13. Tamsyn
13
Tamsyn
“Hey, Tamsyn,” Roman says shortly before nine the following night, when he comes around the corner and sees me standing there alone.
I try to hide a grimace. He’s caught me in the middle of another new personal low. I’m skulking in the hallway outside Lucien’s study, too cowardly to go inside and watch Ravenna’s interview with everyone else and far too nosy to go back upstairs and watch it by myself. I don’t want to get too wrapped up in whatever Ravenna says about him. Because what if — God forbid — my emotions get the best of me and I find myself empathizing with Lucien? On the other hand, why on earth would I want to miss out on seeing his reactions up close and personal? Hence, my dilemma.
Plus, things have been awkward with Roman since he saw me coming in from canoodling on horseback with Lucien the other day. Not that either of us would ever mention that .
Still, I paste a bright smile on my face and do what I think is a reasonably good job of acting like a normal human being. “Roman. Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, playing along. Even though he’s got all one of his brows up at a bemused angle. “Strange day, ha?”
The vibe of the house has been off all day. That’s the only way I can describe it. Too quiet. Too jumpy. The staff whispering in corners and looking worried. Rumors and speculation about where Winwood could be and whether the police are looking for him. Lucien holed up in meetings the whole time. Waiting, waiting, waiting. At least now, finally, something is happening.
“Truer words were never spoken,” I say darkly.
He starts through the door, then pauses when he realizes I’m not right behind him. “You coming?”
All my limited acting skills suddenly decide to fail miserably. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to see what Ravenna has got to say.”
He nods with grim agreement. “No one does. But we don’t have a choice. Come on.”
With that, he takes my elbow and ushers me into tonight’s inner sanctum, where Daniel hovers by the bar and Lucien sits in the tufted wing chair opposite the giant TV that’s invisibly built into the bookshelves, but is now playing a car insurance commercial on mute.
Since I haven’t seen Lucien since last night, I’m greedy for details about him. Dark smudges under his eyes hint at his exhaustion. He’s got the top couple of buttons of his dress shirt undone and his shirt sleeves rolled up. He’s got his legs crossed and is moodily staring at the swirling golden contents of his tumbler where he rests his hand over the chair’s arm. But when Roman and I walk in, his head comes up and his flinty gaze immediately locks in on Roman’s hand touching my bare arm. A muscle begins to pulse in his temple hard enough for me to see it across the distance. Worse — and I’m sure this is just my imagination — the spot on my arm begins to burn. And when Lucien’s attention shifts to my face, all my body’s heat concentrates on my cheeks until I’m certain I’m blushing to the roots of my hair.
He puts his drink down. Uncrosses his legs. Starts to get up?—
Oh, shit. I move away from Roman’s grasp under color of finding a seat on the sofa. An effort that is not helped by Lucien’s gleam of satisfaction as he resettles in his seat. I hastily turn away, but not before I see what he mouths at me:
Good girl.
Sexual tension swoops low and delicious inside my belly.
“Everyone ready for a good show?” Roman asks, joining me on the sofa, but thankfully at a respectable distance.
Lucien spares his brother a serrated dagger of a look before his attention reverts to me. “Always. Ms. Scott. Wasn’t sure you’d join us.”
“Neither was I,” I say. “Where’s your PR? And your lawyer? I thought for sure they’d be here.”
Lucien scowls. “I’ve got enough on my plate. I don’t want them here for this. I’ll check in with them after.”
“Who’s up for a Paloma?” calls Daniel, now pouring drinks from his pitcher with a flourish. “It’s my signature cocktail. The occasion calls for something special.”
“Gallows humor. I like it,” I say, gratefully accepting a glass when he comes over and offers it to me. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” Daniel turns to Roman. “Want one?”
“Why not?” Roman accepts one and raises his glass. What should we toast to?”
“To my late wife, Ravenna.” Lucien raises his glass, his face all grim lines and unforgiving angles. “May this be the very last time she has the last word. And the last time any of us see her face or hear her voice.”
“I’ll take that action,” Roman says, and we all toast.
“Uh-oh. Someone turn the sound up,” I say with a hasty wave at the TV. “It’s starting.”
Lucien hits a button on the remote as we all shush each other and focus on the show.
“Tonight on Newsline ,” the announcer booms in his breaking news voice as the theme music rises. “You’ve seen the headlines. The billionaire. His missing wife. Her sudden reappearance. And now… Murder ? Is this a real-life Gone Girl ? Or something far more sinister?”
“Jesus Christ.” Lucien downs his whiskey in an audible gulp and crosses to the bar to splash a hefty refill into his glass.
“Socialite Ravenna Winter’s first and only interview — her final words — is a Newsline exclusive,” the announcer concludes. “ Tonight .”
“Good evening,” says the show’s star Jeannie Howard, now sitting at her desk in the studio. She’s suitably grim for the occasion wearing a black dress that perfectly complements her caramel skin. Her brown eyes are suitably grave and her natural corkscrew hair pulled back in a low bun for the occasion is a chef’s kiss of solemnity. “Little did I dream several days ago, when Ravenna Winter secretly reached out to me to tell her story, all the twists and turns her story would take in just a few short days. And she’ll share her story with you in its entirety. In her own words. From the grave. Words that, by the way, Newsline has turned over to the police investigating her death on that lonely beach. Her private family funeral is scheduled for tomorrow. Her husband, billionaire Lucien Winter, who police claim is not a suspect at this time , has declined to comment for this story. And now? We begin with a reminder of the players involved.”
“So they’re not even going to make a stab at keeping this impartial,” says Roman beside me.
“Are you surprised?” Lucien says, heading back to his armchair.
Roman snorts. “Not even a little.”
Me? I’m riveted by the recap, which includes early pictures of Lucien and Ravenna that I hadn’t seen online. A snippet of their wedding video showing Ravenna in that spectacular dress upstairs, diamonds glittering at her ears, neck and wrist as she gazes adoringly at Lucien, who gazes adoringly back. News footage from Ravenna’s boating accident and disappearance.
I peel my attention away from the screen long enough to glance at Lucien, but he’s doing his Sphinx routine and is unblinking as the light from the images on the screen flicker across his face.
“And there’s a new player in this drama,” Jeannie continues. “A young woman who —”
“Oh, my God,” I cry, sitting up straight and splashing my drink in my own lap in my shock. “It’s me.”
“Are you surprised?” Lucien asks again.
“Yes.” They got — holy shit — a picture of me and my dad from somewhere. A picture of me smiling at my graduation ceremony at the beginning of the summer. And then there’s — “Oh, my God,” I say again, almost too breathless to even get the words out — footage of me from the other day, looking scared and panicky as I’m jostled by the paparazzi and Hank swoops in to throw me into the car. I look like some unfortunate scandal-plagued actress who’s in danger of being trampled by photographers willing to do anything for the money shot. Then they show a wider angle of the incident and I discover for the first time how many photographers were there. At least eight. And how aggressively they bumped and shouted at me. Funny how I lived it and didn’t even fully realize. But there’s something about seeing it on the big screen that —
“Fuck,” Lucien murmurs, more to himself than to any of us. He shoots me with a penetrating sidelong look, then refocuses on the screen. He doesn’t need to say a word for me to know what he’s thinking, which is the same thing that I’m thinking:
Thank God he sent someone to protect me. I don’t know what would’ve happened otherwise.
“And now, here she is. In her own words,” Jeannie says from the studio, and that’s all the warning we have before the scene switches and fills the screen. I thought I was braced for this moment, but I’m still startled to see her alive again in all her vibrant natural beauty. She’s wearing jeans and a white linen shirt, her skin glowing and fresh even with her forehead bandage, brows dark, red lips plump and pouty and eyes luminous.
It’s wild how jarring it is to see her like this. I half expect her to step out from behind the screen and resume her place here at Ackerley. I don’t know how everyone else is taking this, but we all wait, riveted and frozen.
“Ravenna, welcome,” Jeannie says. “How are you feeling?”
Ravenna pauses to think it over. “Nervous,” she finally says with a tremulous smile.
“Why nervous?” Jeannie asks.
“I’ve never told my story before,” Ravenna says. “I’ve never felt brave enough.”
Sympathetic nod from Jeannie. “First things first. You’re wearing a bandage. What happened to your head?”
“It’s not that big a deal.” Ravenna touches the bandage with one of her delicate hands. “I slipped and fell on the rocks near Ackerley the other day when it was raining. Minor concussion. It’s fine.”
Daniel and Lucien exchange a look.
“It’s plausible,” Daniel says, shrugging. “The rocks were slippery that night.”
“So that much of her story could be true,” Lucien says thoughtfully.
“Let’s go back a few years,” Jeannie says. “You were in a boating accident.”
Ravenna looks grave now. “Yes.”
“Your sailboat capsized in Manhasset Bay off Ackerley,” Jeannie continues.
“Yes,” Ravenna says again.
“Ravenna, you disappeared. You were presumed dead. For years . What happened to you?”
Ravenna hesitates, her chin wobbling. A tear drops, and it’s the most beautiful tear I’ve ever seen in my life. Crystalline against her vivid green eyes, leaving a perfect trail down her exquisite cheek before she hastily swipes it away. “I hate that I caused so much trouble. And the expense of the search. I feel terrible about that. But I had to disappear. I had no other choice.”
“I don’t understand,” Jeannie says, her voice hushed now as she leans in. “What do you mean?”
Another beautiful tear falls. “I mean that I was afraid Lucien was going to kill me.” Ravenna takes a deep breath, the picture of a brave battered wife. “So I had to fake my own death.”
I cry out, pressing my hand to my chest. I’d run a million different scenarios in my head. Ways she might try to explain her lengthy disappearance. Kidnapping. Sex trafficking. Amnesia. Alien abduction. That this isn’t Ravenna at all but her long-lost identical twin sister.
Nothing like that .
“What?” shouts Roman beside me. He looks like he’s ready to smash the TV. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Oh, my God,” Daniel says with a disbelieving look in Lucien’s direction.
And Lucien? No reaction. Not even a flicker of his eyes.
“Why would you fear that your husband would hurt you, Ravenna?” Jeannie asks in that dramatic stage whisper of a voice. “You had the perfect marriage. We’ve seen the photos and the videos. What on earth did you have to fear?”
“Nothing is perfect,” Ravenna says in a brave show of wiping her eyes a final time before drying her fingers on her jeans and hitching up her chin. “I know how it looked from the outside. But Lucien wears a mask. And the man that the world sees is not the man I dealt with behind closed doors.” She pauses. “I didn’t realize it until we were on our honeymoon in Monte Carlo. When it was too late. A server flirted with me at dinner. Lucien got jealous. When we got back to our hotel suite, he said that I was flirting. That was the first time he ever slapped me across the face.”
“What?” Roman shouts again, but all my attention is split between the screen and Lucien, who watches frozen and unblinking.
“He slapped you,” Jeannie repeats, aghast.
“Yes.”
“What else did he do, Ravenna?”
Sad resignation from Ravenna as she reaches for the side table and hands something to Jeannie. “How much time do you have? I’ve got some pictures.”
Jeannie shifts through them, looking more and more disturbed. Then the camera zooms in for a close up, and it’s the picture I saw of Ravenna’s bruised face. The one Lucien said was from the time Ravenna’s tennis doubles partner accidentally hit her in the face with her racket.
“This is horrific,” Jeannie cries.
“Yes,” Ravenna says with a brave show of keeping her chin up.
“Did he also push you?” Jeannie says.
“Yes.”
“Punch you?”
“Yes.”
“Kick you?”
“Yes.”
“Emotional abuse?”
“Always.”
“Sexual assault?”
“Of course. Often.”
“Ravenna, was there no help available to you?” Jeannie asks.
“That’s the thing about Lucien.” Ravenna shudders at some memory. “A man like that? A billionaire? He does what he wants. People are property to a man like that. Who’s going to believe me ? His investors? The hundreds of people he employees?”
Roman is out of his seat now, gesturing wildly at the screen and looming over Lucien. “How can you sit there listening to this bullshit ?”
Lucien barely spares him a glance. “They sent over the transcript this afternoon for comment. I knew what she was going to say. I just didn’t know how she was going to say it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Roman says, pivoting away. Then there’s a crash behind us. Startled, I glance around to discover that Roman has swiped Lucien’s desk clean in his anger. Daniel hurries over and throws a restraining arm around his back.
“Lucien’s got it under control,” Daniel says.
“This shit is not under control,” Roman says, throwing him off. “People will believe her. None of it’s true, but she’s ruining his life!”
“Shhh,” Lucien says, still focused on the TV.
“But Ravenna, did you ever go to the police?” Jeannie says. “The world is full of battered women. They don’t fake their own deaths to escape and disappear for years at a time.”
“I tried once or twice,” Ravenna says, her gaze sliding out of focus as she frowns at some memory. “Lucien had things hushed up. He knows people. He pays people. I don’t think people understand that when you’re dealing with this kind of wealth, there’s nothing you can’t make happen. No one you can’t buy off. Household staff. Police. Judges. A man like Lucien can get it done.”
“So you faked your own death,” Jeannie says. “But why then? If he’d been abusing you for years?”
“We had a party at Ackerley,” Ravenna says. “Lucien saw one of his guests talking to me. The man was a little drunk. He stood a little too close. Whatever. That’s no excuse. When the guests left, Lucien surprised me. I expected him to be in a rage, but he was calm. Icy calm. He said that I’d embarrassed him for the last time. And that’s when I knew. He was going to do it.”
A bark of bitter laughter from Lucien. “That’s the night I caught her coming out of the bathroom after a quickie with one of our guests—a man she’d just met—and told her I wanted a divorce.”
“I’d been saving my own money,” Ravenna tells Jeannie. “Putting it in offshore accounts in case I ever got the chance to escape. I’d wanted to save money for a little while longer, but I knew if I didn’t leave then, I’d never have another chance. He was going to hire someone to kill me and make it look like an accident. That would have been the smart move and Lucien is the smartest man I know. That way, he’d be free of me and wouldn’t have to pay me a big divorce settlement. My time ran out. So I got a fake ID. Went out sailing. Capsized the boat. It’s easy to do if you know how. And then I hid.”
“Where did you go?”
“Auckland. New Zealand.”
A ripple of shock goes around the room at this revelation.
Jeannie shakes her head, not bothering to hide her disbelief. “Ravenna, if this is all true, you achieved the perfect disappearance. A real-life Gone Girl . Why come back? No one was looking for you. You were legally declared dead. You could have stayed gone forever.”
“I had to come back. I heard that Lucien was involved with someone,” Ravenna says.
“Jesus,” Daniel says. “How would she know something like that ?”
“One of the maids, probably,” Lucien says. “Someone who hasn’t been with me for a while.”
“She’s evidently a woman too young and naive to know what she was getting herself into,” Ravenna continues. “Maybe it’s foolish, but I just couldn’t turn my back and let someone else suffer the way I did while I hid like a coward.”
“Can you believe this bullshit?” I mutter to no one in particular, choking back an unwilling laugh. “You almost have to admire her artistry, don’t you? Leonardo Da Vinci was the perfect renaissance man. Ravenna is the perfect liar. She’s like the Terminator of liars. She was made for it.”
“So, you did it to save Tamsyn Scott?” Jeannie says, incredulous now. “That’s very generous toward your husband’s girlfriend, isn’t it?”
“It’s not generosity,” Ravenna says, fully into her Joan of Arc routine. The only thing missing is a golden halo encircling her head. “It’s basic human kindness toward another woman. The kind of thing I would’ve wanted someone to do to protect me.”
I thought I had myself under control, but sudden outrage gets the best of me. “You tried to kill me, you psycho bitch ,” I shout at the television. “Why doesn’t Jeannie ask her about that ?”
“Because they shot the interview before she tried to kill you, Tamsyn,” Lucien says gently, but this reminder is no consolation for these outrageous lies. “Remember?”
Yeah, I remember. Ravenna wins again. “Fuck you, you bitch,” I shout at the TV, the most unhinged and impotent moment of my life. “Fuck. You.”
“Tamsyn. It’s okay,” Roman says soothingly.
“No, it’s not,” I say. “She wrecks everything. Think about everything she’s destroyed in her lifetime. Think about the final cost of all that malice. It’s incalculable. And she never had to pay a price.”
“She paid with her life,” Daniel says somberly. “That’s the ultimate price, isn’t it?”
The glaring truth of the statement shuts me up. Frowning, I turn back to the screen.
“What would you want to tell Tamsyn Scott if you had the chance, Ravenna?” Jeannie says. “Or our viewers, for that matter? And what are your plans now?”
Ravenna takes her time, frowning as she formulates her answer. Then she turns her head and looks directly at the camera and I feel the jolt of that bright green gaze boring into mine as strongly as if she was alive and here in the room with us right now. “I’d tell Tamsyn — or any other woman involved with a sexy and powerful man like Lucien — to not trust yourself. Your instincts are bad when it comes to him. He will never change. You can’t trust him. He will hurt you in the end. You have to get out and stay out. That’s it.” She nods and takes a breath, seemingly emboldened by her courage and honesty. “And I want everyone to know that my plans are to get a divorce and finally be free from Lucien. So I’m telling you now. I’m in perfect health. I’m not suicidal. If anything happens to me, no matter how it looks, it’s because Lucien did it —”
There’s more, but it’s cut off by Lucien’s vicious curse and the explosion of his whiskey tumbler as it hits the middle of the TV with brutal force and shatters into a million pieces, distorting Ravenna’s image and sending shards of glass and droplets of liquid in every direction.
The rest of us cry out and leap to our feet, shocked and not quite sure what to do. I hurry forward, reaching for his arm as he starts to walk off. “Lucien…”
“Apologies, Ms. Scott.” Lucien’s smile is twisted and flat. His muscles are tight as he shakes me off. He never breaks stride. “I’m too tired to talk tonight. I’ve got to bury my beloved wife tomorrow.”