by Skye Warren
A pawn in my own family.
The tinted window reflects my face back to me—the dark lips and upswept hair, rubies shining around my neck. “Whoever did this has been tormenting me for years, before I even knew he existed. I need to know, Gabriel.”
It’s with my chin held high, my hand wrapped around Gabriel’s arm, that I enter my house for the last time. There’s no hostess to greet us, but the house is packed. People spill out from every room. Most of the furniture is still gone, but large rugs and credenzas make the space feel intentional. Men in tuxedos hold silver platters piled with caviar on little spoons.
We continue to the ballroom, where the walls have been redone in a deep gold damask.
A string quartet plays near the parquet floor, a few couples dancing. Behind them is the largest fireplace in the house, almost as tall as a person, flames dancing along with the people. My mother had loved that it warded away the chill in the huge room.
I recognize many faces. Most have been to the house before. Do they know why they’re here tonight? Judging by the way everyone glances at me and whispers, they probably do know. And many of them have seen the naked pictures.
My cheeks flush.
“They can’t touch you,” Gabriel says.
“It feels like they can,” I whisper. “Like they’re looking right through my clothes.”
His gaze darkens. “Those pictures aren’t you. They’re a bloody knife. Fingerprints on a window. Evidence of a crime. And anyone who delights in that can go fuck themselves.”
I can’t help a small, grateful laugh. “I like fighting at your side.”
“Good, because I play to win.”
My breath catches. We both know this is the last day, the final night bought and paid for at auction. What will happen after this? It’s as much a question as who the culprit is.
From across the room I see Nina Thomas holding court from a chair, Charlotte hovering at her side with a glass of water. Nina doesn’t look pleased to see me, her gaze decidedly cold.
Does she think I’m in danger? Or does she not want me to find out the truth?
I don’t want to believe that she could have done anything to harm my mother. She loved her, in more ways than just a friend. But as Gabriel pointed out, love could make men do terrible things. Women, too. She might have been jealous that my mother got married.
Uncle Landon is here, looking more determined than when I met him at his office. He exchanges a look with me only briefly before turning back toward a man at the center.
His true rival. Not my father like I’d thought.
Jonathan Scott has the same dark eyes as his son, hair shot through with gray. While Damon has an air of good humor, even when he’s doing something dark like auctioning a virgin, his father looks hardened by life. Was he that way when my mother fell in love with him? Or did he become that way after her death?
He speaks to a small group of men, their tones hushed, gazes suspicious. And oh God, Justin is with him. Is that who he’s talking to about fundraising in Tanglewood? He glances over at me and Gabriel but doesn’t break from his conversation.
“My father isn’t here,” I say, relieved.
I haven’t gone to visit him since I returned to Gabriel’s house. Maybe I could have used the remainder of the thirty days as an excuse, but the truth was that I didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want to hear him say any more criticisms of my mother, didn’t want to face him with suspicion in my eyes. I don’t think he can be the man who took naked pictures of me—but the possibility alone makes my heart careen in my chest, wild and unhinged.
Gabriel snags a glass of champagne from a passing tray. “The night isn’t over yet. Have a drink. It will help your nerves.”
“What nerves?” I ask with an uneven laugh.
It’s a joke because I must look like the picture of anxiety. Not only to find out who scared my mother, who maybe murdered her, but also to face society for the first time since my auction. Most of the men who attended are here tonight. And everyone else surely knows why I’m with Gabriel Miller tonight.
Of course he looks stunning, the picture of masculine elegance and power. Not a hint of worry surrounds him. His tux conforms to his muscled body, emphasizing the breadth of his chest, the taper at his hips. At least a few of the looks coming our way are appreciative of him.
I take a fortifying sip, the bubbling liquid cool down my throat.
Damon Scott appears at Gabriel’s side with a genial smile. “Quite a turnout.”
“Your father always had a flair for the dramatic,” Gabriel responds drily.
“I come by it honest,” Damon says, flashing me a wink. “Avery. You’re looking absolutely beautiful. Even more than usual, if you don’t mind me saying so. What are you doing with this ugly motherfucker?”
The standoff at the Den sits between the three of us, pulsing with tension. “I told him I was coming tonight no matter what, and he came to protect me.”
Damon blinks. “That doesn’t sound like the Gabriel I know.”
“Maybe you don’t know him that well.”
A startled laugh. “Well, well,” Damon says. “Tonight should be very interesting.”
“I thought you’d already know the outcome.”
He gives me a carefree grin that belies his words. “Not a clue. Didn’t Gabriel tell you? I haven’t spoken to my father in thirty years. I’m here as a spectator.”
I can only stare after him, because there’s no way he’s older than forty. Not even close. The last time he spoke to his father, he was only a small child. But he came to this ball, where he might speak to him. Where he might confront him. Oh no, he’s more than a spectator. He’s a participant, caught in the same web as me. I just don’t know how.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Gabriel told me the upside to his presence was that people tend to tell the truth. They also tend to be kind, smiling and complimenting my dress despite the glint in their eyes. They don’t dare make a cutting remark in front of him, but they whisper as soon as we move on.
My insides feel wobbly, but I force myself to smile. This was my home, my mother’s home. She wore grace and confidence until her final moments. That’s what I’ll do too.
I won’t give them the satisfaction of breaking in front of them.
Still it’s a relief when Ivan and Candy cross the room to meet us. Ivan looks stern and forbidding in a gray suit. Candy looks like a princess in a pale pink dress that wraps around her breasts and falls in flowing silk. Around her neck is a necklace with a pendant shaped like a key and studded with diamonds. I have some idea of what that key represents in their relationship, and I blush.
Candy smiles, knowing and serene. “Hello, Avery.”
“Candy.” I put my hands on my cheeks in a vain attempt to cool them. “You look lovely, as always.”
She turns to Gabriel, studying him with a critical eye. “The past thirty days have been good to you.”
“Beyond measure,” he replies in a cordial manner. “Ivan. I’m surprised to see you both here.”
The gray-eyed man nods. “It’s a little past her bedtime, but I’m occasionally generous.”
“Ivan, did you just make a joke?” Candy grins. “I think I’m rubbing off on him. Well, more than I usually do. Which I have to admit is quite often.”
I swear my cheeks are about to catch fire. How does Gabriel look so calm, only mildly amused by her innuendo? The couple exudes sexuality. I think I get ten degrees hotter just being near them.
Candy giggles at my expression.
My nose scrunches. “You enjoy embarrassing me, don’t you?”
“Very much.” She grows serious. “The truth is I wanted to be here in case you need my support.”
I glance at Gabriel. “He won’t let anything happen to me.”
Candy tucks herself against Ivan. “I know that, but I meant emotional support. Our men can be a little…stiff, if you know what I mean.”
Damn it, I’m blushing a
gain.
The corner of Gabriel’s mouth tilts up. He runs the back of his hand against my cheek, feeling the heat there. His hand is blessedly cool. “Beautiful,” he murmurs.
“Yes,” Ivan says, though his agreement is more of a clinical appraisal. “And no longer yours, if I read the calendar correctly.”
“We still have tonight,” I say, feeling defensive.
Except we all know that tonight isn’t for fun. This is a night for turning over rocks, for finding out what’s been underneath them all along. Shining light into the dark places of my family. A chess match with all the pieces lined up.
A hush falls over the crowd.
I look at the door, and my breath sucks in. Standing in the tall entryway to the ballroom is a man wearing a suit, his hair combed neatly, leaning heavily on a cane. My father.
“No,” I whisper.
How can he even be here? He was in the nursing home, barely able to move. He can’t be walking. He can’t be here. Someone would have had to help him. But why?
My mind swerves away from the implications. He came here to face Jonathan Scott like Gabriel predicted. Out of pride, out of love. Or some darker impulse?
The music continues to play. No one told them our personal tragedy is stealing the show, so the sweet strains filter through a shocked crowd, the band playing on the deck of a sinking Titanic.
He couldn’t have killed Mama. He couldn’t have—
Geoffrey James studies the crowd with an unreadable expression. I hold on to Gabriel’s arm tight enough I must be hurting him, but he doesn’t flinch. I’m doing it to keep myself from running to my father, fighting the impulse to help him walk. How is he even doing it?
And without a word he continues past the ballroom, down the hallway.
The room takes a collective breath. I burst through the press of people, going after him. I hear Gabriel call my name, but I can’t slow down. By the time I reach the stairs, my father is already at the top. And when I make it to his office, he’s sitting in his armchair by the fireplace.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?”
He smiles, though it looks more like a grimace. “You didn’t visit me again. If my daughter won’t come to me, then I have to come to her. I knew you would come.”
This close I can see what coming here has cost him, the sickly white of his skin, the sheen of sweat. He breathes heavily even sitting, still using the cane to hold himself upright.
“You should be in the nursing home.”
“The one Gabriel Miller paid for?”
“Who cares who paid for it? You need rest.”
“So that I can live another month? Another year? That’s not a life. I’m ready to go.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I should have joined your mother a long time ago.”
I look away, wondering if they will really be together in the afterlife. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Daddy.”
“You doubt me, Avery. Gabriel Miller has made you doubt me.”
“Maybe so, but I think I was blind for too long. I wanted to believe that you and Mama were in love, but you weren’t. She was scared.”
“That again? She told me she heard the house talking to her, Avery. I loved her, but there was something wrong with her. And even then I suspected it wasn’t a drunk driver that caused her accident. She was running from her own demons.”
Gabriel appears at the door. “Convenient that she isn’t here to refute that.”
My father’s eyes snap with temporary vigor. “How dare you speak of my wife.”
“Tell me you didn’t hurt her,” I beg softly, kneeling at his side. His hand feels frail between mine. “If you tell me, I’ll believe you.”
He looks down at me, almost confused, like he isn’t sure who I am. “My good girl.” He glances at the small table beside us, the marble chess base built into the wood. “Play one more game with me.”
“No, Daddy. I’m not going to play a game as if everything’s fine.”
Sorrow darkens his eyes. “Then he’s well and truly taken you from me, hasn’t he?”
I want him trapped in every sense of the word, unable to make another move, but alive and fully aware of his loss. That’s what Gabriel said he wanted. It’s what he’s done. The ultimate victory, but he doesn’t look pleased. His features are severe, a sentinel by the door, keeping watch over me.
My knight in dark armor.
A scuff from the hall draws my attention. Nina Thomas stands in the doorway, her gaze accusatory, the matronly rose-gold dress incongruous with the venom in her eyes.
Charlotte hovers behind her, looking worried. “Mom, I don’t think—”
“This is what we came for, so that I could look this man in the eye and tell him I know what he did. I knew from the beginning. I warned her about you.”
I realize now that I don’t need the diary to understand my mother. Don’t need the house or the confessions of the people who loved her. Because for all that they wanted her, they didn’t know her.
My father laughs, breath uneven. “Of course you did.”
She moves into the room, leaning on her daughter’s arm. “What does that mean?”
“It means Helen told me about your adolescent explorations. She told me that you cared for her more than she did for you, how it embarrassed her.”
I suck in a breath, shocked by the cruelty in the words—because there’s a ring of truth in them. And judging by the pain in Nina’s eyes, she heard it. “I don’t believe anything you say,” she says fiercely. “You terrorized her. And when she tried to run away from you, you killed her.”
My father narrows his eyes. “Or maybe you were angry that she wouldn’t leave with you.”
My mother was Helen of Troy in every sense, the threat of female power, the destructive beauty of the female form. I know because I walk the same path. Every girl who’s lusted after and then blamed for that lust, every woman who’s seduced and then accused of liking it.
Stolen and then wrestled back. We’re all the epicenter of our own wars.
“More likely you were angry that she left with anyone,” Uncle Landon says from the doorway. “I admit it wounded me that she never looked at me as anything more than an amusement, one of her admiring coterie. But I would have helped her if she came to me. That’s what pains me the most. That she trusted the wrong person.”
The city will define me in its own image—with all the glory and the humiliation of the virginity auction. They don’t know me, either. Only Gabriel knows the heart of me, those golden eyes unnerving because they actually see.
And that knowledge gives me the strength to stand up. “Trusting the wrong person?” I say to Uncle Landon. “That’s rich coming from you. My mother trusted you enough to make you the administrator of her trust. And you gambled it away, losing her house.”
Tears brighten his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry, Helen.”
A shiver runs through me, because it’s like he sees her standing where I am.
Am I fated to follow her footsteps to the end?
“And you,” I say, turning to Nina. “So determined to make your love affair more than it was. I know how painful it is to love a person who doesn’t return it, but that doesn’t give you any special right to them. She made her choice.”
Nina closes her eyes against my words, shaking her head. A moan of grief escapes her. It turns into a cough that forces her to sit in the nearest chair with her daughter’s help.
Charlotte shoots me a worried look. “I need to get her home.”
I swallow hard, turning to face my father. “And whatever happened the night she died, you had already failed her. She told you she was afraid, and what did you do? Dismiss her. Deny her.”
“She was crazy. What would you have had me do?”
“Believe her. That’s what.” I shake my head, desperate to make him understand. Because there’s only one way someone got those pictures of me—close-ups of my face and body, times when I
was naked and unaware. Even sleeping.
I pick up a paperweight made of stone, the shape of a king piece. I gave it to my father for his birthday a few years ago. With a wild swing it slams into the wall. Plaster sprays from the blow, exposing deeper layers of white and the hint of a shadowy space.
Another swing, and more of the plaster falls away. Dust falls around me like rain.
“Christ,” Gabriel says, deftly taking the king from me.
“She heard it talking to her,” I tell him, out of breath. “The house.”
Understanding lights his eyes. Whatever demons chased my mother, they were real. Even fifteen years ago they had plenty of audio devices that could be hidden. And more importantly they had secret cameras. The kind of cameras that could capture me in private moments.
Gabriel glances at the statue as if judging its weight, its strength. And then he smashes it into the wall, making more of a dent than I could. I take a step back, making room, blocking the spray of plaster from hitting Daddy. He failed my mother, but he was still my father.
Damon Scott strolls into the room, expression only mildly curious. “Is this some kind of renovation reality show? Because our ratings will be amazing.”
Gabriel sends him a dark look. “Are you going to make jokes or are you going to help?”
Damon opens his mouth, surely to answer with the former, but then seems to think better of it. He joins Gabriel as they pull away more of the wall with their hands.
A black cord appears, something rubbery in Gabriel’s hands. He pulls on it, and I realize it’s a wire. He yanks hard, dragging a seam through the middle of the wall. The house is coming apart, torn piece by piece by the man I trusted to hold it together. I can’t fault him, though. A puzzle needs to be solved. A game needs to be played.
A house of cards needs to come crashing down.
And then the cord snaps taut, unable to release any more. Damon does the honors, pulling something black and square from the wall. A speaker? A camera? Maybe both.
“Fuck,” Gabriel mutters, digging away more Sheetrock. The darkness goes too deep. No corresponding wall on the other side, at least not for a while, past the triangle of light from this room. Why is there so much space?