The Rake, page 29
She stood up, clapping her hands together once. “Ursula is going to be very happy with the news.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” I was about to keel over and throw up.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she assured me.
Nodding faintly, I pointed at the door. I could barely breathe, let alone talk.
Louisa walked away, closed the door behind her, and left me with the weight of my decision, knowing full well it was going to crush my soul to oblivion.
He wasn’t going to let me leave.
I knew that much for a fact.
For all his niceness—and Devon Whitehall was a good and true gentleman—he didn’t react well to bullshit, and he and I both knew that I was serving him a healthy dose of messiness neither of us deserved.
So I took the coward’s way out. I wrote him a note.
I told myself that it was fine. I would sit and talk to him face-to-face. I just needed some time to digest everything. Besides, it was better if I didn’t stay in Boston, now that I suspected two different forces of trying to drive me away.
Devon would be fine. He always was. Strong and sun-washed and golden. With his title, sharp intellect, and lazy, surly drawl, he’d be fine.
Shit, I was making the biggest mistake of my life, and I was doing it for my daughter. Keeping her safe was most important.
So this was what it felt like to love a person.
Even before I knew her. Even before she was out there in the world.
I decided to handwrite Devon a letter. I wanted something personal and not too brief to break the news to him.
After all, he’d been nothing but good to me.
It took me four hours to write something I didn’t completely detest.
Dear Devon,
Thank you for your hospitality and for dealing with my brand of bullshit, which, let’s admit it, is too much for 99.99% of the human race.
The thing is, I don’t think living together is doing either of us any good.
I make you miserable, and you make me uncomfortable.
The feelings you stir in me leave me raw and scared.
As for you, I know last night you were on the verge of punching a hole through your bedroom wall, all because of me.
I know things are kind of rocky, but please know that I filed a complaint today and that the police are working on it. I promise to carry my weapon at all times, and to stay safe, but I can’t do this anymore.
I’m afraid if we keep having a relationship, the stress is going to get to the baby, and I have to put her before anything else. Before you. Before me.
I’m so happy to do this journey with you and request that we remain friends.
With that being said, I’ll be taking a step back and will try to look inside myself to find the grace and trust you deserve to be treated with.
Lots of love,
Belle.
P.S.
You should marry Louisa. She loves you.
Fifteen Years Old.
Tenth grade starts with bangs.
Not to be confused with a bang.
Ross, of course, is behind the idea.
“Bangs really suit you. I just love your hair. It’s fantastic to work with. I need to straighten my own bangs every morning,” Ross moans.
We made a deal—I’ll give both of us bangs if he agrees to go to Krav Maga classes with me. We go three times a week. The instructors are tired of our faces. But I no longer leave my fate in the hands of men I don’t know.
I watch for Coach Locken in the hallways, in my classes, in the cafeteria. I’m never going to let him do that to me again, and revenge will come.
I’ve seen enough documentaries and watched enough news cycles to know that handing him over to the authorities won’t do any good. I need to take the law into my own hands. Because whether he gets away with what he’s done or not, my life will still be fucked forever.
I refuse to be that girl who messed with her coach. Who let him eat her out for months, and then oops, got scared and told Mommy and Daddy when he took her virginity. No. Screw that. I’m a girl with a plan.
Coach Locken stays away from me.
One month follows the other, and I almost start breathing again.
Then one Saturday morning, bright and early, when Mom’s making pancakes downstairs, Dad reads the paper and Persephone is on the phone with Sailor, something happens.
It’s weird that it happens, because everything else about this Saturday is so ordinary. So mundane. The scent of pancakes wafts under the cracks of the bathroom. So does Persephone’s laughter as she and Sailor discuss how obnoxiously romantic both our parents are (Sailor is, unfortunately, also the spawn of two people who really need to stop pawing one another in public).
I get a text from Locken.
I’m going to do it again if you tell.
Be warned.
Consider me warned.
I’m about to throw up.
But I think I know why he feels confident in telling me this—he knows the authorities are a piece of crap. The school board would never believe me. The local police station is full of his schoolmates—people he drinks beer with—and Southie is just not a place where you go to the police. You take care of shit on your own.
I pee in the toilet. Feel like I stopped peeing—my bladder is empty, I know, because I’ve been peeing fifteen years straight, every day, multiple times a day, without fail—but for some reason, I keep dripping. The cramping in my stomach is bad. Like my gut is constricting against something it wants to purge out.
I look down, between my legs, and frown. A gush of blood comes out. I blink into the toilet bowl, spreading my thighs apart, and I see a clump of … something.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I bend over forward and throw up right there on the tiles. I’m shaking. No. It can’t be. I reach above my head for a towel hanging on a rack and stuff it into my mouth to muffle my cries. I squirm on the floor and scream into the towel.
Crying, crying, crying.
I was pregnant.
The bastard got me pregnant.
Of course he did.
But … why did I lose the baby?
I calculate back and realize the pregnancy was five weeks long. I’d fallen during the last week of summer break. But still. How? Why? How come?
This is the moment I realize I am not myself anymore.
That maybe I’ll never truly be myself, because I didn’t have time to figure out who I was.
This is when I think my faith in humanity will never be restored.
That things cannot possibly get any worse.
And then they do.
I was going to fucking kill someone, and it wasn’t going to be Emmabelle Penrose, even though she was the woman who most deserved my wrath.
Crumpling the handwritten letter, I slam-dunked it into the bin, scooped my keys from the kitchen island, and charged toward the door.
I took the stairs two at a time, almost toppling over on my way to the Bentley.
My first stop was Sweven’s still-paid-for rented flat. The matchbox-sized hellhole from which I rescued her like a flea-ridden puppy.
I banged on the door until my fists were red and sore. No one answered.
“Open the door, Emmabelle. I know you’re there!”
One of her neighbors shuffled outside their apartment, clad in a Big Lebowski robe, a joint dangling from the side of his mouth.
“You’re wasting your time, man. She hasn’t lived here in a few months. Moved in with her rich boyfriend.” The neighbor puffed on his spliff, cocking his head to the side. “Come to think of it, he looked a lot like you.”
She hadn’t come back home.
My next destination was Persephone and Cillian’s place.
I tried calling Belle the entire journey. She did not pick up.
Not one to be deterred by her lack of availability, I left her voicemails left and right while trudging along the painfully slow traffic of Boston during rush hour.
“Hello, darling, it’s your boyfriend. The one you just left with a fucking note. Yes, the same one whose baby you’re carrying. If you think we aren’t going to talk about it, you’re gravely mistaken. Oh, and by the way, whatever happened to the fact that people are trying to KILL YOU? Ring me back. Kisses. Dev.”
And then:
“Sweven. Hope your evening is going better than mine. Where are you? Also, if this is you telling me in a roundabout way Louisa’s presence is bothering you, may I suggest hiring a life or speech coach to help you with your communication skills? Call me back.”
And finally:
“Emmabelle fucking Penrose. Pick up the bloody phone!”
Things escalated from there.
I arrived at Persy and Cillian’s place, using the lion’s head brass knocker so hard it dislocated and dropped onto the floor. My girlfriend’s (yes, she was still that) sister informed me, rather regretfully, that her sister was not there.
“Are you saying this because you’re hiding the bloody wench, or because she’s really not here?” I stood on her threshold, panting like a dog.
“My wife said her sister’s not here.” Cillian appeared behind Persephone at the door, draping a protective arm over her shoulder. “Are you calling her a liar?”
“No, but I’m calling you an insufferable wanker.” I’d lost all form of etiquette and manners, resorting to hostility. “So I have a good reason to think someone might be hiding something. They’re close. They’d cover for each other.”
“Actually…” Persy squared her shoulders, looking rather haughty, “…I would like to know where she is too. I worry about her. She might not take the threats against her seriously, but I do.”
“Ask Sailor and Aisling,” I instructed her, but I was already pacing back to my car, making my way to Sailor. “Let me know if you hear anything.”
“Will do,” she called from her spot at the door.
Sweven wasn’t at Sailor Fitzpatrick’s house either. She wasn’t at Aisling Brennan’s place. She wasn’t at Madame Mayhem. She wasn’t anywhere.
It was as if a sinkhole swallowed her.
I called Brennan. After all, I paid him to have her followed, the boyfriend of the year that I was. When he didn’t pick up, I decided to pay him a visit. For what I was paying him, Emmabelle should not only be safe but also warm, cozy, and getting regular pedicures and three meals a day.
Bursting into the gambling room at Badlands, I flipped over a poker table. Sam was arranging a game with two senators and a business mogul. The chips fell on the floor with a clank.
He looked up.
“What the fuck?”
“The fuck is you fucked me over. I’m paying you a retainer to keep tabs on my girlfriend. Newsflash: it’s been a second since I hired you, and I have no bloody clue where she is.”
Sam ushered me to his back office. We rushed through a busy, narrow corridor, passing men who wanted desperately to stop and chat with us. I swatted them away like they were flies.
“Would you shut your trap? I have a goddamn reputation to uphold.”
“Where’s Emmabelle?” I bit out. We got to his office and I slammed the door behind us then proceeded to trash the place. I tossed his couch over, tore at a Roman curtain, and punched a hole in a portrait of Troy Brennan—an offense which was likely punishable with death by stoning.
“I’ve been calling and calling your arse. It went straight to voicemail.”
“Was busy buttering up Dumb and Dumber,” Sam said shortly, producing his phone from his back pocket and punching in a number. “Let me call my guys and check.”
The good news was they answered him immediately.
The bad news was that, well, THEY LOST HER.
“What do you mean they lost her?” My voice rose, and I found myself yanking his Apple screen from his desk and crashing it against the wall. “She is not a fucking thought thread. A subplot in a book. A pair of sunglasses. One does not simply lose a thirty-year-old woman.”
“She tricked them,” Sam said, lightly stunned by the revelation. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly agape. I gathered it didn’t happen to him often.
“She must’ve realized they were following her and tricked them.”
“She’s a smart woman,” I seethed. God, couldn’t she be just a little less perceptive?
Sam scowled. “You were the genius who didn’t want to tell her I was putting surveillance on her. In my entire career, no one I followed has ever managed to slip under the radar.”
“Thanks for the fun fucking fact.” I grabbed the collar of his shirt and jerked him toward me so our noses were crushed together. “Find my girlfriend by the end of tonight or I will personally ensure you and the DA who is covering for your arse are both dragged through court for the rest of your miserable lives to account for every crime you’ve committed over the last two decades.”
I stalked out of his club and went to the only person I knew may have some information—Louisa.
Louisa waited for me in a tiny crème and black lace bodysuit, complete with a corset that made her waist as nonexistent as my need to screw her.
“Hello, darling. Good to see you.”
She sidestepped from the door to allow me to walk in. As soon as I closed it behind us, I pinned her with a look that said a fuck fest wasn’t in the cards for us.
Know your audience, lass.
“Put something on.”
“Like what?” she asked, blinking slowly.
“A fucking raincoat if you wish. Do I look like a bloody stylist?” I grabbed something I suspected was a robe lying on a back of a chair and threw it at her. She wrapped it around herself quickly, drawing in a breath.
“What’s the matter?” She made her way to the wet bar to pour us some drinks.
“What did you do?”
Surprisingly, I sounded fine. Wry. Businesslike. Not like I was about to commit capital murder.
“What do you mean?” She stepped toward me with two glasses of whiskey, handing me one. I didn’t acknowledge the gesture nor the drink.
“What did you do?” I repeated.
“Devvie, stop being so weird, for heaven’s sake.”
She took a step back.
I took a step forward.
I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t want to find out.
Sweven brought out emotions in me I didn’t care to explore.
I’d always been calculated. Calm. Full of confidence.
I was not any of those things right now.
“What. Did. You. Do?” I took both glasses form her hands, putting them aside on a credenza, crowding her against the wall. We were inches from each other.
The air was charged with menace, violence. She could feel it.
Louisa wilted slightly and finally asked, “How much do you know?”
“Enough to know it reeks of your involvement.”
She stuck her chin up. “What I did may have been unethical, but it certainly wasn’t illegal.”
“Wasn’t illegal?” Yup. I was roaring in her face now. Her hair flew back from the impact. “There are people after her! She is on the run!”
“People after her?” Louisa wore an expression of genuine surprise. “I did no such thing. I’d never send anyone to go after a woman, let alone a pregnant one. It goes against everything I believe.”
I gave her an aren’t-you-a-saint look.
She elevated her eyebrows, in a way that said, quote me on this, motherfucker.
I decided to strike her off the list of suspects. For now. Frank and my mother kept my hands full, as it was.
“You did something,” I maintained.
“A small something,” she countered. “Really small. Teeny-tiny, actually.”
“What did you do?”
“Devvie …”
“Now.”
“It was your mother’s idea.” She dug her fingernails into her fists, looking unbearably embarrassed, her cheek turned in my direction. She couldn’t meet my gaze.
“What did you do?” I asked for the millionth time.
“I can’t tell you. You’ll hate me.”
“Too late. Already there. Now, for the last time, before I make you regret the day you were born—what happened between this morning and this evening to inspire my girlfriend to leave me?”
All the air was sucked from the room in the moment before her confession.
“I paid her.”
It was out in the open now. The admission.
And once it was out, Louisa proceeded, gingerly throwing another crumb of information.
“It’s Ursula, Devvie. She was relentless. Completely unhinged. Time is ticking. She got nervous … gutted, really … and …” She shook her head frantically, reaching for my face. I threw her hands away.
“And?”
“And she wrote her a one-million-dollar check.”
“Fucking hell.”
“And Emmabelle took it,” Louisa added desperately, her small fists balling around the fabric of my dress shirt. “She took the check, Devon. What does it say about her? She doesn’t love you. Doesn’t need you. Doesn’t see you. I ache for you every day.”
She spoke the words to my shirt, unable to look at me when she said them.
“You’re my first and last thought. You’re always in the back of my mind. Loving you is like breathing. It’s compulsive. Let me love you. Please. Just give me a chance, and I’ll be everything you need me to be.”
“You can’t be everything I need you to be.” I stepped backward, letting her stumble a little before gaining her composure. “Because you’re not the woman I love.”
Her eyes were big and full of tears. I walked over to a small dining table, picked up her phone, and handed it over to her.
“Now you’re going to call and tell your pilot that’s on standby that you will be leaving tonight. Go back to England. You will never set foot in Boston again. Not as long as I’m alive. And if you ever come back—”
I paused, thinking about it. Louisa’s face was now marred with makeup and tears. A concoction that gave her a slightly comical look, like she was a long-lost Cradle of Filth member.
