Deceptive Innocence (3 page)

In battles of passion there are so many tactics that can be used to overpower your opponent: displays of strength, aggression, and dominance, and then there are the equally effective acts of gentleness, attentiveness, romance, devotion.

It seems Lander has mastered them all.

As he continues to make little circles around my clit with his tongue, I grab the comforter beneath me, and I’m writhing under him . . . It’s almost too much.

“Look at me, Bell. See who’s doing this to you.”

My eyes move down, and yes, I can see him, tasting me, watching me.

And when he adds his fingers to the equation, once again thrusting them inside me while his tongue continues to play, it takes only a moment for me to explode again.

He pulls away, raises himself back up so he’s hovering over me. He kisses my cheek as he tugs at my hair.

“Bellona,” he whispers, “such a beautiful warrior.”

I watch, almost in a daze, as he reaches over into his nightstand and pulls out a condom.

I take it from him, feel the aluminum wrapper between my fingers. I know what this means.

It means I’m really going to do this. I’ll never be able to say I just got swept up in the moment. This is a purposeful, willful act.

I tear open the package and take him in my hand as I slowly pull the condom over the tip of his cock, rolling it out gradually over every inch, letting my fingers slide along its length as I pull away.

There’s nothing stopping us now.

He moves on top of me again, directing my face toward his. I feel his erection pressing against me, but he doesn’t move, just hovers there, waiting, a strange glint in his eyes.

I try to reposition myself, force him inside me, but he grabs my arms and holds me against the bed as I wriggle my hips, desperate for satisfaction.

“What is it?” he asks, a teasing melody to his voice. “What do you need?”

My cheeks turn bright pink as I absorb the question, as I come to grips with the answer he requires.

“Please,” I whisper, but he just looks at me, silently demanding more. “I want,” I begin again in a voice that hovers between pleading and sighing. “I want . . . I want . . .
you
.” And then I raise my chin, almost defiantly, as I add, “I need you to fuck me.”

And in an instant he’s inside me, filling me, making me cry out, my arms still securely held against the bed as my hips rock against his. My body has won the battle it’s been waging against my mind, overpowering my thoughts and logic with waves of intense and illicit pleasure.

I can feel that I’m about to come
again
. No, my mind can’t make sense of that at all, but my body tenses, welcomes the building intensity . . .

. . . and then Lander pulls back so that now only the tip of his erection is inside me. Again I try to buck my hips, but he holds me off. He’s toying with me, making me ache as he pulls out and then pushes in just a little farther. Again I want to look away—to deny that this desire is real—but I don’t. I watch him as my own breathing turns into a pant. Again he pulls out before pushing in just a bit more. The light in his eyes is impish, playful.

“Please,” I say again, my body now screaming for release. “Please . . . more.”

He pauses for just a heartbeat, and then with intense force he thrusts deep inside me, over and over, setting my whole universe on fire.

Enemy.

He releases my arms and I dig my nails into his shoulders, run them roughly down his back, trying to recapture some of that anger, just a bit of my resolve.

This man is my enemy.

“So you
are
a warrior,” he says softly, and in an instant he pulls away. Before I can protest he turns me on my side as he sits up, back on his knees, straddling my left thigh and raising my right leg over his shoulder. With focused power he enters me again, rotating his hips so that every nerve ending inside me feels the impact. His name bursts from my lips and I quickly cover my mouth with my hand as if I can somehow take it back.

“Look at me,” he reminds me. “See me.”

The request has a note of vulnerability, and yet as I meet his eyes I know he’s the one in control. In control of my body and, in this moment, my mind. In this moment he is everything.

This man. My enemy.

Again I touch his chest, feel the thin layer of sweat, and watch him as he watches me . . . as he brings me back to the brink.

He whispers my name as I cry out again, this time to God, as my whole body spasms against him, responding to him as he grips my leg with one hand, as he touches my face, as he holds my gaze while he climaxes, as he again calls out that name . . .

. . . Bellona.

In a moment he collapses by my side. We both look up at the ceiling, breathless, his scent on my skin, mine on his. Right now everything’s mixed up like that, everything’s upside down and backward . . . and yet, in this moment, upside down and backward feels disturbingly good.

I reach over, take his hand.

“Please,” I whisper, “call me Bell.”

chapter four

S
econds turn to
minutes as we lie next to each other, embracing the silence. I watched him watching me as I was touched, as I was entered, as I came for him . . .

. . . and now I can’t meet his eyes.

He turns on his side, brushes my hair out of my face as I study the ceiling.

“What are you thinking, warrior?”

“I’m . . . I’m thinking this is a really nice place.” I can usually deliver my lies with conviction, but not now, not while my body is still trembling, my mind still reliving the way he kissed me, the way he moved inside me.

He smiles, knowing I’m not telling the truth and not caring. His eyes roam the room, as if trying to view his dark wood furniture, the fireplace, the few pieces of designer men’s apparel that have been casually left on the floor for the first time. “It fits my needs,” he says.

I bite back a laugh. If he
needs
all these things, then he must be the neediest man on earth. “What do you do, Lander?”

I know the answer too well.

“I work for a bank.”

“Ah, so you got all this on a teller’s salary?”

The way he slid his hand up my inner thigh, the way his fingers caressed me, toyed with me until I cried out.

“I’m a VP,” he explains with a smile.

“Wow, you worked your way up in the world at the young age of . . . I’m guessing you’re around thirty?”

When he found that spot on my neck, the way he teased it with his tongue, alerting me to sensitivities I didn’t even know I had.

“Thirty-two, and no,” he says calmly. “My father is the CEO, my brother’s a managing director. I was given what I have. I didn’t earn a thing.”

The admission is unexpected, and it jolts me out of my revelry. I look at his face, searching for either smugness or regret, but neither is there.

“Does it bother you?” I ask. “Having everything come so easily?”

“No,” he says, his hand sliding over my stomach, stroking my skin. “I’ve added my own complications to my life,” he continues. “In the end nothing will be easy at all.”

“In the end,” I repeat, trying to ignore the slow circular movement of his palm. “That sounds so final.”

“Endings usually are.”

“We should drink to that.” I sit up and hold the comforter over my breasts. If there was ever a time for modesty, this is not it. But I’m feeling shy now, unnerved by what he was able to unleash.

“Let’s drink to happy endings,” I say, keeping my voice casual, flirty.

His eyes sparkle in the dark as he examines me. “I don’t believe in happy endings.”

“Then what do you believe in?” I pull back a little more, grab one of the dress shirts I spot crumpled by the bedside, and throw it on. “What should we toast to?”

He sighs, but his smile is bemused as I inch out of the bed. “If we have to toast to something, let’s toast to justice.”

Again I’m hit with a wave of uncertainty. That came out of left field. Does he suspect?

“I don’t think I understand,” I say slowly. “How did we move from endings to justice?”

“You asked me what I believe in,” he says. “I believe that a lot of the things we strive for in this life are either unattainable, illusions, or a matter of luck. Like security, happiness, or even . . . well,
love
. But justice . . . I think we can actually have that. I think that if we work for that, if we make justice a primary ambition, then it’s attainable. It’s the philosophy I live by.”

“But . . . you’re a banker.”

Lander breaks out in a laugh so rich and warm I can’t help but join in. “I guess I wasn’t thinking in professional terms,” he admits. “I was thinking more along the lines of . . . of social justice, I suppose.”

“Ah.” I study my ring. “I think I get it. Justice is . . . well, it’s a good goal. Very noble. Maybe even attainable, for some—but I’m not sure it is for everybody. It’s . . . elusive sometimes, I think.”

“Even for the goddess of war?”

“Battles are never easy, not even for the Roman gods.” I button the shirt quickly, my eyes now on the floor. “But I’m not craving justice right now anyway,” I lie. “All I’m craving is a drink.”

He smiles. It’s a knowing smile. It’s disconcerting. “If it’s important to you, I’ll get us drinks.” He starts to get up, but I put out a hand to stop him. I lean in, touch my lips to his.

“Stay where you are,” I whisper as I pull away. “Tonight, at this moment, I want to serve you.”

He doesn’t respond; he isn’t meant to. I smile teasingly and leave the room.

My bare feet pad lightly against the cold hardwood floor, down the hall, to the living room, where the bar is. I reach for the cognac. A strong drink, both rich and flavorful. I select two brandy snifters, pour the liquor, and then, over one glass, gently tap the garnet on my ring. The stone moves aside, revealing a miniature pillbox that forms the base of the ring itself.

A pillbox filled with white powder.

I was surprised by how easy it was to find such a ring and by how affordable they are, as if poison rings are just novelty items, as if their name means nothing.

And no one expects sinister acts from a woman wearing pretty antique jewelry.

I smile as the crushed sedative slips into the drink.

When I reenter the bedroom he’s waiting for me, watching me . . . but he sees nothing. Not really.

I step over a discarded pair of jeans. “You shouldn’t be so careless about where you leave your clothes, Lander.”

“Brazen words from a woman whose clothes are currently strewn all over the living room.”

“And whose fault is that?” I sit by his side, kiss him, give him one of the glasses. “To justice,” I say, raising the other.

He nods, joins in my toast.

As he takes a long sip, a new sense of calm washes over me. My eyes wander around the room. There to the right is another expensive nude, and to the left assorted thousand-dollar watches have been carelessly left on his dresser.

“When I was a little girl, the doorman buildings were like castles to me.” I toss my hair over my shoulder, fix my gaze on the floor-to-ceiling windows. “They’re not, of course, but the people who live in places like this . . . They’re a little like royalty, aren’t they? Everyone bows before them, craves their attention. They’re treated like kings and queens, princes and princesses.”

“Yes,” Lander says dryly. “My mother was treated like the dowager princess of Wales.”

I don’t know what that means, other than that he’s flaunting his education and it bothers me. I’ve read all of Lander’s favorite Shakespeare plays, learned tennis and chess, studied finance and art—all toward the goal of understanding and manipulating the world of the Gables. I should at least understand this man’s references.

Lander takes another sip and yawns. “Where did you grow up?” he asks.

“Brighton Beach,” I lie. But it’s the perfect answer to give someone like him. It implies that I don’t come from wealth, but also not from a place of abject poverty. I need to be an outsider to keep Lander’s interest, just not as much of an outsider as I actually am.

With our backs propped up by pillows, we drink and chat for a few more minutes about innocuous things—the gentrification of Brooklyn, the weather, the music we like—and then, as I snuggle up close to him, he yawns again.

“I’m sorry,” he says as he puts his empty glass on the nightstand. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

“I wore you out, baby,” I say, slipping back to my old speech patterns. It doesn’t matter; he won’t remember this anyway. I adjust the pillows and then put my hand on his chest. Gently but firmly I push him back so that we’re lying down again, his body relaxing into the firm mattress. “You surprised me tonight. You’re a lover
and
a fighter.”

“Yes,” he says, but the
s
is drawn out, making the word sound like the hissing of a snake.

“You learn those moves at Oxford?” I ask, and he smiles, mumbles something unintelligible. “Did you fuck lots of girls in Merry Ol’ England?” I ask, my voice laced with venom and sarcasm. I straddle him, my hair spilling forward again as his eyes go to half-mast. “Did the girls line up for you? Did you insist that they look at you when they took off their clothes? Did you make them admit to being wet for you?” I run my fingernails lightly along his throat. “You probably don’t think I’m special at all, do you?”

But now Lander’s asleep.

I smile, lean over, and whisper in his ear, “But I
am
special, Lander. I’m special because I know who you are. You’re the guy who stands by your daddy and brother even when it means destroying someone else’s family. Even when it means taking a mother away from her daughter and locking her up for a crime she didn’t commit. I’m special because I know that. And I’m special because I’m the girl who’s going to teach you and your whole fucking family what karma is. You think I get excited during sex?”

I roll off him and rise to my feet. “Just wait until you see me get off on vengeance.”

chapter five

N
ow that Lander’s
out for the night I’m free to explore. I sit in his home office, in front of his computer, waiting for it to boot up. The keyboard is cool to the touch . . . just as the glass was cool against my skin when Lander pressed me up against the window.

I shake my head fiercely and turn my attention back to the computer . . .

The computer that is asking for a password before it will open up its desktop.

Fuck.

I try a few numbers, his birthday, the date of his college graduation. But they don’t work, and I can’t risk trying anything more. I turn the machine off. I hadn’t noticed a laptop in the place, and even if there was one, what were the chances that it wouldn’t be password protected too?

I stand up, walk over to a file cabinet. But it’s mostly filled with things like cable and water bills. I have to assume that all the important stuff is filed electronically. There are a few cell phone bills that might be useful. I use my Android to take photos of each page, vowing to try to decipher them later.

I start opening drawers. In the first I find a spiral notebook. Inside are notes from bank meetings, a few scribbles about new FDIC regulations, nothing that isn’t likely already public information. I sigh and look back to the open drawer . . . and that’s when I see it: a book that looks suspiciously like a journal.

It seems unlikely to me that Lander is the kind of guy who would tell his secrets to a diary, but you never know. I put the financial notebook down on the desk and pick up the book. But when I open it I don’t find words—I find pictures, drawings that look like they were done quickly but are actually pretty good.

They’re caricatures. The first one is of a woman with a perversely large bustline and dollar signs in her eyes. She carries a Chanel purse, peeking out of which is a little shih tzu or something with a diamond collar. The words
Dogged Girl
are written boldly underneath the image.

Another is of politicians made to look like marionettes. That one’s labeled
Thrusting Spell
, whatever that means.

There’s a drawing of a crying woman in a hospital gown, on her knees, clutching at the pant leg of a man wearing a crown as he tries to walk away, titled
A Cad Feels Spewing Sorrow
.

And then there’s a drawing of a man in a suit, a nail sticking out where his heart should be. He stands arm in arm with a much older man whose suit pockets are turned inside out as he hands what is apparently the last of his fortune to a smiling boy with shark teeth. The boy looks like he’s going to eat the money being handed to him . . . Scratch that, he looks like he’s going to bite off the man’s entire hand. The title of this piece is actually pretty self-explanatory:
Bite, Torture, Ruin
.

The weird thing is that the boy with the sharp teeth looks a little like Lander.

The last picture I find is of a man who looks a lot like the older man from the last drawing. Except in this image, he’s the one with the sharp teeth, and he’s snarling down at a man who’s lying on his side, apparently sleeping and peacefully unaware of the threat looming overhead. The picture is rendered so we only see the sleeping man’s back. The title of that one is
E’s Wolflike Indecency
.

Pretty dark stuff for a spoiled rich kid.

But that’s not a big surprise. What does surprise me is his talent. I take a moment to photograph each picture. He did these drawings for himself, and they were clearly inspired by things, events, and people, which means this sketchbook is a journal of sorts. I just have to figure out what it’s really saying.

I turn the page again. There’s a list of names:

Ahmadi

Akbari

Najafi

Narndar

Talebi

???

That’s it. Five names and some question marks. Probably just another form of doodling, but I take a snapshot of the list anyway before putting the book and the notebook back and opening another drawer. Perhaps I’ll find a flash drive or something—I
have
to find something really good, otherwise what exactly did I get out of the evening?

On my knees, my hands sliding down his hard thighs as I pull off his jeans . . .

Again I try to shake off the image, but it’s not so easy this time.

Standing in front of me, naked. I push the jeans aside; something in the pocket hits the floor with a faint knock . . .

Something in his pocket . . .

Maybe?

Possibly?

I immediately turn and go back to the living room, find the jeans . . .

. . . and his smartphone.

I pick it up, activate it . . . and it’s not password protected.

Such a small misstep on his part.

And such a major victory for me.

I flip to his text messages. There are a few from women, hopeful texts. You can hear the unwritten words:
Will you save me, Lander? Will you share your life, your love, your checkbook?

Looking at Lander’s responses, when he bothers to respond at all, the answer is always a resounding
No
.

Then there are the texts from his brother. Those are friendly but impersonal. The ones from his father, Edmund Gable, are incredibly curt. He never asks Lander to meet him; instead he tells him to. There isn’t one text complimenting an achievement but many cataloging his mistakes. If Edmund loves his son, he doesn’t express it here.

Oh, and look at all these texts from Lander’s BFF, Sean White.

I study the name on the screen for a moment. It sounds so innocuous. A man with a name like Sean White could be a waiter, a lawyer, an actor, a janitor,
anything.
But of course he’s not just anything, he’s the head of security for HGVB Bank.

He used to be a cop.

• • •

I remember the
first time I saw Sean White, all those years ago. The night had been off-kilter from the get-go. A little before eight p.m., my mother had told me that we were going to meet Nick Foley in Brooklyn Heights.

Nick had apparently texted my mother on that new, fancy phone he had just gotten her. He had asked us to come over, said he was going to take us out to a movie. It was the first time he had ever offered such a thing, and my mother was so excited. Her lover was acknowledging her. He had chosen her over his wife. At least that’s what she had told me this meant. She looked into my eyes and explained that love conquered all. She told me that our lives were about to change. No more run-down apartments with bars on the windows, no more Top Ramen dinners, no more worries about gang-ridden schools.

“Nick is going to take care of us,
mija
,” she said. “He’s going to love us.”

It was confusing to hear. On the one hand I had desperately wanted my mother to be a real-life Cinderella . . . but then, Cinderella’s prince hadn’t been married to somebody else.

We got in my mother’s run-down Toyota, and by eight thirty we were parked in front of Nick’s house. My mother told me to wait in the car.

It felt . . . wrong. Even at ten I understood that my mother had committed a sin, and sins couldn’t be rewarded by riches. That wasn’t how fairy tales worked.

So I sulked in the car as my mother went to the front door of Nick’s five-million-dollar Brooklyn Heights home. I plugged in to my portable CD player and turned up the volume to an eardrum-shattering level as my mother rang the doorbell and then, after a moment, tried the door, which gave way for her.

Watching my mother walk into that house, all I could think about was that she didn’t deserve her good fortune. She didn’t deserve to ride off into the sunset with this man . . . and yet . . . wouldn’t it be nice to live in that house, right here on this pretty street with all these gracefully arching trees? In my bedroom at home I could always hear people outside yelling, drunk, threatening. On the street where I lived with my mother there was always something to fear.

But here? On this street in the nicest part of Brooklyn? Everything felt safe.

That’s what I was thinking as I sat alone in the car, admiring the way the leaves glistened under the streetlights, listening to Madonna sing about the equalizing power of music.

I didn’t see my mother come running out of the house. I didn’t see her until she was flinging herself back into the driver’s seat, a cell phone pressed to her ear. The car was dark—our interior lights broken long ago—but when I pulled off my headphones I could hear the panic in my mother’s voice. And I saw that there was some kind of stain on her shirt and something dark and wet on her hands.

“Yes! I just found him! Please come!
¡Dios mío!
Please come! There’s so much blood! His heart . . . I can’t feel his heartbeat!
¡Auxilio!
”

Auxilio
: “Help.”

In minutes the night was alive with sirens and flashing lights. Soon Nick’s neighbors were on the sidewalk, cops were everywhere . . .

. . . and my mother was kneeling by one of those pretty trees and vomiting onto the dirt. A few policemen tried to talk to her, but she was barely coherent.

That’s when Detective White showed up. He stood over my mother, seemingly impassive and disinterested.

I knelt by my mom’s side and held her hand as Detective White asked his questions.

“Are you an illegal?” he asked her.

The question was enough to startle my mother into silence, her sobs catching in her throat as she shook her head. She managed to assure him that she was born here, in America, but had been raised in Mexico. She then tried to bring Detective White back to the point. “Did they find the attacker in the house?” she asked. Had he seen Mr. Foley, on the ground, covered in all that blood? Was he really . . . dead? Who could have done that to this man, this man whom she loved? This man who was kind and gentle . . . and important. A senior VP at HGVB Bank. This kind of thing just didn’t happen to men like that! It couldn’t!

“You were sleeping with him?” Detective White asked.

My mother had simply stared at the detective, openmouthed. She then glanced at me, shame covering her face.

“Hey, don’t worry, I get it,” Detective White continued. “You were already on your knees scrubbing his floors, so when he walked up to you, his fly in your face, you figured, ‘What the hell, I’ll clean his pipes while I’m down here.’”

My mother got up, pulling me up with her.
“
Mija
,” she said sharply, “get back in the car.”

But it was too late. Another officer came over. A woman this time. “This the kid?” she asked before kneeling down and taking my hand, pulling me gently away from my mother. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” she cooed.

And that’s when the world started spinning. Detective White was suddenly slapping handcuffs on my mom while he read off her Miranda rights. He wasn’t rough about the way he handled her. There was no hint of the lecherous bully who had been questioning her only seconds earlier . . . not now that the other cop was within hearing distance. Now he was the picture of professionalism.

The female officer led me even farther down the street, shielding me from the sight of my mother being hauled away. So I didn’t have to see that.

But I heard it.

I heard my mom screaming my name.

Later my mother would tell the police how Nick had texted her, asked her to come over. But Sean White testified that they were never able to find Nick Foley’s phone and that when he took my mother’s phone the memory had already been wiped clean.

My mother maintained that Nick had planned to leave his wife for her, but Sean White insisted that all evidence pointed to the fact that the opposite was true, that my mother had been stalking Nick even though he had rejected her.

There were people who said that they heard what they now think might have been a gunshot long before my mother arrived at Nick Foley’s home, but Sean White “proved” that those witnesses weren’t credible. But he was able to find two witnesses who were, two witnesses who swore to hearing a gunshot just minutes before my mother called the police.

There were rumors that Nick Foley had had a recent falling-out with the CEO of HGVB, Edmund Gable, but Sean White was able to squash those rumors well before the case came to trial. He said that a thorough investigation proved that Nick Foley was actually incredibly fond of Edmund. He admired him! In fact, Nick loved the whole Gable family! Both Lander and his brother made statements supporting this.

In the end, my mom was sent to prison while I spent the rest of my childhood in a series of foster homes.

Three months after that, Sean White resigned from the force and accepted Edmund Gable’s offer to head security for the New York offices and branches of HGVB Bank.

But that detail didn’t make the papers.

Sometimes, when I sleep, I can still hear my mom screaming. It sounds like the screams of a dying woman. In the end, that’s exactly what they were. The death of her lover, the charges, the trial, the conviction, losing her daughter . . . All these things led to her suicide. It never occurred to me that she would do something like that, but it should have. I failed her in so many ways.

• • •

My grip on
Lander’s phone is now so tight that the tips of my fingers are white. I can literally feel my rage sharpening, stabbing at my heart.

That’s good.

That’s inspiring.

With a deep breath I bring myself back to the present and scrutinize the texts. There’s nothing incriminating here, not really. But there are a few cryptic messages from Mr. White. A text that reads,
I made the problem go away.
And another farther down that reads,
Made the switch.