultory laugh. ‘What is it you said? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’
‘Stop speaking in fucking riddles.’
‘The paperwork I didn’t want to look at. I was keeping it until I told Rose about the shares. About everything. What a fuck up that would’ve been.’
‘Not your finest plan,’ he agrees. ‘But I say again, want to explain?’
‘It seems as though, as a young girl, Rose’s mother, Noorah, worked for the Hayes family as an au pair.’
‘’Oh, fuck.’ He forces his hands through his hair, obviously intuiting where this is going.
‘Presumably, her Lebanese heritage would’ve meant she spoke fluent French. She would’ve been on a Lebanese passport, too.’ Not living in the US. Not travelling on a US passport.
‘It seems she met my father in Nice, at a time he was an up and coming hotelier.’ And that is as much as the investigator seemed to discover about their relationship. ‘She lived in France for two years before going home before she turned twenty.’
‘And there the story would end, if it not for the small issue of intimidation,’ Rhett says.
‘But I wasn’t the first Durrand to have that bastard Hayes over a barrel. Emile got there first.’ But as for my involvement, my intimidation of Carson Hayes senior and my plans to crush his company, several months ago, while in the midst of an audit, a certain recording was found. Carson Hayes labouring over the body of an unconscious woman.
‘The girl in the video,’ Rhett asserts. ‘She was Rose’s mum.’
‘Rose’s mother and my father’s girlfriend. And the year she left France is the year Wolf Industries was born.’
Created from the proceeds of my father’s blackmail.
Born and built on her suffering.
Suffering I used once again to blackmail Hayes.
‘Fuck.’
‘That about sums it up.’
He doesn’t have time to absorb the information as his phone buzzes with a text. His eyes flick over the information contained.
‘What is it?’ I demand. ‘Is it Rose?’
He nods tersely. ‘CCTV at the house shows her in the driveaway just after four this afternoon.’ His head rises, his eyes hard. ‘Ben was driving.’
‘Ben?’
‘She was in the passenger seat. He parked at the side of the house, in the courtyard.’
‘Where the CCTV coverage is poor.’ He nods again. The orange trees growing near to the house have partially obscured the view of the camera there, including leading in and out of the house. ‘I should’ve gotten the tree surgeon out earlier. I’m sorry, Remy.’
I wave away his apology as unnecessary at this point. ‘What else?’
‘Footage shows him leaving via the driveway ten minutes later. Just him, though. There was no sign of Rose. He even stopped to talk to the gardener on the way out. The bloke says there was no one else in the car. Just him.’
‘Or that’s what he wants us to think.’
‘Yep. Then, at four thirty, a taxi pulls up. Same place. Drives out again, soon after. The windows were tinted to it’s hard to say if there was anyone else in it but the driver. We ran the plates. They were fake.’
‘Ben? I can see him helping her to leave.’ And yet I don’t really believe she has. ‘But this level of fucked up? It’s beyond him.’
‘You’re blind to Benny-boy’s antics. You think because you knew the knobbly kneed kid, you know the man. You don’t know half of what he is.’
‘And you do?’
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him long enough. You might say he’s been a side project. Kind of a hobby.’ His expression twists, though he knows he has my attention. ‘You wouldn’t have listened if I’d told you I found out that he’d he recently bought a crowbar on his Amex card.’
‘If you knew, why was Rose not receiving around the clock security?’ The ice in my voice matches the drop of my temperature, my blood running instantly cold.
‘Because he had a hard-on for you, not her. If I’d thought for one minute—’
I wave away what’s coming next. Recriminations. Blame. None of this is of interest.
‘What next?’
‘Apart from the crowbar,’ he muses, scratching the stubble on his cheek. ‘Fuck!’ His spine straightens, the soldier in him suddenly very obvious. ‘As far as suspicious shit goes, how about this? Last month, his shell company completed a sale on a tumbledown shack a few kilometres outside of Menton.’
I release a volley of French curses that just aren’t enough. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!’
‘Watch the rims,’ he complains as I lash out with my feet.
‘Fuck the rims!’
‘For all your language capabilities, there’s nothing quite like fuck. Is there?’
‘There will be nothing quite like Everett soon.’
‘You can try, but you’re too angry to be much more than a happy place for my fist. Cool head, boss man, if you don’t want things to go tits up. Get in the car.’
I throw him the keys.
Tits up is not an option.
ROSE
‘Can I have more?’ I hold out my plastic glass. Please, sir. This little waif would like a drop more wine. At least, I hope that’s what my expression says as I channel a little Oliver Twist.
‘Of course.’ He twists from the waist, bending to grasp the neck of the bottle from where he’s placed it on the floor. As he does so, I peer behind him, hoping to see where his keys are.
Really, Rose? You’re going to fight your way out of the creepy cellar with the use of a tiny bottle opener? Or maybe the can opener? The nail file?
But I have to do something because I can’t stay here to pee in a bucket.
‘Thank you.’ I smile as he tops up my glass.
‘Not too much, ma chérie. Not after the drugs.’
Yes, you look after me. So you can kill me at your leisure.
‘I’m starving. May I have a little of the cheese?’
He puts the bottle down on the floor between his feet, twisting at the waist to reach for the meagre provisions. Bread tears and wax paper rustles as I put my glass down on the bench. As he turns back, passing over my dinner, I fumble and drop the bread.
‘Butter fingers!’ I bend quickly forw
ard, the bread bouncing away like scree down a hill. But I’m not interested in the bread.
Not as my heart pounds against my ribs. Not as the scream jammed in my throat turns to a growl as I clasp the neck of the bottle, everything slowing and playing out frame by frame.
His expression morphs.
His hands reach.
The slow spin of the bottle in the air.
Red wine spilling from the neck like blood.
His head rearing back as I spin.
His eyes closing as I smash it against his temple.
From slow to fast, the sounds played out in stereo. His low cursing, my nails scraping the stone bench. My feet slipping on the dirt. The jangle of the keys as I try to jam them in the lock.
‘Fucking bitch.’
I cry out as he yanks me back by the hair. I land on my twisted elbow with a sob. The pain is jarring, my fear amplified, making me feel physically sick as he throws his keys in the corner and makes his advance.
‘I warned you. I said there could be no escape.’
‘I’d rather be dead than stuck here with you.’
But they’re just words. Words I don’t mean. But I don’t get the chance to retract them as he towers above me quite suddenly.
‘That can be arranged.’ His eyes burn with a mixture of hatred and hunger. ‘But not before I take what’s owed.’
Then he’s on his knees in the dirt, his fingers biting into my legs, pressing them down. Pushing them open with his, one knee pressed against on my thigh bone. He catches my pummelling fists, his body crushing mine to the ground, stones piercing my back as we grapple, then my wrists are in one of his hands.
‘I like a girl with a little fight.’ His breath smells of wine and desperation, but I don’t answer. I can’t find a suitable retort, not as I continue to fight.
It’s fight or get fucked.
Fight or be killed.
Body bucking, my shoe comes off as I try to pound him with my heels, choking out a strangled sob as his hand slips under my shirt to squeeze.
‘But not this much,’ he grates out, that same hand moving to my neck. He grabs me, his grip tightening and making it hard for me to breath. The more I try to inhale, the tighter his grip gets. Panic and pain fill my chest and my head. I feel like I’m about to burst. There literally isn’t space for anything else inside me but this and fear as I clawing at his hand, claw at my neck.