“I was on the roof,” she says, sounding exhausted. I’m glad she’s standing up for herself but it is sad that she needs to—against the man who was supposed to raise her.
“The roof,” he says, looking even angrier. “You took her there.”
Now I am the one exhausted. “Yes, and I can’t bring myself to regret it even seeing what it did to her. She should not be locked up like this. It’s killing her. Can’t you see that?”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “The only thing I see is a leech. That’s what you are. You see a poor little rich girl and think it’s your big payday. Well, you aren’t getting a cent from her.”
Of course I already have her money, but I don’t want it. That’s the irony of my life. Getting what I want and then wishing I had something else. “Are you any better? Wanting to marry a woman thirty years younger than you. One you’ve helped hide herself away.”
It looks like a vein might pop out of his forehead. “She told you that?”
“I’m right here,” Bea says, cross now. “And I can’t believe you two are fighting over me like you’re dogs and I’m a bone. I want to be alone now. I need to rest.”
She does need to rest but not alone. Perhaps I can convince her to let me stay. All we have to do is get rid of this arrogant bastard with his Italian suit. I know that I can wrap her in her bubble—stifling though it is—and make her feel safe again. “I’ll stay with you tonight.”
And then the man gives me a look so imperious it looks exactly like it did when I was a child. “You are nothing but trash,” he says, his voice the same from my memories. “That much is obvious from looking at you. Not to mention hearing you. I recognize the accent. Marrakesh?”
It’s him. My heart pounds a war drum. “Tangier, actually.”
“Yes, that sounds right.” A smirk, which seals his fate.
And then I’m on top of him, taking him by surprise. I’m not seven years old anymore. He can’t throw me off like I’m a pest to be disposed of. Can’t lock me in the closet this time, not with my hands wrapped around his fucking throat. His eyes are wide, mouth open as he struggles to take in air.
“Paulette Bellmont,” I say between gritted teeth. “Perhaps you remember her. She was a maid in a hotel. You stayed in the penthouse. Do you recognize my accent now?”
His mouth closes and opens, like a stupid fish. There are choking sounds.
“What are you doing?” Bea is beside me, tugging at my hands, not nearly hard enough to pull me away, nothing could pull me away. She looks shocked, horrified. Like I’m the monster instead of this asshole on the ground. “Let him go.”
For a moment my fingers loosen. When Bea asks me to do something, I wish to do it. When she wants me, I wish to deliver. It goes beyond my regular desire to please women. Beyond any sense of professional duty. This is about Beatrix, a woman who I never deserved to even touch.
Much less love. God, I love her. In the riot of emotion inside me, this much is clear.
But I have been waiting my whole life to do this.
“You followed her home one night,” I say, my voice hard, my hands tight around the neck beneath me, pleading with Bea with my eyes to understand. “She did not hear you. Perhaps because the street was busy and loud, like always. Or because she was tired from working for twelve hours straight.”
Bea’s rose-colored lips part in surprise. “What are you talking about? You know Edward?”
“You pushed your way in the door after her. Attacked her. The only thing you did not know is that she had a child living there. A small boy. Too weak to properly defend his mother.”
“No,” Bea whispers, horror in her green eyes.
Only then do I look down at the man whose skin has turned mottled red. I don’t want to kill him—not yet, anyway. I want him to hear this, and the dead never listen. “You locked me in the closet.”
I see the memory dawn in his red-rimmed eyes. Yes, he remembers now. There may have been other maids he hurt. Other women he followed home. But he remembers the screaming boy he trapped in the closet with a wood-worn chair, its hemp cords fraying, but its frame sturdy enough to hold me in.
“And then you raped her.”
“She was nothing,” he rasps, which is a fatal error.
Perhaps he sees that when I squeeze hard enough to take away his air. He makes a terrible sound, like the back of a car scraping against the road. His eyes roll back, and I’m looking forward to the moment he becomes silent. I did not plan to become a murderer for this, but at the moment the rage swirls around me like a firestorm. The only thing left to do is burn.
A soft crying sound prods at the edge of my consciousness. It’s Beatrix, begging me to stop. “Please,” she says. “Stop this. Hugo, please.”
For a moment it seems that I can push aside her pleas as easily as I did before. As easily as this Edward pushed me aside when I was a child, but she is not a poor little rich girl no matter what he calls her. She’s a woman, strong enough to call me back from the brink of madness.
Slowly my hands loosen, but they’re made of cement. It feels like cracking to pry them away from where they’ve hardened. When they finally release I stumble back with the force of it.
Edward collapses on the floor, coughing and choking as he tries to breathe. As he tries to live.
Did I make a mistake? “A man like him deserves to die.”
Bea kneels on the floor, her hands clasped together in futile prayer. Or maybe not so futile. She bent me to her will, after all. It makes me resent her, even while I recognize how much power she has over me. I would not change it if I could, but I hate that she wants me to let him be.
Her eyes are solemn. “A man like you doesn’t deserve to be a killer.”
Don’t I? I hadn’t thought I deserved anything at all. Definitely not the delicate woman who just pulled me off of my mother’s rapist with the force of her will alone.
“Then he gets away with it,” I say, my voice dull.
It had always been coming to this, hadn’t it? Mama knew. Even then she knew.
The rich can get away with anything. Even now most would consider me a rich man. I could probably hurt a poor maid in this hotel and get away with it. How sick is that? I never would but it does not change the potential. How does it stop? How does it ever stop?
“No,” Bea says, urgent. “We can tell the police. You witnessed it. We can—”
A short shake of my head. “That long ago? And my mother is dead now.”
She gasps. “Did he…?”
“No,” I say with a bitter laugh. “It was cancer who finished her off. But I’m not sure she ever really lived after he hurt her. She was far too busy looking over her shoulder for that.”
“God.” She looks at Edward like he’s someone she’s never seen before. “How could you?”
He has only recovered enough to get words out one at a time, coughing each one out, spitting it at her feet. “You. Believe. This. Piece. Of. Trash.”
She stands up, holding herself with a remarkable poise considering only thirty minutes ago she was having an anxiety attack on the roof, curled into a ball. “I notice that’s not a denial. Did you do it, Edward? Of course you did. I can see it in your face.”