Chapter 19 #2
Hadrian had been right. The room could show me. This was what I’d wanted to see, was it not? The reason I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about this truth he’d kept from me?
A jagged twinge of jealousy turned at the back of my lungs. After tonight, did I have the right to feel this way? Gradually, I smothered it.
I pulled my eyes from her and scanned the room, left to right, and I saw him.
Sitting in one of the wingback chairs, though I could have sworn he wasn’t there a moment ago, was Hadrian.
His face wasn’t as sharp, but his frame was just as wide, his elbows firmly planted on the chair arms. A button-up shirt hung open around the neck, his hair was slicked back, a tie loose at his collar. A wayward groom.
He watched the crinoline and voluminous skirts and parasols float about the lawn like leaves down a river.
I tried to touch the back of the couch. My hands slipped right through the wood frame. Nothing but a chill raced up my arms. I was an invisible bystander and nothing more.
“Mr. Hadrian,” a voice started, burly and cushioned. I jerked to the voice. An older gentleman stood by the door to the foyer. Sparse hair lay combed over his bald spot, brow sweaty, mouth perpetually flat.
Hadrian straightened his cufflinks. How had no one missed the groom on his wedding day?
“Does it grow tiresome having to wipe the perspiration from around your neck so often, Bertie?” Hadrian asked, giving a cufflink a final tug. Then he stood and plunked a wayward wine glass from the writing desk.
Bertie blinked. Two stout caterpillar brows shot to the middle of his forehead. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Hadrian?”
Hadrian threw back the remnants of his glass. The stark scent of moonshine wafted to me. Sparkled in the air like dust. Everything amplified, as if the house was telling me, See? See? This is what you wanted, right? Here is all of it. Take everything.
I didn’t miss the tremble in Hadrian’s wrist.
“I am sure there are many more important things you could be accomplishing right now than simply gawking at me, yes?” he asked. He straightened to his full height. He dwarfed Bertie. But the set to the old man’s shoulders told me it had been reversed for a long while.
Bertie blinked and glanced to the floor. He pulled at his lapels. “My apologies, sir. Your father was merely requesting your attendance for a moment. I had trouble finding you, as I realized you were within the house instead of outside with your guests.”
Hadrian stared until the old man met his gaze. “Is that so.”
Bertie’s jowls wobbled. Face reddened. “Yes, young man. Now, if you will excuse—”
“Can I ask you a question, Bertie?” Hadrian stepped forward. Slow. Methodical.
Bertie exhaled through his nose. Then nodded.
Hadrian’s coattails fell delicately over his hips; his sleeves were an inch too short for his wrists. “Do you suspect that I should be away from my betrothed so soon on my wedding day?”
Outside, as if on cue, a howl of laughter split the air.
“I am not sure I follow, Mr. Hadrian.” Bertie’s jaw tightened.
Hadrian chewed his bottom lip.
“Very well. Have a drink, then. I have more than I could need.” Hadrian turned his back to Bertie, quick to retrieve an extra glass from the writing desk.
He held his sleeve over the lip—a dusting of powder fell to the bottom.
Then he poured from a decanter atop the liquor cabinet, which hung open in welcome. Extended it. “Take a moment with me.”
“I assure you, the offer is appreciated, however I truly need to return to duties—”
“My wedding day, Bertie. After all we have been through? You helped guide me so much as a boy.” Hadrian’s words, now that I’d heard him speak before, sharpened like blades. If Bertie was smart, he would have heard it, too.
Bertie eyed the glass.
“You are worth your weight in gold, are you not? Don’t deny me the privilege of having a drink with you, man,” Hadrian crooned. His words were thick with Lowcountry, of a fine upbringing. Sultry.
Like a prized jockey, Bertie preened a bit but held his tongue and back stiff. “Never, never. Very much a success. To you and Mrs. Cora, both.”
As soon as Bertie took the glass, Hadrian threw his back. He licked his teeth against the burn. When Bertie took a tentative sip, he cawed, “All of it, Bertie! You’ve snuck enough of my father’s liquor before.”
Bertie coughed half of it down. “I assure you, Hadrian—”
“Mr. Belfaunte,” Hadrian corrected, deadly soft.
Bertie blinked hard. His crow’s feet deepened, then spread to his hairline. His brow rose. Sunspots decorated his skin there. “Yes. Of course.” Sarcasm lined his words.
Hadrian eased around the chair. Steps echoed like gunshots.
Another step.
Then another.
The grandfather clock pattered like a heartbeat. From the foyer, no doubt. I whisked closer, and sure enough—there it was. The same grandfather clock, shadows circling it like fingers.
A choked gasp made me turn.
Bertie stumbled backward, clutched at the closest shelf. It rattled against the wall. Books shook, shoe soles scuffed. His lapels fell open. Red bubbled around his pressed, white pointed collar, the tailored suit that framed it, and his wobbling chin.
Faint as a whisper—the back door clicked shut.
The sound of a key tumbling into place.
I glanced to Hadrian. He watched Bertie with feigned earnest, his forehead and brow a mess of concern, then turned his attention out the window to the lawn.
In the midst of guests, one single man stood still.
Carefully placed waves and sharp as sin blue eyes.
He might have been an inch shorter than Hadrian, and I knew without a doubt that he was looking into this parlor.
The man brushed a finger under his eye. Stole a glimpse over his shoulder. Nodded to no one in particular.
Then turned away.
This reaction seemed to satisfy Hadrian. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“You—you—” Bertie struggled.
“Enlighten me.”
“—bastard,” he choked.
“You look green, Bertie.” Hadrian spoke as if the weather had turned fine.
“You deserved it,” Bertie gasped. He started to tremble on the floor. Cold, straggled bits of rage shone through his eyes. “All of it.”
Hadrian squatted down beside the butler and set his wine glass on the floor. Watched as foam erupted from between Bertie’s lips. My hand fluttered to my throat.
Hadrian’s tongue poked where his teeth should have been. “Sometimes good men do evil things,” Hadrian said, dry. “I wouldn’t say you were one of those good men, Bertie.”
The man’s neck purpled. “Pathetic … child.”
Hadrian’s head tilted, cheeks tightened. “That’s a shame. You believe I care what you think. Well, I have news for you.” Hadrian took the man’s collar, pulled him near, until they were nose to nose. “I wouldn’t have killed you if I did.”
He shoved Bertie to the floor.
“Burn in hell, old man,” he whispered. Then he got up. Brushed off. Straightened his jacket, tie, then suspenders.
He walked from the parlor.
This was the Hadrian that had gotten trapped. This was the man he’d been.
I followed Hadrian’s long strides. I took the steps two at a time to keep up. Past the second floor, up to the attic.
He shoved the door open with a firm push of his shoulder.
Shadows clung to the room. Not nightly shadows that came after the sun fell, but alive little tendrils. They caressed the floors, the chair legs, the desk in the middle of the room. I blinked, but nothing changed.
The air hung heavy with cigar smoke. I had just stepped through when Hadrian shut the door.
The man at the desk—Howie, if I remembered his name correctly—sat with a dip pen between his teeth. Reddened whites of his eyes, carefully tied hair. It fell past the chair back.
“Bertie sent for me.” Hadrian’s chin dipped, mouth parted. The whites under his eyes were visible. Dead eyes.
Howie didn’t look up.
The grandfather clock continued to tick.
“I’m busy,” Howie muttered to his pages. He gave his son a similar glare. “Or are you blind?”
“No dire negotiations you need to make while mingling? Or have all your important connections left?” Hadrian grunted.
He dragged one hand, languid, over the back of a chair.
He continued, until he stopped in front of a shelf.
Perched atop it was a typewriter. Ran a fingertip over the K, S, R, and F keys, which had faded.
Howie’s jaw ticked. Just like Hadrian’s. The stiffness he held in himself, the haughty assurance in his movements—they were the same. Where Hadrian’s were not as confident, Howie’s insinuated assumption. As if everyone should know what he thought.
“A quick tongue has never gotten you anywhere, son,” Howie snarled. He set his pen down, then pushed back in his chair. His chin jutted up. “Actually, there was something I intended to discuss with you.” He sniffed. “There are … shipping containers missing.”
Hadrian continued his perusal of his father’s shelf. “I am no bookkeeper.”
Howie’s voice remained chilled. “You know where they went.”
“I do not.”
Howie’s neck blotched with color. He slammed both hands onto his desk, shot from his chair, and shouted, “You ruin me! Every chance you get, you take it. Where are they?”
Hadrian turned, shoulders loose, hips canted to one side.
Gray eyes ate gray. The face, the nose, the chin, all identical.
Hadrian’s hand smoothed the front of his jacket, then slipped inside, under his shirt. Howie tracked it.
“Not a clue.”
“You have not enough balls to lie to me,” Howie muttered.
“Who said I would lie?” Hadrian said. And grinned.
Howie shoved the desk, then flung a drawer open. He yanked out a navy revolver and pointed it at Hadrian. “Do not take me for a fool. You dare to think I would not realize what has happened? My own blood, paid my own men off to work for him? To turn their backs on me?”
Hadrian stared down the barrel. “I find it difficult to pay men off that choose to work with me instead.”
Howie’s nostrils flared, neck nearly purple. “All I have done for you. And this is how you repay me?”
I heard Hadrian’s teeth grind. As if I needed to hide, I eased back toward the right corner of the room. The air started to hum, whisper. Little pokes of memory, voices, grew louder and louder until words formed.
Haddy, crying, asking for Momma.
Haddy, screaming, against rusted pliers.
Hadrian, weedy in adolescence, with a purpled eye and swollen jaw.
Hadrian, the creature, with a gaping, bleeding chest.
The hand in Hadrian’s jacket withdrew—the men fired at the same time. The faint, broken click of a jammed round. The other, a smoking pop of a filled chamber.
I clamped a hand over my mouth with a gasp. The room—no, I—was shaking.
Howie fell forward against the desk. Blood bloomed against his shirt, his gun clattering to the floor. He grunted before taking a kneel. Then he fell back against his chair. It screeched backward.
He didn’t fight. He didn’t scramble.
Not an ounce of fear danced in his eyes.
Hadrian’s eyes flashed as he stalked forward. Frustration? Disappointment, maybe? His pulse fluttered, crazed, in his neck.
“Coward,” Howie hissed. His fingers stumbled to stanch the bleeding. Blood started to bloom through the wound anyway. “You couldn’t even do this like a man.”
Hadrian’s expression splintered. The last straw—I knew that feeling.
Saw the familiar, brittle fury that snapped into thousands of little pieces.
“No man?” he roared. He prowled to his father, grabbed the crown of his hair and pulled his neck open.
He looked Howie dead in the eye. “Tell me I am no man,” he demanded.
Hadrian slammed his head into the shelf behind him. The room shook.
My breath caught in my throat. This was the moment I’d seen in the hallway when we’d first found the door.
He huffed.
“Tell me!” he shouted, spittle flying. “No man? You and Bertie were men to beat a child?”
They breathed heavy together. The blueprint and the carbon copy. In that moment, the expression “There is a fine line between love and hate” never looked truer.
“I will always be more of a man than you,” Hadrian snarled. He gasped, choked on a swallow, teeth bared.
“If that is what you believe,” Howie croaked. His lips cracked, beaded with blood.
Tears welled in Hadrian’s eyes. Hatred, a burning, gasoline-lit flame.
“I asked not for you to be my father,” he spat. “I never chose you.”
Blood stained Howie’s tongue when he wheezed, “Nor I, you.”
Hadrian’s expression twisted into hate, hurt, and fury. He pulled the knife from his trousers, and swung down.
Nor I, you.
I squeezed my eyes shut before the knife hit home.
Hadrian killed his father and butler. Hadrian meant to do it.
A war storm tangled through my body. A version of understanding, hurt, confusion, and empathy all in one.
A sob ransacked my body, tight and uncontrollable—and all that jealousy that I’d felt for this man, this creature, suddenly slipped away.
Because I wasn’t jealous of what he’d been through now.
Before, I wanted the strength he’d had at handling his family, his life. But now I knew it had been desperation.
I hurt for him. We were two halves of the same coin. He’d chosen a different path than I had. Whereas I secluded from my pain, he’d imploded.
The question was: Could I forgive him for doing such a thing?
Those words echoed through my mind: Sometimes good men do evil things.
I bit down hard on my tongue, tasting metal and grime.
I cried, in a gut wrenching, visceral way.
I’d let this man kiss me. I’d let this man dig his way beneath my skin and burrow there.
What else had his father done to him? And was I okay with forgiving him, for keeping this from me? What kind of person did that make me if I did?
Pot to kettle, he’d told me once.
Parts of my heart warred with each other. How had I let a man that killed his father slip his claws into my heart, when Ivan had been just as vicious in a different way? Could his actions be justified any more than Ivan’s could, or even my own?
Hadrian isn’t this man anymore, I thought. That was why.
Ivan continued his hurt, he kept his head in the sand, and moved on. I’d seen it—Hadrian wasn’t the same man he used to be. He’d changed.
And I was ravenous to do the same. Because if someone looked at me, at any of the things I’d done and deemed me unworthy of redemption, how would I handle that?
Would I think it was justified, like Hadrian did?
Would I hide in my hurt and wait years for someone to come and find me?
Is that not what I was attempting to do to myself right now?
Wouldn’t I want someone to seek redemption for me, had I been in his shoes?
I swallowed bile.
The room broke apart.