Delusive (47 page)

“Does that mean what I think it does? Do you want me to…marry you?”

“Yes, Leina. Before we go forward, a marriage between us needs to happen.”

I immediately looked at my naked left hand. It was a knee-jerk reaction and I couldn’t be sure why I had done it. Once, it had come close to having Elias’s ring on the fourth finger. It was everything I had planned for. The reason was different. The purpose was different. I wanted it, but not for the reasons he did. “I’m not going to my sister or the Feds. When I help you, it will be without them. I want to help. Not sure if I can do what you’re asking me to do…with the ring and what comes after it.”

“You need me,” he intoned, his brows furrowing. “I can’t protect you when you can’t do what I’m asking you to do. Even before things between us changed, this isn’t new information. I’ve repeatedly asked you for things and now you know the reason I needed you to behave a certain way.
 

“If you think you can walk away from this, you’re wrong. You only have two options, and I doubt you’ll sit back and let my father punish you. You can’t walk away. It’s no longer an option. I think you know that.”

I rubbed the back of my neck in discomfort. The scope of the truth no longer held Natanael at the center. Kirsten seemed to have something to gain in all of it as well.
 

I had to say yes to Elias to gain a foothold in the game now that so many things have changed and I was forced to be a player whether I wanted to be or not.
 

“Okay,” I finally agreed.

THAT NIGHT, ELIAS’S bed couldn’t have dwarfed me more and had never been colder. Being back in a place I no longer fit with didn’t help me sleep. The sudden light, pouring in from the hall into the bedroom, alerted me. I rolled over in bed to see Elias standing in the doorway. In only his boxer-briefs, his hair tussled in a bed-head sort of way, he plodded toward me. Pulling down the sheets, he crawled into bed with me to lay next to me. Facing me, he caressed my face tenderly. “This doesn’t change anything, Leina.”

I refused to nod and agree, because it changed everything. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

He rolled over, giving me a view of his broad and muscular back.

I snuggled up next to him, looping my arm around the curve in his waist and rested my palm on his tensely flexed torso. My nose pressed against his shoulder to fill my senses with his scent, his heat, the feel of his skin, and the lulling sensation of his breathing pattern.

“Twelve days,” he said, his voice vibrating through his back.

“What?” I questioned, confused.

“I haven’t been able to sleep through a full night in twelve days.” He moved again, slipping out of my hold and away from my reach to settle into bed.

THIRTY

THE DAY WAS A headache. If I had any questions about the state of the money in my mother’s will, it was squashed with a few words from the estate lawyer she and my father shared. I never saw a dime of the money my mother left me, because she was able to change her will before my father had her killed. She left almost everything to Holden. The only thing I had left from her was the car my father chose to use to take his own life.
 

I couldn’t blame my mother for edging me out of her will. She knew her daughter was blind and had to protect me the only way she knew how. What saddened me the most was that she’d prepared for my father’s wrath, because she knew all along he would try to kill her. If they ever had a loving relationship, it died quickly. I only wished I could remember the truth. All I saw was the best and the better times they had. Where did it all go wrong?

My father, on the other hand, had no will and was so deep in debt, they were going after his estate. There was nothing left to take.
 

Even though I was now legally married to Elias, I had barely a cent to my name. The money I earned at La Dentelle was funneled into the house my father rented and living expenses while we lived together. I continued to work, because I had no other choice. I was even considering taking on a second job so I had something to put in my bank account.

I was penniless, because I put so much money into exacting revenge. I wore a wedding set large enough to draw attention, but the route to get there was so clinical and cold it took less than fifteen minutes before I was declared Mrs. Cari.
 

It was a repeat of the scene I walked out on in Portugal. In Elias’s lawyer’s office, with two of his associates as witnesses and a man serving as an officiant who didn’t make us recite any sort of vows. Elias certainly wanted to make sure my ring was more extravagant than the actual "ceremony.”

It was completely sad, made sadder by the fact I’d lost two people in a matter of twenty-four hours; three if it counted my sister, who I finally realized, never really cared about me. When I tried to call her after my father’s death, her number had been disconnected. I even went so far as to track down an ex-girlfriend of hers whom I knew she was still friends with.

“Hanley, surprised to hear from you,” Sam greeted me warmly the moment she answered the phone.

“Hi, Samantha,” I said with a smile, trying to match the friendliness in her voice. “I’m trying to get a hold of Holden.”

“Oh, really? She’s not answering her phone? What did you need her for?” There was an unnatural delivery to her words, indicating she knew exactly where Holden was and why she was avoiding me.

“You don’t have to be so cryptic,” I told her. “I know she’s probably busy with a case.”

“Case? Holden doesn’t work for the FBI anymore… Shit!” In between elongated silences, I could hear Sam verbally beat herself up about disclosing the information to me that, I guess, I wasn’t supposed to know.

To push her to tell me more, I finally stated my purpose. “It’s fine. I’m not trying to bother her. I only wanted to tell her our father passed away.”

“Oh, Leina. I’m so sorry. I…” She sighed long and hard. “She was fired a while back for tampering with a case her department was building against your mother. She screwed with evidence, I think. They could’ve put her in prison, but for some reason, they just let her go. She and Whitney have been living in some tropical paradise they won’t even tell me the location of. Seems she’s doing pretty well. The last time I saw her in town, she was pretty happy, living off all the money your mother left her.”

“My mother left her a lot of money?”

“Well, you know. Those men left your mother all that money. Holden had more than one reason to make sure no one looked at your mom as a criminal. They would’ve taken the money away.” She exhaled again. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you. I’ve been keeping the secret for a long time. With your father gone, you should know.”

“Thank you. If you talk to Holden again, can you tell her about our father?”

“He died to her a long time ago. It would be redundant to bring her the news. Take care of yourself, Leina.”

I PROMISED ELIAS I would help with a mission I didn’t have the energy to finish. The woman I had devolved into was very foreign to me. I began to hate her and made sure I stayed busy to avoid dealing with her and her need to hold on to self-depreciating thoughts. It wasn’t the woman my parents raised to me to be—strong, phlegmatic, and practical—she was someone who was heart-broken and dying to be let out.
 

The house my father and I rented went back on the market seven days after I had officially moved out. It turned out the money I gave my father for rent never reached the landlord.

After I moved in with Elias, I barely saw him. There were times I thought he found out my schedule so he could be there when I wasn’t. We slept in the same bed, but we might as well have slept in separate bedrooms. In the week we’d lived together, we’d had one or two interactions that could be categorized as a conversation.
 

For work one day, I wore a revealing dress that was more in line with Skylar’s style. Elias let it be known I wasn’t leaving the house that way. Instead of pushing the issue, I changed my clothes. We hadn’t had another exchange since that day.
 

During the week we’d lived together since being legally married, only last night did we somehow wake up tangled around each other. But from Elias’s reaction, I wasn’t sure if it was a mistake, or if he was finally ready to forgive me in spite of his misgivings.

AT TEN-THIRTY on a Thursday, I’d finally made it to Elias’s house. A package addressed to me was at the door to the home. I wrestled with the package as I made my way inside. The house was entirely dark, implying that I was alone, as usual.

After flicking on the lights and heading into the living room, I set the box on the coffee table. Taking a switchblade out of my purse, I opened it. Wading through the bubble wrap and packing paper, I found what was inside—the gold-brushed urn containing my father’s remains.
 

Holding it in both hands, I looked around the room for a place to put it.
 

The second I placed it on the mantel of the fireplace, the door burst open, ushering in a stream of cold air.
 

“Hanley!” Elias called out in a panic, sending me into a state of further alarm.

I was also thrown by the fact he’d called me by the new name, when he seemed stuck on calling me Leina in a constantly cold manner. I caught his eye before he marched up the stairs.
 

Performing an about face, he walked up to me. Concern blanketed his face as he slipped his hands up my back, pulling me close to him. He kissed my forehead gently, calling my name as if asking if I was all right. “Why didn’t you pick up the phone?”

The warmth of his touch and the latent sizzle of his kiss on my forehead made it hard to function normally. I looked at my phone on the coffee table, remembering how many times it had lit up during the day while I was at work or doing errands. I blinked up at him in uncertainty.
 

I had no idea how I was supposed to be—how
we
were supposed to be. Were we in cahoots to reach the same goal, or two people fumbling around in a relationship alien to the both of us? He gave me whiplash with the way he behaved. I didn’t know which side I stood on anymore.
 

“I…was busy at work, and I didn’t realize it was you calling me, since…you don’t anymore. I—” I glanced at the urn on the mantel shelf, holding the ashes of one of the two people I never got to say goodbye to. I turned my gaze back on him. “Why were you so worried?”

Pressing his fingertips to my lips, he closed his eyes for a split second. “Don’t ever do that again. The second I call, pick up the phone. I thought the worst on the way here. Mental illness can be hereditary.”

“You thought I’d hurt myself?’ I asked, my words drawn out and filled with incredulity.

His chest heaved with a deep inhale. He released an exhaustive sigh he allowed to circle down my neck. His line of sight followed where I had glanced before. “I can’t pretend with you anymore,” he whispered.

“Pretend…what?”
 

Releasing me, he walked over to the fireplace mantel and fingered the urn. It was in his hands for a second before he threw it across the room. It slammed against a wall and slid down, sprinkling my father’s ashes to the ground.

I jerked the second the urn shattered. Gasping, I choked on my own saliva. Completely stunned he would behave startlingly mean toward me so soon after losing my father, I had trouble collecting my emotions. Taking deep wavering breaths, I staggered across the room to pick up the mess.

He grabbed my arm and pushed me up against the far wall. “Don’t pick that up. He didn’t deserve to be where you placed him. You should’ve thrown the remains out in the trash the minute you received them.”

“Elias!” I wheezed with my eyes wide in shock.

“How long are you going to keep this up, Hanley? I know you haven’t cried once over him. You’re going on with your life behaving as though you feel nothing. I know you feel it. Despite his failure at being a good father, you loved him. He used you. You were a puppet to him. Frankly, I don’t think that man was capable of loving anyone or anything.”

“No.” I shook my head with vehemence as my eyes clouded with tears. “My father loved me, Elias. Maybe he didn’t show it the way you think he should have, but he loved me.”

“He loved you so much…he killed himself and left you all alone? Does that make any sense to you? Because to me, it’s clear your father was a selfish bastard.”

“What…”—I choked up and had a difficult time continuing—“is wrong with you? Why are you being this way?”

“What is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you? He had your mother killed. He killed her husbands in cold blood. Does he seem like a man who deserves to be on anyone’s mantel?
 

“And your mother? Why does she deserve justice? I don’t know exactly how she was with you, but I can guess. She was probably worse than my mother, which is saying quite a bit. Why does she deserve retribution? Why are you avenging the death of a woman who probably cared even less about you than your father did?
 

“I know where your sister really is. She keeps her residence in Syracuse to fool people. But she really lives in a beach house in the Caribbean. She got everything your mother had while you got, what? A car?”