Leo
Dinner is a travesty.
Daphne sits across from me at the dining table, wired with tension. She holds her fork too tight and eats her salad with a vengeance. As if it’s the salad that scared her and not her snarling beast of an older brother.
“You’re not eating anything, Leo.”
“I’ve eaten.” It’s all tasteless. Pointless. The texture of everything serves only to remind me that I have the most painful hangover in history.
“Okay, but you know you have to eat more than that. You’re going to starve to death. Plus, it’s good salad.”
“I hate salad.”
Daphne drops her fork and puts her hands over her face. “Why are we having salad, then?”
“Penance.”
She’s in the middle of rolling her eyes when shouting starts. Daphne’s head snaps up. “What is that?”
“Go up to your room.” I get up from my seat. Something’s happening in the foyer. “Put on some music and don’t come down until the album’s over.”
Daphne runs to my side. “You’ll have to carry me there yourself.”
“Might be a little short on time.” I can see Gerard from the hall. He’s huddled with the security team. Two of them are shouting. He’s talking over them. Gerard sees me coming and holds out a hand.
“Go back,” he says. “Go up.”
I don’t. I keep walking toward him like a fucking fool, so Daphne and I have just stepped into the foyer when the police breach the front doors. I understand now why an argument had broken out among my security staff. Situations with police often get ugly, then uglier. Everything will be heightened by the fact that my house is full of hired firepower.
Which is why they’ve sent so many of them. They pour in the front door two by two, guns drawn. Gerard glues himself to my side and stands in front of Daphne. And I go to the middle of the foyer and put myself in the way.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty. They’re running through my house like a fucking army, and part of me is furious. Part of me is dead, and has been since Haley left my office. More detectives. And then the captain, who is brandishing a piece of paper.
“You’re supposed to show me the warrant before you invade my house,” I tell him.
He advances on me, glaring, sneering. “Mr. Morelli, we have a warrant to search your property for evidence of the kidnapping and captivity of Haley Constantine. We had reason to believe there would be interference with the collection of evidence, necessitating a no-knock entrance.”
“Her toothbrush is upstairs in the master bath, if you’d like to start there.”
“My god. You have the right to remain silent, you sick fuck. Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I’ve just read to you?”
“You didn’t read them. Let’s strive for accuracy.”
“Do you understand your rights?”
“Yes, Captain, I do. Everyone’s body cameras on? Let’s make this simple. I kidnapped Haley Constantine.”
“Leo, stop. Let me go.” Daphne wrestles away from Gerard and rushes over to me. “Stop. Don’t say that.” Her face is white. “You can’t say this.”
“Haley Constantine was my captive.” They’re getting quieter, probably so that my full confession is clear in the video. “I held her here, and I didn’t let her leave.”
“Leo.” Gerard comes to my other side. “That’s not what happened.”
“I forced her to sign a contract with me in exchange for releasing her father from a business deal. I coerced her. Exploited her.”
It’s all close to the truth. They’ll accept it as the truth.
Gerard curses under his breath and takes out his phone. Cops are crawling everywhere, down all the halls, all through the foyer. There’s nothing for them to find there. I think there’s nothing to find until one of them pulls out a coat. Haley never wore it. There was never an occasion for her to wear a black coat. But it is her size. There’s a tag on the hanger with her initials on it. It goes into an evidence bag.
“Eva,” Gerard says. “There’s a situation at the house.”
Let him call her. I don’t care. There’s nothing she can do. The police are already here, and I’m not going to do anything to stop them. Set the machine in motion. Let it destroy me. What’s the worst they can do?
Daphne pulls hard on my elbow. “Don’t lie to them, Leo.”
“I’m telling the truth. God as my witness. I held Haley Constantine hostage.”
“You didn’t.” Daphne sounds horrified. “You didn’t hold her hostage. She wanted to be here. What are you talking about?”
“I held her hostage. She wasn’t free to leave. Or would you prefer if I called her a prisoner?” I’m talking to Daphne. I’m talking to all of them.
“It’s not true.” Silent tears streak down Daphne’s cheeks. “Stop lying. Stop, stop, stop.”
“Sorry, sister mine. I’m not the man you think I am. I’m as bad as your collector. Worse. Dry your tears. They’re not worth crying for me.”
Daphne sucks in a breath and holds it. She swipes at her face with the back of her hand, and through the pain, through the hangover, through the despair, I hate myself. I hate that here, in my house, she has to put on that mask. It’s not what I meant. I just meant that it’s worthless to cry for a sinner. A ruined man. A hell-bound soul.
“Anything else you’d like to confess?” The police captain is having the best day of his fucking life. His people are coming down my stairs with boxes of evidence. They’ve turned the house upside down in ten minutes flat. I have no doubt it’s because someone is guiding their search. Caroline’s never been in my house. She’ll never see a blueprint. There are no public records of the inside of my home. But she’ll have planted ideas in their heads about where Haley might have spent her time. It’s too large a space to search it all this quickly.
They appear to have enough.
“They’re already in the house,” Gerard is saying. “I couldn’t get him to stop talking. He confessed everything. No. No. The lawyer isn’t here. There was nobody except the security detail.”
“Leave her alone, Gerard,” I tell him.
He ignores me. Keeps hovering around. Barking orders at the security team to stay back by the walls. It’s so fucking loud in here. My home has never been invaded like this. I can’t summon the will to be shocked. Caroline will do anything to fuck with me. Anything. It doesn’t matter that she has Haley back.
I laugh out loud, and the police captain’s lip curls. “Is this funny to you?”
“I’m entertained. Of course I am. You and thirty of your buddies are in my house, rifling through my things because you’re so fucking convinced I kidnapped a woman. Fine. I agree. I kidnapped her. It doesn’t matter that she came here by herself, does it? Or that she’s home with her family as we speak.”
They’re filing out the door. Boxes and boxes. I don’t know what the fuck they could have taken that would be proof Haley was here. Her clothes, probably. That’s most of what she left behind. All the clothes I bought for her. The clothes I wanted to see her in. I want to see her every day of my fucking life. And if I can’t see her, then I don’t want a life.
Not that I’m going to mention that on the record. They have what they need.
The police leave, several of them taking the time to jostle me on the way out. Daphne lets her hands fall to her sides and stares up at the police captain, who wants to savor every moment on the job. He waits until all of his men have gone. Then he straightens his tie. The motherfucker didn’t lift a finger throughout this little raid, but now he’s putting himself back together.
“Charges are pending investigation, Mr. Morelli.” He makes a show of looking around the foyer. “I bet you’ll miss this place when we put you away.”
I let a grin creep over my face. Show him my teeth. I watch the realization dawn that he’s standing in my foyer alone, with none of his men around him.
Daphne moves to stand in front of me, brave in the face of uniforms and guns and search warrants. “Stop trying to scare us. You’ve done your job.”
The police gives her an interested look, a very male look, and I growl low in my throat. “Get the hell out of here.”
He leaves, and then it’s only me. And my sister.
“Why did you say that?” she says, turning on me, her eyes alight with frustration. “Why did you say that you kidnapped Haley when you didn’t? They’re going to use that against you.”
“Because it’s true.” I am fucking exhausted. I have had enough. “So close to the truth, it might as well be true. I forced her to be with me. Did you think your brother was kind and noble? No, sister mine. I made her trade her body to save her father.”
I deserve the shock in her eyes. The condemnation. And I deserve for her to walk away, to run up the stairs and leave me standing here, alone.
* * *
I’m entirely unsurprised when Gerard comes into my office an hour later with his phone in his hand and his jaw set. “The Constantines aren’t done yet.”
“Who are they sending now?”
“Rick Joseph is looking for you. He’s on his way over.”
The last time Caroline sent someone to my house, I made Gerard and the rest of the staff leave. Haley was the only one in the house when Ronan shot me. “Fine.”
“I can stop him at the gates.”
“No. Let him come. I’ve waited too long to kill that motherfucker.” I let Haley live with the knowledge of him in the world for too long.
“Don’t, Leo. Don’t do it tonight. You’re not thinking clearly.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “If you don’t want to be a witness, you can leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Guard Daphne’s door, then. Show that bastard in and make sure my sister doesn’t come out until it’s over.”
It used to be me telling Daphne to stay in her room until a nightmare had passed her by. Gerard will have to do it now, though he’d rather play his old part. He’d rather put a bullet through Rick’s head before he could step into my foyer. It’s what my father would have ordered him to do without a second thought. He’s fielded similar orders many times, I’m sure.
It’s different now. Both of us know it’s not Rick he’ll be protecting Daphne from. It’s me. It’s the sight of me keeping a promise to Rick on a knife’s edge.
He makes up his mind. Stands up tall. “You don’t need more blood on your hands.”
“And if I want it?”
“Let me do my job.”
“Your job is to stand in front of my sister’s door and guarantee her safety. We can make it an order, Gerard. I don’t fucking care. I want everyone off the first floor and on the second, with you. Anyone who wants to leave can go. When is Rick arriving?”
Gerard sighs. “He’ll be here within the hour.”
I send him away, though not out of the house, and return to the master bedroom. My favorite knife waits for me in the weapons safe in the corner of my closet. A pistol. I bring both back to my office.
All the lights should stay on for this, but in addition to the clawing pain in my back, I have a splitting headache. I don’t get headaches. Having one now gives the sweet release of death an added appeal. The drilling in my skull tugs at a memory I can’t reach. Something nonsensical about someone else’s headaches.
I don’t know. I don’t care. This is why I don’t drink, except when I need to be seen drinking for a social event.
It’s possible Rick will kill me tonight. I don’t intend to let him have an easy victory, however. He’ll have to do it with his eyes open.
He’s left me some time to set up my office.
He’s left me some time to sit in my chair by the fire.
He’s left me some time to pray.
I wasted it, the day Ronan came. I was too consumed with getting all the staff out of the house. Too consumed with the Constantine girl I’d sent away. By the time I started, by the time he was standing in my office, my thoughts were too disorganized to do anything but ask for a swift end to the pain. The pain in my back, yes. But more than that, the pain of tearing the new green shoot of what I had with Haley out of the ground and throwing it into the fire.
I wanted more time with her. I knew I’d never get it. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Make it fast, make it fast, make it fast. Ronan wouldn’t shut the fuck up. He was squeamish about shooting me mid-prayer. I dragged it out to spite him. And I dragged it out because my mind’s eye had caught on Haley like the image of the cross. It was her I asked for forgiveness. Her I asked for absolution. It was no act of contrition. It was not perfect. But in the end, all I could think of was her name. Haley, Haley, Haley.
God has a sick sense of humor. He answered my prayer. I got more time with Haley. Enough time to scare her. To scar her.
Forgive me.
A tap on the window interrupts my final request.
A little bird perches at the sill. Tap, tap, tap. I go over and put my finger to the glass. “It’s the middle of the night,” I tell it. “Go back to your nest.”
It taps again.
“It’s not going to be pretty,” I warn. I don’t know what the fuck it’s doing here. It’s dark, with blustering snow in the courtyard. The bird ruffles its wings and settles into the corner.
A loud voice echoes across the foyer. Gerard, letting Rick in. His footsteps move past the door. The firelight doesn’t reach him.
Another shape is framed by the doorway a moment later. Shoulders rising and falling. He’s breathing hard.
“If you wanted a meeting with me, all you had to do was call.”
“I don’t want a meeting with you.” Rick steps into the flickering orange light. “I want a life.”
“You have a life, pathetic as it is.”
“Not after tonight.”
I trace my knife, flat on my desk, with a fingertip. “I understand she promised you Haley.”
His eyes flare. “Not just Haley. A big, Constantine wedding. I’ll finally have a place in the family. I’ll finally fucking belong somewhere.” Rick catches himself. Pulls back. He’s not accustomed to terse expressions. The scowl he puts on would be laughable if it weren’t so fucking sad. He sees the Constantines as a shining city on a hill, but he’ll never find safety there. Never find peace. “All I have to do is kill you. All I have to do is make sure you never hurt her again.”
“Then let’s not waste any more time.”
Rick hesitates for a single heartbeat, and then he rushes me.
The man isn’t a fighter. He wasn’t born for it, wasn’t bred for it, but he’s desperate for this reward Caroline’s dangled in front of him. He’s desperate to be the hero. Giving in to his desperation is his biggest mistake.
He could have shot me from the door, but a shooting in cold blood doesn’t fit the narrative. A fistfight does.
I might as well give it to him.
Rick tackles me with the zeal of a convert. The only thing I didn’t account for was how bad the pain had gotten. How much the headache had affected my balance. I find it too late, after we’re already on the floor. I get the first punch in. Rick lands one on my ribs. Levering him off the floor takes more energy than I would have thought. The chair by the fire goes over.
Everything hurts.
Not because of Rick, though the wild hits he manages to land don’t help. It’s possible this is additional penance for when I kill him.
A glass vase on a corner table tips off and shatters. I’ve lost a minute. I don’t remember getting to this corner of the room. But the sound of that breaking glass snaps me out of this purgatory. I promised I’d kill him if he touched Haley, and he did. There will be no more mercy now. I want him to feel the knife break his skin. I want him to feel it spilling his blood. It’s not far to my desk. I’ll take him there. God help me.
Fear flashes into Rick’s eyes. Then he’s out of time.