Vengeful Love: Black Diamonds (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

I squeeze my eyes shut, telling myself repeatedly that I don’t need to cry.

Why haven’t you found me?

A sob leaves my chest as a tremor runs the length of my body. I hang my head and drag air through my teeth.

“Dad, if you’re there, please help me.”

Dawn descends outside, the sky now a lighter shade of grey. It’s the only guide I have as to how long I’ve been here. My guess is twelve, maybe thirteen hours. I’m freezing. It’s hard to tell which part is producing the most pain. My head throbs. My arms and back are ablaze. Even my fingertips and my toes are stinging. I try to rotate my wrists in the cuffs but there’s no give and being chained to the table stops me from sitting upright.

When Nick grabbed my throat, I lost Stuart’s coat and I’m back to my black skirt and cream blouse—the clothes I wore expecting a day in my office.

I need a way out.
Gregory hasn’t found me yet, which means there aren’t enough clues. If there were, he’d have found them. He’d be here, with Jackson, saving me.

Nick wants money and Gregory will give it to him.
But when? At what cost? His life?
I have to get to him first. I could confess to Trina.
Then what would happen? Would she let me go?

My best chance. My only chance, is Stuart.

He feels alone. He never met his parents. I can empathise. My mother left.

I wait. Hoping he’ll come. Willing him to come. If nothing else, I need a drink. My body is weak and if I weren’t sitting, I don’t think I’d be conscious. I need water.

I watch the sky turn lighter still, grey in the dull winter weather, but day. There’s something about the new day that makes me hope, lets me find the faith I lost in the dark.

He’ll come for me.

* * *

I brace myself as the metal door screeches against the floor and when Stuart appears, I raise my eyes to the ceiling and thank my father for his help.

Stuart stalks towards me. “Put your head back.”

I choke on the water, my body rejecting the cool sensation on my throat. He retrieves his coat from the floor and hangs it back around my shoulders. Then he takes a banana from the side pocket of his combat trousers and peels.

“Please let my hands go.” I wince as the words leave my throat.

He unlocks the cuffs and releases one hand so I can slump back in the chair. He offers the banana to me and I want it but my arms are numb. I open my mouth and he nods, snapping pieces and placing them on my tongue. It’s funny, I’ve never noticed how sweet bananas are but now I feel like I can taste every fragment of sugar as my jaw moves slowly, chewing and swallowing like I’ve never had solid food. When I’m done, I’m able to lift my arm for water and I gulp down the rest of the bottle, placing the empty on the table.

Something’s changed. He doesn’t have venom or fight. It’s just Stuart. Soft eyed, dark haired, young.

“My mother left me when I was a child,” I say. “I was five. She took me to school one day and never came to pick me up. She walked out on my father and me.”

He shuffles on the table’s edge, moving to the side then back where it started. He folds his arms, then moves his hands to his lap. Finally, he moves his hands to either side of his hips and grips the lip of the table.

“Did she love you?”

“I think so. She said so.” I shrug. “I ask myself that question a lot. If she loved me, would she really have left? If she loved me, why didn’t she ever come back or try to contact me?”

I don’t know if it’s working. He focusses on an invisible spot on the concrete floor. I wait. Like Gregory would, I leave space for Stuart to fill the silence. Eventually, he does.

“At least you knew her. I’ll never know where I really came from.”

“You were adopted?”

“I was in the system for years.” His face twists with a look that’s full of disgust. “A delinquent, they called me. Then I got foster parents. Time and again, new parents. Apparently, my mother gave me to a family she knew at first. I think they thought one day she’d take me back. I don’t know.” He exhales, still fixed on the same spot of concrete. “She never did. She killed herself.”

“I’m sorry.”

He lets out a short puff that rocks his body, then lifts his head to look at me. His browns are wide. Beautiful.

“I’m not even from Zimbabwe.” He laughs again, though the sound is drenched in sadness.

“Where are you from?”

He looks to the window now as if he’s wondering whether he wants to talk at all. “She had money. She was middle-class. The family who had me at first, they say she killed herself because she was forced to give me up. They say she was too young and I would have brought shame on her and her parents.”

“I’m sorry.” I say it again because I don’t know what else to say. Those two words have so little meaning.

He makes a noise somewhere between anger and pain, and rubs his hands over his face. “See, the kicker is, my mother, she had a younger brother. He’s alive.”

He walks to the window and turns to face me, dropping his back against the wall and lifting one foot flat against the surface behind him.

“She gave me up but they never did anything to hurt him. They never made him want to kill himself. They went on with their lives. Playing happy families.” His square jaw tightens and the look on his face, those familiar eyes, makes my stomach sink. “By the time I turned eighteen, I’d spent so many years hiding in my room, messing with computers, I was a tech whiz. I could hack anything, create software that no other kid of eighteen could create. I used that. I tracked down her family.”

I hold my breath now and I think I’m more terrified than I’ve been in the entirety of the last fifteen hours.

“I traced them all, my grandmother, my grandfather and my uncle.” He moves away from the wall and stands over me. “My search brought me to England.”

A million disordered thoughts crash through my mind.

“My uncle is a billionaire. A tech billionaire. Imagine the coincidence. I watched him for weeks, never knowing whether to approach him, not knowing if I had the courage and if I did, how I’d do it.”

My eyes sting and this time, I don’t think I’m strong enough to cool the fire.

“I put Black Diamonds on the market.” He laughs again and rubs a hand across his chin. Then he paces next to me. “I thought, I thought if I made something of myself, that he’d be interested in me. But deep down, I knew, I knew they’d gotten rid of me once, they wouldn’t want me now.”

“Stuart, who is your uncle?”

He stops but it’s so clear. Those brown irises, magnetic, alluring. His dark, square features. His tall body.

“You know it’s him,” he whispers.

His name floats from my lips like it’s being carried on wind. “Gregory.”

He doesn’t react, as if he’s known this moment would come, as if he’s been waiting for it.

“You’re Elsa’s son.”

He nods once and his lips twist like he’s fighting emotion.

I move my free hand to my mouth as silent tears roll down my face. Kevin Pearson raped his daughter and she bore his child. Gregory said she was sent away for a time but he never understood why. Now I do.

“Stuart, he doesn’t know.”

“Bullshit!” He turns and fiercely punches the wall, cracking the plaster further, a strangled wail escaping him as he looks at his damaged hand.

I try to stand but my legs are lifeless. “Stuart, you have to believe me. He doesn’t know. I know about Elsa, about your mother. I know she killed herself and I...” I hang my head and my words are barely audible. “I know why. She went away, Stuart. Gregory was only a boy and he didn’t know why she left, never mind why she came back.”

He faces me, his eyes wet. I can feel his thoughts flying, as frantic as my own.

“Think about it. If he knew and didn’t care about you, he would never have employed you and taken a chance on you. He loves Elsa. If he knew her son was out there, if he knew he had a nephew, he’d want to know you.”

His shoulders sag and his breath hitches.

“He tried to help her, Stuart, and one day he can tell you about her. You could have a family. Your family. Gregory cares. He’s the most loving man I know. I want you to know him, to see that about him.”

He slumps onto the table in front of me as a tear rolls down his cheek. I reach out cautiously and when he doesn’t pull away, I wrap my hand around his. “
I
would like to get to know you, Stuart.”

He looks up to me now and I know I’ve gotten through to him.

“I don’t know how this happened,” he whispers. “I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to punish him for being the child they chose. I wanted to take from him the way they took from me.”

“But he didn’t, Stuart. Please, believe me.”

“I do.” He squeezes my hand then wipes his face with his other. “I don’t know what to do. This wasn’t part of the plan. He was supposed to just buy the game for the price Nick wanted.”

I nod, taking a deep breath, not yet able to put all the pieces together. “You need to go to Gregory. You need to tell him where I am. You have to warn him about Nick and Trina. Trina has a gun. I don’t know about Nick. You have to tell him.”

“He’ll kill me as soon as he sees me, Scarlett. There’s CCTV, the cleaner. He’ll know what I’ve done to you.”

“Then you have to make him listen. You have to tell him everything.”

“Isn’t this cozy!” We snap our heads to the door to see Nick. “I have someone on the phone who’d like to speak to you, princess.”

I take my hand away from Stuart’s. He’s afraid. Nick leans towards me, twirling my hair around his index finger, then he holds the phone to my ear.

“Scarlett?”

“Gregory?” His voice is more than I can take. A violent sob bursts from my chest, then another and another. “I love you!” I scream as Nick pulls the phone away.

“There’s your evidence. Ten o’clock.” He hangs up the phone then angrily takes my chin in his fingers. “Looks like your man’s coming to get you.”

I cast my eyes to Stuart and try in that moment to tell him to go. I don’t know whether he follows me or his own moment of enlightenment but he slips out of the room.

“I love you! Gregory, I love you!” Nick Henshaw mimics in a high voice before releasing my chin and bending forward to his knees, laughing from the depths of him. “Ah, you kill me.”

Before he leaves he cuffs my wrists in my lap and locks the door behind him.

* * *

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Trina says as she takes a seat at the table. “Well, lady, time’s up. For you. For him. Whatever. It’s nine forty-five. Your boyfriend will be here soon and when he comes, what do you think is going to happen?”

“He’ll give Nick the money.”

“Well, yes. I meant
after
that.”

I stare at her now, wanting to rip her head off, knowing I don’t have the strength but balling my fists in my lap nonetheless. I look at the door and contemplate whether I could make a run for it. She unholsters her handgun and rests it on her thigh. A silent warning.

“Do you think Nick is going to keep him alive, Scarlett? After everything that lying bastard has done, do you really think he’ll be allowed to hand over the money and walk away?”

She’s right. I know she’s right and it’s making me sick. My stomach is in knots and I’m praying, praying and hoping, that I really did get through to Stuart. That Gregory listened to him. That he comes prepared. Or doesn’t come at all. That someone comes. Anyone else to deliver the money. Then I feel guilty because whoever comes is walking into a fatal transaction. I know it and all I can do is hope.

Trina picks up her handgun and turns it in front of her face, considering every edge and nodule. “Nick’s is a lot like this. Cleaner. Newer, perhaps, but similar.”

One side of her lips turns up and she puts the gun back on her hip. “It was a good plan, don’t you think?” She shakes her head with a smirk. “Nick wants to take credit but he knows it was me. You see, I trailed Gregory. And you in the process.” She holds up her hands as if in apology and bile rises in my throat. “I knew things were off. I watched you both and you know something, it made me sick. Seeing your worry, him without a care in the world, going about his business.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Oh it was. You were just too close to see. Then I looked deeper into his files, and lucky, lucky, he had a sibling. Sister killed herself. Daddy was locked up. Couldn’t stand the thought of what Daddy had done to her. He’s like him, you know, Gregory. Like father, like son.”

“Don’t you dare liken him to that bastard. Don’t you fucking dare!”

“Keep your hair on.” She laughs. “So I kept digging and found out Daddy gave his daughter a baby. I banked that intel. Then I came to see you in Dubai.” She leans her head to one side with a fake sympathetic smile. “I really did try to give you a way out. You threw it back in my face. I guess, in lots of ways, you’re to blame for all this. You forced me to think up another plan. And as I’m doing that, what do you know, the illegitimate son pops up in London. It was beautiful really, the way it started coming together. Of course, Nick Henshaw was very willing to get one up on a man who stole from him.”

“That’s bollocks.”

She shrugs. “Is. Isn’t. I don’t care. It was Nick’s idea to take the game from Stuart and I have to admit, it was a neat idea. Take the game, cut Stuart in on the money. But it was me who knew about Stuart in the first place. I was the one who connected the dots and put them together. The problem was, I couldn’t quite see how I was going to get what I needed. Nick could force Gregory into buying the game, give him a taste of his own filthy, rich, corrupt medicine, but how would I get my confession? I tried leaking to the tabloids but you, and his money, cut me off.” She laughs, slapping her hands together and grinning against the tips of her fingers. “Then you brought it all together for me. You tied that game up in a court case. It was obvious then how we could all get what we want. And that’s what you’re going to do now, Scarlett, right now, you’re going to give me what I want.”

“Why would I give you anything?”

“Because I can end this. This is the grand finale, Scarlett, you must know by now that I have a cunning end.”