The Scandalous Billionaires Collection (71 page)

"Oh shouldn't I?" Suzy said, rolling her eyes
up towards the ceiling. "Let's just say this conclusion is based on
ten percent intuition and about 90% on those things up there?"

Harrison and Bella followed her line of
vision up to the light shade hanging from the ceiling. A pair of
lace, lavender panties dangled precariously from the ornate
fixture.

Harrison looked serious for a moment before a
smile cracked up his face and he shrugged his shoulders.

"What can I say?" He said. "We were in kind
of a hurry." .

********************

Twenty-four hours later Bella was sitting in
a crowded Penn Station waiting for her exchange partners. Laughter
and romantic hi-jinx were the farthest things from her mind now.
The piece of luggage she had with her suggested an ordinary
traveler catching an intercity train somewhere. She wouldn't have
guessed that a million dollars would be either that small
or
that heavy.

Her heart was pounding, her mouth painfully
dry.

Although she didn't expect any trouble, the
thought of handing that amount over to Steve and Stacy was
sickening, even if Harrison assured her that they would never get
to spend a penny of it.

She held her thumb ready over the panic
button in her pocket, just in case. The case was tucked under the
seat behind her legs and her other hand played with the locket
Harrison had given her for good luck. He said it was a little
trinket from his childhood and that it had served him well in
countless tough business negotiations.

She watched the crowd intently, straining to
see either Steve or Stacy and praying to get this thing over with
once and for all. A face far along down the people filled platform
came into view and then disappeared again and Bella felt her head
go light for a moment, as though she were in a dream. She blinked
her eyes and then peered into the sea of faces again. A terrible
wave of nausea overcame her as the face she had glimpsed came into
view again and she jumped to her feet in shock.

Harrison was watching everything on live feed
from a car outside in the street.

"Something's wrong." he said to Marsha who
was standing next to him.

"I don’t see anyone yet." she said. "Why is
she standing up?"

Back in the station Suzy was beginning to
feel woozy. Her finger hovered over the panic button but then she
released it and took her hand from her pocket.

The man she had spotted was nearly in front
of her now and Bella's heart was thundering in her chest. She
hadn't seen that face in nearly eight years, it was older now;
much, much older, but one she couldn't mistake.

"Daddy?" She gasped.

Her father's old and battered face was
disfigured with a twisted smile.

"That's right Bella." His voice was merciless
and hateful, a thousand times worse than Steve's attempts to sound
sadistic. "It's a family reunion."

She recoiled as he leaned in close to her and
felt his breath on her face.

"You did good honey, real good. Daddy's
little girl has made her old man really proud."

"That's the old pizza delivery guy." Marsha said with
an edge of urgency. "This isn't in the plan."

On the screen the man was leaning in close to
Bella and whispering something into her ear. She looked horrified
as he raised a telephone to her ear but she listened intently.

"She just called him Daddy Marsha. What the
hell is going on?" Harrison was ready to take action but he needed
to know who was who first.

Marsha peered at the screen. She knew the
face as well as she knew Stacy and Steve's. She had been watching
them for months and recognized instantly the delivery guy who had
been showing up regularly for the last four weeks. He was bit old
of the job but that wasn't so unusual and he had never once gone
inside the apartment; he just made his deliveries, collected his
money and then left.

"What are we waiting for?" Harrison was on
his feet already. "We need to get in there."

"Don't go anywhere Mr. Demovic. Leave this to
us." Marsha said firmly, but Harrison wasn't listening. In an
instant he was out on the street and heading for the nearest
station entrance.

Marsha cursed and then looked back at the
situation on camera. A train was pulling in.

"Shit." She knew instantly what was going
down. "Get Bella out of there now!" She barked the order at her men
but watched in disgust as the three grainy figures on the screen
stepped into the train. They came into sharper focus as the
employee with the camera approached them.

"Come on, come on." Her teeth were clamped
shut. This was it; the doors of the train were still open, her guy
had plenty of time.

"What the hell are you doing?" She hissed
under her breath in disbelief.

Bella was holding her hand up and blocking
the agent from getting on the train.

"Get back." Marsha heard her say. "I'm going
with him. Harrison, Marsha, I'm sorry. I've got to go with
him."

Her father pushed her out of the way and
aggressively shoved the agent back onto the platform. Bella caught
a hold of the door to steady herself and watched as Harrison raced
down the steps.

He was almost in time, but not quite. The
doors slid shut and she looked into his eyes as the train pulled
away. His powerful arms hammered against the window but already the
MTA Police were closing in on him.

A hand on Bella's shoulder pulled her around
and then shoved her into a seat. She didn't want to look up. The
face was one she had vowed never to see again in her whole
life.

"Just sit Bella. Don’t make a fucking scene.
Like I said, if you want to see mommy again, just do exactly as I
tell you to do."

She nodded her head in compliance and then
went rigid with fear as he sat down next to her. He gripped her
wrist tightly and she recognized with horror the grizzled,
sun-burnt hand and knuckles that had been raised so often against
her mother.

"First thing you need to do is call off the
bloodhounds. I know you're wearing a wire so you tell them to back
off, or I will."

She nodded again. She hadn't seen her mother
in six years and hadn’t heard her voice until just now. The kind
voice was unmistakable and there had been no decision for Bella to
make. She had failed her mother before by going to prison and not
finishing the job on her father. She wouldn't let her down this
time.

"Harrison, Marsha. Back off. You have to let
us go, he has… he has my--"

"Shut up, that's enough. Not another word
until we get where we're going. Now where's the wire?" He hissed
into her ear. She took the panic button from her pocket. Marsha had
told her that the innocent looking object served as a wire and that
with just a small squeeze it became a panic button as well.

She handed it to her father who looked at it
in wonder.

"Will you look at that? Not like my day with
all the goddamn wire and tape. These kids have it so easy." He
crushed the small device under his boot and smiled. "Just you and
me now kid." He said. "Just like old times."

Bella shuddered with disgust and didn’t speak
a word for the rest of the journey all the way across town. The
train continued on into New Jersey and she looked desperately out
the windows at every stop for a glimmer of hope but there was none
to be found. The train continued relentlessly on and the further
out they got on the line the emptier the carriage became until
eventually it was just the two of them alone together.

"That's better." Her father said as the last
person exited onto the platform. "Your rich boyfriend is back in
Penn Station crying over his one million bucks, but pretty soon
we're gonna find out how much he really loves you."

They arrived at the terminus where her father
took her to a battered old van, blindfolded her and then pushed her
to the floor. She was too terrified to speak. The ride was bumpy
and lasted about a half hour and when they got there he dragged her
roughly from the vehicle and pushed her inside before taking off
the blindfold.

She looked around to see a dingy, derelict,
badly lit room, but only one thing mattered to Bella; her mother
was there, Mabel Wilson, handcuffed to a radiator. She ran to her
and held her close while her father put a cuff onto her as well and
then dragged her to the other end of the radiator before locking
her in place.

"That's enough." He said gruffly. "Now you
two bitches are gonna pay for what you put me through."

Bella watched her mother shrink in fear but
she didn't move to comfort her. She couldn't. She was stunned. Her
mother was alive and her father wanted revenge on them both. What
it was he blamed them for she couldn't imagine.

This was a nightmare far beyond anything that
Stacy and Steve had created and it seemed as though the last four
years of her life had been utterly erased. The world of her
childhood had returned with a sickening vengeance.

Her father hefted the suitcase onto a rickety
table, unzipped it and then stabbed a finger at the light switch to
plunge the room into blackness. The terror Bella felt was visceral.
She could hear her father moving in the darkness and then saw the
glow of a black-light pen. Her father cursed and then clicked the
lights on again.

"Those two morons are lucky I found them." He
said referring to Steve and Stacy. "Marked bills, like I didn’t see
that coming. Doesn’t matter though; I'll just add this to the ten
million Demovic is gonna pay to get his family back."

Bella had once read about how the mind reacts
in extreme circumstances such as kidnapping. The feeling of
disassociation from reality is common together with the refusal to
accept what is happening. The sensation Bella felt of being outside
herself and watching terrible events befall another person was
intense.

She looked around at her old family. Her
mother was huddled in fear. The woman had never stood up for
herself throughout Bella's childhood, had allowed her own daughter
to go to jail without so much as a word in her defense and had then
disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving Bella to serve time
without knowing if she was alive or dead.

Then there was her father the abuser. He had
ruined her childhood with his drunken violence, sent her to prison
and now, after eight years of silence, he was kidnapping her in
order to extort money out of her lover's family.

These were her nearest and dearest.

If she had ever felt despair in her life,
this was the closest she had come. If these were her kith and kin
then what really was the point of it all? Maybe it was time to give
in. Sometimes you just can't win and all hope turns out to be a
wishful delusion. Surrender to the inevitable is the only sane
thing to do.

She trembled as she watched her father make
the phone call she had known must be coming.

"Demovic." The leathery old man barked into
the handset. "You want her back it's ten million. Plus a million
for the pile of marked garbage you dumped on me in Penn Station. I
want all unmarked this time. No bullshit."

He ended the call and grinned.

"Like taking candy from a baby." He said and
then looked down at his daughter, obviously feeling a little more
relaxed now that things seemed to be going according to plan.

"I hear you got one on the way Bella."

She looked at him but the words didn't
register.

"One what?" She said.

"A baby you moron, what do you think? Maybe
this one will turn out better than you did. Maybe this one won't
attack its own father with a piece of lead pipe." He spat the last
words at her. "Do you know I've never been the same since
then?"

He walked across the room and loomed over
her.

"Please don’t hurt her Franklin. Hurt me
instead." Her cowering mother said.

"Shut up Mabel." He shouted. "I'm not talking
to you. I'm talking to her." He paused. "And to my little
grandchild."

He hunkered down close to Bella.

"I always did love kids Bella." He looked
down to her stomach and then reached a hand out towards her.

It was enough; Bella felt the haze that had
surrounded her since she had seen his face on the crowed platform
lift and clear.

"Keep going." She said, watching his hand
come closer. "You touch me, my child or mom and I'll fuckin' finish
what I started eight years ago."

Her father's hand stopped and he stared at
her in shock. This was the girl who had gone to prison for clubbing
him over the head with a pipe. He drew his hand back.

"You better pray that boyfriend of yours
comes up with the money Bella. I'm not messing around this
time."

He stood up and left the room.

"Don’t go anywhere." He said as he closed the
door.

Bella watched for a moment to make sure he
was gone and then put her hand to her abdomen. There
was
a
point to it all and there
was
a reason to go on. Of course
there was. She couldn't give up, no matter what; not even if
Harrison abandoned them. She would never abandon the tiny life
inside her no matter what the circumstances.

"Bella."

She looked up. Her mother was reaching out to
her. She had dreamed of this moment almost nightly, ever since she
had given up hope waiting for her mother to visit her in jail. She
looked at the woman beside her now, her child's grandmother, and
didn't know what to feel.

"Mom, where were you all this time? I needed
you."

Mabel began to weep.

"I'm so sorry baby, I'm so sorry."

"Tell me something mom, please. It's been six
years. Where have you been all this time? I needed you so badly."
Her voice cracked and tears filled her eyes.

"It's him." Her mother said in a whisper,
fearing his return or that he might be still just outside the door.
"He came back. He wouldn't leave me alone. He blamed me for ruining
our family, for putting you in prison and for turning you against
him."