Ghost Avenger

by Serena Akeroyd

  “What option do I have when you won’t speak,” I tell her easily. “I’m asking a simple question, Marla. Are you happy with the life you lead at the moment?”

  Her elegant jaw tenses, and I can see tiny lines of strain crack the makeup covering her cheeks and chin. “I lead a good life.”

  Her wooden tone makes me want to scream. I’m a patient man, but two hours of this has driven me to my limits. I blow out a breath, then state again, “I didn’t ask if you led a good life. I want to know if you’re happy.” She remains silent, so I persist, “Are you happy with the jet you don’t use, the limo that is a crutch, and the house that echoes around you? Are you happy having a frozen love life, no friends, not being able to share your thoughts and feelings for fear of hell raining down on your head? And what kind of hell is it? A hell that takes all those things away that don’t add to your happiness anyway...”

  When her gaze remains firmly glued to her lap, I murmur, “We’ll leave it here for today, Marla. Go and get some rest.”

  I’ll save the rest for another session later, but I can’t put her or myself through it, right now.

  I can only bash my head against a brick wall for so long, and I can only hope that my words will have some positive effect. The truth is, if this time together did nothing more than aggravate the hell out of me then it was a waste of time. But if my repetition actually knuckled in and made her question one tiny aspect of her life then it was all for the good.

  I watch her stand, graceful as ever. She walks like she has a book on top of her head for balance, and I wonder if they still do that. If in Switzerland, girls are still finished by being made to wander around with words on their head rather than in them.

  Pursing my lips at my thoughts, I wait for her to go then get to my feet. We met in a living room on the ground floor. One of many, but this was Marla’s choice. From the way she decorated the hallway, I know she has a green thumb. It came as no surprise this morning to have a maid lead me to sitting room that was part lounge, part jungle.

  It’s mid-winter, but my allergies have been playing up all morning thanks to the varied flora in this one space, which probably didn’t help my temper all that much. I hate having a stuffy nose as much as the next man.

  It’s my chance to escape occasional table after occasional table loaded down with plant pots, but instead, I head over to the back wall where there’s a patio door that leads onto a small terrace. Opening it, I stand in the entryway for a second and look out onto a Princess’ version of a backyard.

  Acre after rolling acre of hill and mountain. Some of it fenced off, parts closed in by hedges.

  With tension gathering at the back of my neck, I urge my body into tadasana, or mountain pose. One of yoga’s basis stances.

  Shoulders back, crown of the head reaching skyward, tailbone lengthened down, arms engaged, all four corners of my feet pressing into the ground and knees energized. All I’m doing is standing there, looking out, but as I focus on my breath, I allow calm to come to me. I allow the beauty of the view ahead of me to add to my ease, and slowly, I roll through a sun salutation.

  It’s the wrong time of the day, of course, but the quick rhythmic flow is exactly what I need to get the kinks out. By the time I’ve finished and am back in mountain pose, the door slams open. When I hear a plant pot rattle at the force in which the door smashed into it, I grimace. About to turn around, the whirling dervish known as Jayce tackles me from behind. She slips her arms around my waist, tucks her front to my back, and clasps her hands together in front of my stomach. With her forehead burrowing in between my shoulder blades, I realize this isn’t an embrace that will lead to sex.

  She’s seeking comfort.

  The instant I realize this, I put one hand on top of hers, and the other I reach around to clasp her forearm. I can do little else but wait her out, giving her everything she needs until she’s ready to talk about whatever it is that has her so distressed. It’s been a long time since I’ve been held like this, and though she’s behind me, spooning into me, I know she’s leaning on me for strength.

  If only strength were easy to transmit, I’d give her whatever she needs, but she seems to know that. Otherwise why come to me?

  I like the notion of her needing me. Everyone needs to be needed. In the smallest of ways to the largest—need is nothing more than a measure of love in my eyes, and no one can do without love.

  She responds, slowly but surely, to my supportive stance. I’m here. She can embrace me. I embrace her in return. But I ask nothing of her until she is ready, and as a result, her tension dissipates. She untangles herself from the gentle clasp I have on her hands, rushes around me and tumbles into my hold, an action aided by my opening my arms to her.

  The minute she burrows into me again, I murmur her name, then tilt my head and press my lips to her crown. Sucking in air loaded with chamomile and lemon, thanks to her fresh and fruity shampoo, I’m once again content for her to find her balance in my arms.

  Is there a bigger honor than that?

  This strong, capable woman is here to find calm from her chaotic world with me.

  The notion lightens my own mood, because Marla really did a number on me. It’s not often I find my equilibrium out of whack, but she certainly did her best today and found her target. Bullseye.

  “I want to hurt him, Drake,” she whispers, then repeats herself a good four or five times.

  I frown down at her, because I really hadn’t expected her to say that. “You want to hurt Charles?”

  “No. Not Charles,” she retorts, huffing at me like I’m an idiot. “Milo!”

  It takes a second to recall who Milo actually is. When it comes to me, I wouldn’t say I was any more enlightened. “The chauffeur with a bad attitude?” I can’t imagine a Hell’s Angel has a better attitude than that miserable son of a bitch.

  She nods at my query then gulps, and as she peers up at me, I can see the hell in her eyes. A hell I wish I could take away from her.

  The desire to protect her floods me, but in this, I can’t. She has a gift. A gift I will never be party to. All I can do is support her, be here for her when she needs me. It’s a role I’d never thought to take on, one which bordered on the caretaker side of things. But Jayce is...unique. Why shouldn’t what she needs from a partner be unique too?

  “He was abusing Charles,” she whispers, her voice hoarse.

  My muscles stiffen with tension. “The bastard.” What else can I say? No insult alive can in anyway encompass the sheer evilness of what Milo did to that small boy. “What are we going to do?” I ask her after a second of fighting down the urge to go and kick the living shit out of the perverted bastard.

  In my practice, I have several patients with abusive backgrounds. It’s not often I’m near the abuser, only the victim.

  Knowing he’s so close, within physical reach, makes it hard to keep a hold of my calm.

  I’ve seen the aftermath of abuse. I deal with it on a daily basis.

  There’s nothing more I’d like to do than make Milo suffer. To make him hurt. On that score, Jayce and I are on the same page.

  Drake

  It’s hard not saying anything to Marla. Three days have passed with her still remaining in this bubble of denial.

  I have to wonder if she’s as bad with her regular therapist, and if she is, I pity the man. I highly doubt the other psychologist had any notes he could share with me, Non-Disclosure Agreement or not.

  Like the limo, the NDAs are a crutch she constantly depends on. Using them to excuse everything from her suicide to her inability to discuss her grief.

  Now Jayce has learned the truth about Charles’s passing, she’s setting herself on a path that could lead us all into trouble. Marla, more than anyone. We made some calls, but decided to let the week progress as it would, because Marla was desperately in need of a reality check before this shitstorm blows up in her face too.

  For what feels like the millionth time, I ask her, “Are you hap
py with your life?”

  My stubborn obstinacy is surprising even me. I don’t feel like we can move on until she makes this admission. It isn’t my normal practice, just to focus on a single question and make the rest of a session revolve around that question, but Marla is unique.

  It’s like Stockholm Syndrome, except she has the key to her prison and can leave whenever she damn well wants.

  The silence hits me first. We’re in the same sitting room as ever, and in the background, the birds twitter and whistle. I opened the doors a little while ago, because the hodge podge of flowers and plants still stuffs up my nose, but her comfort is more important to me than my allergies.

  If she can’t feel comfortable then she won’t open up.

  It’s a theory I’ve always lived by, and I don’t intend to change it now. Even if she is the most difficult patient I've ever had.

  My attention is mostly glued to the birds, and I wish I could turn around and look out at the view. Study that instead of studying the same forty-by-forty square feet of lounge-greenhouse hybrid. But my tedium is broken, however, by a small sniff.

  Not one of disdain but one of emotion. And then, in the tiniest voice, a voice that barely reaches me, never mind the back of the room, she whispers, “No. I’m not happy.”

  For a second, I gawk at her. Then, I wish like hell I could pick her up and twirl her around the room. It feels like I’ve cracked the hardest shell in a bag of nuts. We’ve barely started, but that admission is so enormous, I can’t even begin to quantify how huge a step she has just taken.

  Instead of doing a jig, I murmur, “Why do you stay, then, Marla?”

  “Where else can I go?” she replies, eyes downcast before those beautiful emerald orbs peer up at me again. “It’s my fault I’m here. If I hadn’t lied to Redouane, if I’d told him the truth, maybe I wouldn’t be here. Charles would be alive. Redouane isn’t a bad man.”

  I shake my head. “Is he a good man, though? He doesn’t have to be bad, but that doesn’t mean he’s good,” I try to clarify when she looks at me, confused. “He’s punishing you. Why Alaska? The farthest point in the United States. Why this house? In the middle of nowhere. Miles and miles from the closest town. He’s isolated you to punish you, and you made a mistake, Marla. You lied, yes,” I tell her softly, “but you’re human. We all lie at some point or another. We all make mistakes. We don’t deserve to be made to pay for a mistake, which in the grand scheme of things did no more harm than damaging a man’s pride.”

  Her eyes glisten before she closes them. “You don’t know what I lied about, Drake. Unless Jayce has told you?”

  “No. I asked her to tell me. But she said she’d promised she wouldn’t tell anyone, and she stuck to her word.”

  Marla lets out a huff of laughter. “Now I wish I hadn’t held her to that. It would be so much easier if you knew.” She covers her face with her hands. “Charles isn’t my husband’s child. I married Redouane a few months after I had a fling with a bodyguard, and I got pregnant after that one night. I didn’t know though. And virginity was so important to Redouane. I know I lied, but that bodyguard had taken my virginity and left me no more experienced than before. I wish I could go back. I wish... There was a time when I wished I’d aborted Charles, then Redouane would never have found out the truth. Then, when Charles died—” She releases a keening cry that makes me hurt for her. In that soulful sound, she pours out every bit of her agony. Every ounce of her pain, and I feel that pain. Hurt for her.

  She made a mistake. She’d done as I’d assumed; hurt a man’s pride. But nothing made this exile defensible. And that’s what it is. A weird kind of banishment that she was allowing to happen to herself.

  The woman has family, rich and powerful family members. Why the hell she’s allowing this to happen... Then, it hits me.

  “You didn’t wish Charles’s death on him,” I tell her, wanting to clarify that immediately so we can start to work on this. Her environment is pulling at her, making her miserable. She needs to get away from this place. It’s a mausoleum. Dragging her down. Killing her from the inside out.

  “You don’t know that,” she snaps, but her words are aimed at herself rather than at me. The hatred burns hot, hotter than I realized she was capable of feeling.

  Of course, they always say that still waters run deep, and Marla is very, very good at portraying that image of the ice princess.

  It comes to me that before Jayce, before David, she would have been my type. Exactly what I found attractive. I’m not saying that the attraction would have been mutual, I’m not that big headed. But she would have suited me to a T. In comparison, Jayce is so ebullient. So vibrant and so boisterous.

  I can’t help but compare the two, and though it makes me feel guilty because she doesn’t need me making comparisons—albeit secret ones—Marla falls at the first hurdle in comparison to Jayce’s effervescence.

  I shake my head at my musings, because this is not the time for that. Focusing on Marla once more, I murmur, “I do know that. You’re not God, Marla. You don’t control the universe.”

  For a second, fear freezes me. I can feel my core body temperature plunge when a thought connects in my head. It’s a leap, but it fits.

  Milo is the chauffeur here. It's safe to assume he knows something about cars? Enough to ‘trigger’ an accident in a car that’s fully functioning, perhaps?

  And if Charles was going to say something, tell his mother...then Milo might have felt like he had no alternative.

  It’s speculation, and it gets us nowhere, but somehow, I feel like my gut is right on this. But that speculation doesn’t free Marla. She’ll still blame herself. In fact, she’ll blame herself even more. Her situation brought her son into contact with a pedophile. A pedophile who might, potentially, have caused the accident that killed her beloved son, simply to clear up loose ends.

  She’ll never recover from this.

  Ever. Not if she discovers the truth now.

  She’s too fragile. Too close to the edge. That hatred that burns within her is ice cold, but it means she’ll shatter. Her hatred isn’t hot, it doesn’t temper her, forge her into something stronger. It weakens her.

  Before I can say anything, however, a low rumble sounds overhead. With the doors open, the vibration is an annoying throb, which filters through the earth.

  “A helicopter?” Marla mumbles in shock, getting to her feet to peer out of the patio doors and up at the sky. “Who could that be?”

  I have an idea. And shit, the timing couldn’t be worse.

  The helicopter is a tiny dot amid a huge cloud system swirling overhead; last night, it stormed. Huge bolts of lightning stabbing into the ground with a power that had the electricity cutting off a handful of times. She watches its passage then grimaces. “Redouane will have sent a lawyer. Be prepared to be gagged.”

  I grab her shoulder as she keeps on peering up at the metallic bird. “Marla, I need you to trust me to deal with the guest I’ve invited here.”

  She frowns at me. “It's not a lawyer? You’ve invited someone to my home?”

  I nod. “I know it’s unorthodox, but I discussed it with Jayce...and we agreed, this is a positive step forward for Charles.”

  “Why?” she eyes me, studying me as though I’ve suddenly grown two horns.

  Maybe I have. I don’t interfere in my patients’ lives unless an intervention is necessary. But this isn’t an intervention. This is... hell, the only way I can describe it is an eye for an eye, but she can’t know that now. She can’t learn that Milo was abusing Charles. If she does, I don’t know what she’ll do to herself.

  If revealing the truth is the straw that broke the camel’s back, I’ll have no choice but to hospitalize her, and I do not want to do that. But she’ll be a danger to herself. She’s unstable as it is. Fragile.

  Shit.

  Why the hell did her husband have to pick today to arrive here? Why not tomorrow?

  We hadn’t even known if he’d come whe
n we made the call. But he listened, and he was here now.

  I’m running out of time. I can feel the seconds swimming by, but when I expect Marla to dig her heels in, to demand to know what’s going on, she lets out a weary sigh. “This will help Charles?”

  “Jayce believes so.”

  A muscle flexes in her cheek. “I’ll give you an hour, and then I want to know what the hell is going on. Do you understand me?”

  The princess has spoken, but to be honest, it’s refreshing to see that side of her. Her volatility is a concern, but the strength behind that demand makes it exactly what it is: a royal decree.

  I nod, filled with gratitude. An hour might not be long enough, but it’s a damn sight more than I thought we’d have.

  “I understand.”

  With that, I take off out the patio doors and run the twenty feet toward the driveway. To the side of the house, there’s the garage. Milo lives above it in an outbuilding. But inside the garage, there’s an ATV. The helicopter has yet to land, so if I can track it, and reach it before they can call ahead for a car to collect them, it might give me ten or so minutes alone with the Prince.

  I’ve never ridden an ATV in my life, but I climb astride it, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Jayce skids to a halt beside me, appearing out of nowhere, her haste as panicked as my own. Her sneakers squeaking against the smooth concrete floor as she comes to a stop.

  “Quick!” she hustles, shoving herself in front of me so that she can drive. Within seconds, we’re on our way, driving over manicured terrain at breakneck speed.

  At least, it feels breakneck when there’s no seatbelt, and we’re not wearing helmets.

  I scowl overhead, squinting as the low sun glares straight into my eyes, and the chilly wind blows directly into them. The layout of the garden is on our side. Sure, there’s a lot of lawn, but there’s also a hell of a lot of trees.

  “Over there,” I holler, pointing at the helicopter when I notice it’s finally starting to lower down to the ground.