Loverman

by B. D. Roca

  His various bruises were still coming to their full flowering, and a headache he had no intention of reporting to a doctor thrummed at his temples.

  Maxine, presumably in full panic, had refused to be cornered. He’d believed her manoeuvred into today’s meeting, once more at his lawyer’s offices, with the threat of money cut off if she did not appear. But instead, her confederate had shown up, a sly-eyed, on and off again boyfriend from, Charles suspected, her earliest years. Furious but controlled, Charles had sat down at the conference table with him. His head of security, Williams, together with Charles’ lawyer waited in another office. Charles needed the conversation to be private. The others were simply there for her boyfriend’s benefit. He wanted him to understand exactly what brand of shitstorm Maxine had drawn him into.

  “Maxine has quite a spectacular hold on you. You’re even standing in for her today. Risking arrest. Not to mention, arranging for break-ins and attempted burglaries on multiple properties,” Charles opened.

  “My presence here is no admission of—”

  “You showed up in a check on Maxine. You certainly have the contacts to have arranged for my home to be burgled—twice. When those burglaries turned up nothing, Maxine had you turn that search on her son’s place. Correct? She was so impatient by then that she actually participated in the hunt.” Charles had shaken his head, flicking a glance over the man’s closed, clever face. “She has a unique hold over you. I’m assuming she told you exactly what she was looking for?”

  The man had given him a knowing smirk. It was its own answer.

  “The item is in a vault,” Charles lied easily. Idly he wondered just what the fool believed was on the USB. “It’s exactly where neither of you can ever access it. It will be staying there. So why do this?”

  The man’s mouth thinned. He drummed his fingers on the table. “Of course it’s in a vault.” Abruptly he sat back, arms crossed, and eyed him with a gambler’s defiance. “It was worth a try, and I thought, well, the USB might not turn up, but other things will. Interesting things. You’re a twisted bastard, just like your father. Maxie’s told me plenty, and I’ve heard the stories about you. All we needed was proof of it.”

  Exactly as Charles had guessed. He’d enjoyed those private, vetted invite-only clubs. He’d felt freed in those spaces. He’d taken Kemp to a few. That Maxine would somehow find out and attempt to find lucrative evidence disgusted him. “Blackmail if theft didn’t work out?” Anger spiked. Yes, this ugly scheme was most certainly the work of the woman who had all but pimped her own daughter out to Richard Durant. The surveillance video on that USB was proof. Little wonder she’d gone to extremes to try and retrieve it. Skin crawling, he waved the man out of the room and sat back, alone in the conference room, thinking.

  Finally, he picked up his phone. As he’d expected, Maxine answered on his second ring. “Your boyfriend has certainly proven useful to you. And pathetically loyal.”

  She sounded amused. “Nick loves me. He always has.”

  Charles decided that particular discussion could be left for Williams. His patience was finally shredded. “Maxine, I’m done with this. You’re dangerous, not exactly stable, and most certainly have addictions that you have no intention of treating. You have forty-eight hours to get out of the country. Try anything like this again, and the police will be involved. All payments will cease. If your children ever wish to contact you—and who knows, they may—we will come to an arrangement which will enable that contact to occur. You will be under constant surveillance, permanently, even if you are no longer on my payroll. So will your associates. I no longer care if you starve in a gutter. After what you’ve done to them, I doubt your children will either. Do you understand?”

  “You cannot be serious—”

  “More than you can know. Oh, and Maxine—I’m not like my father, in any way at all. You see, I value those close to me, and I will do anything—and I mean anything—to protect them. Do we understand each other?”

  From the angry hiss of breath at the other end of the line, she finally did.

  Once they were back in the house, Charles sank down onto one of the long, low leather sofas. He looked exhausted.

  Without a word, Kemp hunted through the kitchen cupboards and found a box of the green tea Charles favoured. Williams came in as the kettle boiled. Kemp shot him a look as he poured boiling water into a glass teapot.

  “I’m leaving for the day. Tony, the team member you met earlier, will be staying on the property until we can be certain the issue has been neutralised.”

  Kemp gave him a long, cool stare. “Uh-huh.”

  A corner of the man’s mouth turned down. He nodded and left Kemp to the tea.

  Charles looked up as Kemp put the steaming mug on the low glass coffee table, frowned. Kemp sat down next to him on the sofa, put down his own mug. Charles gave him a peculiar look. “I thought you hated green tea.”

  “I do. But since I made some for you, I thought I’d see if my opinion on the subject has changed.”

  Charles snorted. He toyed with the steaming mug, put it back down. “You won’t like it any better, but thank you.”

  “For the tea? It was nothing.”

  “For trying. For remembering. For caring enough to make it.”

  Bloody hell, making the tea had been nothing. Charles’ appreciation of that small act was enough to create an ache in Kemp’s chest. He pushed it to one side, said, “Viva will be here in an hour or so. It’s sunny outside. How about we sit out there while you tell me just what the deal is with Viva and that USB in your wallet? Because Charles, you haven’t exactly been forthcoming with me.”

  Charles’ jaw tightened. “No, I haven’t. And yes, before Viva arrives there is something you need to see.” He dragged in a deep lungful of air. “You may not like me very much when it’s done.”

  Night had fallen by the time the long ugly grind of the day came to a halt. Viva sat in the living room. Charles had slipped away to give the siblings privacy.

  Now Kemp poured vodka—because tea of any kind just wouldn’t cut it—into a glass and sank a good slug of it, craving the burn as it ran down his throat and hit his gut. A second slug, and he managed a deep breath, not able to process what had just occurred, and stood, staring across the pale marble and smooth pale wood of the elegant kitchen.

  In the guest wing on the other side of the house, the security guard had probably settled in for the night. Kemp hadn’t seen him since that afternoon. Knowing he was on the property was reassuring, but beyond that Kemp couldn’t begin to care. He poured vodka into another tumbler for Viva.

  It was just as well Charles had given him warning.

  Hours back now, Charles had closed that study door behind them both, checked the set-up on an old laptop. He’d looked ridiculously on edge. For a moment Charles’ fingers hovered over the keyboard. “One thing, Kemp,” he’d muttered. “Watch this through. Then ask the questions. Your sister will be seeing the same file soon enough. Bear that in mind.”

  Sitting forwards on that leather office chair, Kemp had peered at the screen and not known what the fuck to expect. It was a piece of surveillance video he’d set up, Charles had said. Back at Palm Beach.

  WTF.

  The last thing he’d expected was this.

  The hallway in that mansion.

  He was slammed back ten years. He was fourteen years old again. And there, one thing he’d never seen that night a decade before: the absolute fucking confidence of that bastard Richard bloody Durant as he’d gone to Viva’s bedroom door.

  Jesus, how many times had that happened? The thought scarcely hit before the world on the screen erupted.

  Viva’s scream. Her, Durant, flying back out of that room.

  Watching, Kemp jerked back, scarcely aware of Charles beside him.

  From there on there were no surprises. There was just himself, not helping Viva. Not able to do a fucking thing. Useless.

  There was just Maxine, the filth pourin
g out of her mouth, and every ounce of the sheer ugliness and greed and venality that she was on full display. Maxine grabbing Viva by the jaw and demanding she lie.

  Fucking bitch.

  The video rolled on and finally ended, and Kemp sat there for a moment, emptied and silent and with so many questions he couldn’t even shape the first one.

  A long, fraught silence. Finally, Charles asked, “Do you despise me for doing it?”

  “For what?” Kemp shot back, on auto. “Setting up that fucking camera or not telling me at some bloody point you had?”

  In shock, he wanted the truth of the man, for once. Needed it.

  “You’ll never forgive me, will you?”

  Kemp twisted around, looked at Charles properly. The look he got was as unreadable as ever.

  “Charles, I—” Kemp remembered every moment he’d fought against the way he felt about this man. Every moment he’d told himself that by allowing Charles back into his life, he was endangering Viva.

  If only he’d known. God almighty, Charles had always known.

  Kemp slowly shook his head. “And you said you used this to—”

  “For a long time, it served no purpose. In fact it was a danger. But eventually? I used it to keep your mother at bay. From the both of you.”

  And he’d originally set it up to get evidence on his father because Charles had suspicions about the man. Because he’d known Maxine wouldn’t care. He’d said that, earlier.

  Kemp and Viva had both thought Charles had hated her, back in those early days. Instead, Charles had tried to protect her. Always.

  Kemp didn’t even know where to begin.

  “It’s true,” Charles said flatly. “What I did was unforgivable.”

  Which shook Kemp completely.

  “You were fourteen. You were so fucking brave.”

  Charles looked startled and his lips parted. Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as his phone rang. It was security. Viva had arrived.

  “No,” Viva whispered hoarsely. “No. No.”

  It was the first sound she’d made since that toxic piece of video stopped playing. Silence had fallen. Seconds later she slammed the old laptop shut on the desk in front of her. Her finely boned hands formed tough fists, rested immobile on that silvery case. Her jaw was gritted. She looked like someone in the grip of a catastrophic silent illness. A heart attack, a stroke imminent.

  Kemp had known he could not leave her to watch this alone. Charles was still in the room, standing by the window. Arms crossed, face averted, he looked to be studying the view.

  Viva got to her feet somehow. Before either of them could move, she’d grabbed up the laptop as if she were about to hurl it at the wall.

  A terrible, strangled scream of anger and frustration tore out of her throat. It sounded like a decade’s worth of smothered rage and fear.

  Finally, gasping, she slowly lowered the laptop, but rather than put it back on the desk, she held it, like a baby, against the protection of her breasts, crossing her arms tight over the thing.

  Charles had swung around. Watching her, he did not move. Neither did Kemp.

  For a long minute, Kemp had thought she would truly, Jesus Christ, slam the thing to dust. Instead, a sound like a sob tore at her throat. The Mac held carefully against her body, she walked out of the room like a sleepwalker, still holding it, ignoring the two men as she headed through the house for the french doors that led outside. Once out there, she disappeared into the wild, sunlit gardens. Eventually Kemp caught a glimpse of her down at the cabana by the water.

  Charles walked outside and calmly took a seat on the terrace overlooking the grounds. He turned his back on that view and shook his head.

  “You can’t do anything yet,” he told Kemp. “Just let her absorb it. She’ll have questions, later. I’ll answer them the best I can.”

  Kemp gave an abrupt nod and took a seat, not on one of the loungers, but like Charles, at the elegant glass and aluminium table.

  After what felt like hours, Viva returned. The sun had shifted in the sky. A hint of evening laced the air.

  Her eyes were red rimmed now but dry, her face pale and composed. She put the laptop down on the tabletop, placed the USB carefully on top of it. Very slowly, as if still in the grip of a terrible illness, she took her seat.

  “I have questions, but I need coffee. Kemp?”

  Kemp nodded and headed for the kitchen. He came back with coffee in bone china mugs and another green tea for Charles.

  Chin lifting, she took a deep breath and said coolly, “I watched it again. Several times. I had to be… certain.”

  Her phone rang. After a moment she examined the screen and answered it. “Red, darling, I’m sorry, but I’ll be staying over here tonight.” A pause. She nodded. “Yes. It’s just family stuff. You know what that’s like. Couple of things to sort out. Yes, sweetheart, can you stop by tomorrow and pick me up? That would be lovely. Charles can give you the grand tour. We can all have breakfast out on the terrace. It’s very la dolce vita here.”

  Incredible, the way she could make herself deal with the next day. Make plans. Put on a cool front. But then Viva had always possessed willpower of pure steel. She was almost vibrating with that sheer steely resolve right now. Kemp recognised it.

  Didn’t mean she wasn’t falling apart inside.

  When she ended the call, lifting her chin to meet Charles’ stare there was hell in her eyes.

  “You really are quite, quite terrifying, Charles,” Viva observed. Kemp had seen her use that tone to ice out business associates. Her jaw tight, a set of Prada sunglasses on, she turned the sleek black USB between her fingers.

  They still were sitting at the glass table, the soft, darkening air still warm. Kemp drank coffee but would have preferred scotch in it because, fuck, after the day they’d all had, he needed it. Viva sipped hers and toyed with that bloody USB as if it was a new fashion accessory.

  “As I said,” she remarked, “I watched that disgusting video again, several times. It’s a vile little document.”

  Charles did not flicker. Instead, he said flatly, “Yes, it is.”

  “And you set it up… when you were fourteen, the camera, the whole thing, because you suspected what your father was doing and wanted to get evidence… for what purpose, exactly?” Her chin jerked up, and she eyed him through the dark shield of those glasses. “What was your aim?”

  Charles’ mouth tightened, and he turned the mug of tea around on the table but did not lift it. He looked wholly fascinated by the movement but said, “I wanted to get evidence so that I could hand you something—some weapon—you could use to stop him. And if you had not felt comfortable doing that, then I would have done so for you. You see, I always understood what a monster he was. I always understood you were in danger. I—I came to realise that he had done as I feared. And I knew, with a monster such as my father, you would need every protection you could find.”

  Viva gave him a long, considering look.

  Eventually, “I thought you hated me.”

  “I was afraid for you. I didn’t have to know or like you for that.”

  She gave a nod at that frank reply and sucked in a deep, shaken breath. “And Kemp.” She glanced up, pale eyes wide on his. “You didn’t know about this tape?”

  Kemp shook his head. “No, Vivi, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t. I only saw it this afternoon, just before you.”

  She nodded and seemed to absorb it all. Think through it. Weigh it up.

  Eventually she released a deep sigh, tapped the USB sharply with a click click click against the tabletop.

  “And this is the only copy?”

  “The only one,” Charles said.

  One corner of her mouth twisted. After a moment, “Charles, you are one terrifying fucker. And I am glad—so glad—that you were on my side.”

  “I couldn’t be on the other.”

  “No.” She stared at him for a long moment, then said, in open challenge, “I killed your
father, Charles.”

  Charles didn’t blink. “I know,” he agreed coolly. “And I’ve thought about this very carefully. If I said thank you, would that be thanks enough? Or—you know I really am ridiculously wealthy—I could arrange for a truly spectacular fireworks display as a thankyou. It would be sincerely meant. Does that appeal?”

  For a moment she stared at him, eyes wide. His mouth was crooked in a wry, sad, understanding smile. Because yes, he’d been put through his own particular hell by the man.

  And then she laughed.

  Only after a while, it wasn’t laughter any longer. A fist crushed against her mouth, tears slipped down her cheeks, something she rarely permitted Kemp to see and certainly never Charles. She sucked in a deep, unsteady breath, and Kemp went with her into the house. He settled her on one of the soft, low sofas and went in search of the vodka. Charles gave him a quick glance, nodded towards the gardens, and slipped away into the gathering shadows of dusk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Viva curled up against Kemp, allowing him, for once, to truly offer her his strength to lean on. It was a curious feeling, like having a jungle cat, fierce, powerful, yet wounded enough to allow you to offer it some level of consolation. So Kemp held her, felt her tears slip over his skin, and knew that soon enough, her own fierce strength and independence would take over and the mask would be complete once more.

  He didn’t mind. He knew her. They would always be there for one another, and if he could offer her even this small level of comfort, then it was something, at least.

  Eventually, she drew away a little and announced that she had to go wash her face.

  Kemp directed her to one of the guest bedrooms, all of which seemed to have en suite bathrooms, and returned to the living room. He took another gulp of straight vodka, a smaller one this time, and considered practicalities.