Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Stella
“ Y our identification came,” Mel says, ripping into an envelope.
Everyone’s been great trying to keep my attention off social media and the photos of Zane and Nathalie at the party. I try not to let it get to me, but there’s a picture of him nuzzling her ear and he has his arm around her waist. They’re holding drinks in expensive crystal glasses, and it sparks a jealousy in me I can’t tamp down. She’s his height, slim, wearing an expensive cocktail dress, her makeup perfectly in place. I will never, ever, look like that, and the second I saw it, tears and humiliation burned my throat.
Tonight, I’ve been focusing on Zarah. She shouldn’t be watching so much TV, and Max, Ingrid, and I played several games of Scrabble and Clue with her, encouraging her to think, trying to get her to engage her problem-solving processes. One thing we both have in common since Ash locked us up is that neither of us were able to further our education. She’s been hidden from the world without books, without meaningful conversation. Max started reading to her at night, and charging Zane’s credit card, I ordered her a stack of the number one bestsellers in every genre. I know there’s no substitute for living, and after all this is over, I hope Zarah uses every opportunity she has at her disposal to see the world. But for now, she gobbles up the games, the books, the magazines. She loves Vogue best. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise.
“What?” I ask, looking up from a copy of the magazine.
“Your IDs,” Quinn repeats.
She’s getting better, too, and against her doctor’s recommendation, she took her sling off. The doctor prescribed physical therapy, and a therapist comes to the hotel once a day to help Quinn keep the mobility in her arm. I’m thankful she wasn’t wounded permanently.
“You and Max need to get going to DC,” Mel says.
Mel decided it would be best if Max and I flew to DC and talked to someone at the NTSB in person. The FBI took possession of the black box and the recording, but we want to see for ourselves if they secretly kept any copies. That’s information they would never share over the phone, especially with strangers.
Max volunteered to go alone, but Mel thinks I should go, too.
Zane was not happy, insisting Denton go instead, but Mel said she had other plans for him. Trust me, I don’t want to go either, but I can’t sit and babysit Zane because I’m scared he’s going to choose Nathalie over me. If you want to split hairs, he already did. Fighting against it is stupid.
Mel finishes opening the manila envelope, and I get up and stand next to the table.
Quinn’s guy did a good job using the picture Mel emailed him. I’m wearing my glasses, and the colored contacts Mel ordered came in, too. My eyes glitter green behind the lenses, and my coppery hair looks good against my complexion.
My new name is Kendra Lovelace. Mel got a kick out of that considering one of the biggest things we’ll be doing is shutting down Ash’s prostitution and escort business.
I have a new driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, and social security card. Everything I need to travel. Mel was waiting for my IDs to book our plane tickets, and she does that now, two roundtrip tickets to DC. She doesn’t think this will take long but she reserves our rooms for two nights and we’ll leave in three days.
My death has, for the most part, cycled out of the news, but every time Zane or Nathalie does something, they always have to recap what happened the night Paulo shot me and the terrible picture of Zane poised to slap me. Sometimes they dredge up the picture the paparazzi took of me, Zane, and Zarah standing in front of Temptations. I look so young in that picture, so innocent. Zane looks younger, too, and sad, though he never lost the haunted look in his eyes. Maybe with his parents gone and Zarah living in her fog, he’ll never be truly happy.
I know what that’s like. The constant feeling something isn’t quite right. The feeling that no matter how good things are going, it will never be enough, will never fill that hole an event in history left behind.
For me, that was my mother passing away and growing up in foster care. The next forty years could be the best of my life, but I will always feel empty because of my loss. Stupidly, I thought Zane could fill that void, but all he did was make it bigger.
“I wish Paulo was going with you,” Mel says as she finalizes our tickets. He went back to LA to take care of an emergency that popped up, and I wasn’t sorry to see him go. He’s a nice guy, affable, but when we’re together at the hotel, I feel like there are too many cooks and not a large enough kitchen. Douglas, as well, has returned to his regular duties and keeps an eye on Zane and Nathalie when they’re out in public. Zane’s poking the Blacks, and it’s more important Douglas ensures their safety rather than hang around here.
“We’ll be okay without him,” I say, and Max nods. “We don’t need to call attention to ourselves, and the NTSB is more likely to talk to us alone.”
“That’s what I think, too, but it’s always nice to have someone at your back.”
“I trust Max.” Truthfully, if I needed someone to look out for me, I would choose Denton over Paulo. “Do you need me for anything else?”
Everyone looks at me, and my cheeks pink with embarrassment and more than a little frustration. I love they care about me so much just one wrong move and they’re scurrying around trying to comfort me like a toddler who has fallen and can’t decide if she’s going to scream or laugh, but it’s suffocating, too. Being cooped up in the hotel has set us all on edge.
“No. I’m going to order some food soon. Do you have a preference?” Mel asks.
It’s a bit late to eat, but our schedules have been off since we moved into the hotel. We sleep in and eat dinner later, and it’s not unusual if we eat around nine or after.
“Whatever you want is fine. I’m going up to the roof.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Quinn asks, half rising out of her seat.
I bite back an angry retort—I can barely go to the bathroom alone. “No, I’ll be fine. I just need air.”
“Be careful.”
They act like I’m going to throw myself off the rooftop. “I’ll be down soon. I just need a break.”
As I leave the room, I hear Quinn say, “Zane’s spending too much time with Nathalie.”
It figures Quinn would know me best.
I trudge up the staff staircase. The concrete, despite the heat, is cool under my bare feet, but I push the door open and the air is hot and thick with humidity. It rained earlier, and my dress sticks to my skin the second I step out of the stairwell.
The slight breeze does nothing to cool me, and I bunch my skirt around my thighs and sit at the edge of the pool. The heat isn’t turned on, and the cool water feels divine. I inhale a deep breath, and the tension leaves my body.
Zane is spending too much time with Nathalie for my liking, but I know he needs to. That’s hard on me. He screws me at night and tells the paparazzi he loves her during the day. We have bigger goals and worries than whether or not we’ll end up together, and I get that. The Blacks have hurt so many people and will continue to do so if we don’t stop it. It would be selfish to ask Zane to drop it all and run away with me, and I don’t know if he would. He wants justice for Zarah’s stolen time and his parents’ deaths. I wouldn’t ask him to choose.
There’s a highrise hotel across the Renegade, and the building is lit up gold from top to bottom. The rooftop isn’t open like this one, it’s encased in glass, and I can’t tell from this distance what kind of event is happening inside. Zane didn’t tell us where he was going tonight—as a precaution maybe Mel knows—but he doesn’t like telling me things. He knows it’ll upset me, and unless it’s life or death, I don’t want to hear the details. He could be there, in that hotel right now, living it up, drinking champagne and smoking cigars the way he was born to, though he’s probably at one of Ash’s swanky buildings downtown. Ash prefers the glitz, glamour, and trendy downtown vibe to the elegance and sophistication of the riverbank.
The breeze ruffles my hair, and I swish my feet back and forth. I should have brought Zarah up here, but she, Ingrid, and Max were playing Memory. She’s adapting well outside of Quiet Meadows, and Max is a big help. He has an intelligence that his looks don’t hint at, and he draws Zarah into conversations that sound out of my league. They probably are. Zarah may have lost five years of her life, but she’d already had more experiences than I ever had at that age.
I think about heading to bed. I’m tired, lonely, and scared, and the things we have to do in the next few weeks weigh me down. Zane and Nathalie won’t come to the hotel tonight. They’ll go back to the penthouse the way they would as if none of this were happening. Maybe in the middle of the night I’ll sleepwalk to the Honeymoon Suite and see if he shows up. Sometimes he does, and I wake up, my body curled around his. Sometimes he doesn’t, and I’ll drift back down the hallway to finish out the early morning in Quinn’s room and wake up alone, tears I don’t remember crying sticking to my cheeks. He goes to work as he normally would, and if he has an early meeting scheduled, it’s more convenient that he stay at the penthouse.
Reluctantly, I pull my feet out of the cool water and shake the droplets off my toes. I pad over the rooftop and down to the sleeping rooms.
I poke my head into Max’s suite to let everyone know I’m alive and well and shuffle down the carpeted hallway to the room Quinn and I share. I wiggle out of my dress and study my bruises in the mirror. They’re fading more with every passing day, though I’m still stiff. Other than ibuprofen, I haven’t needed pain pills in a while, and I’m thankful for that.
I slip off my panties to put on a clean pair and my pajamas. There’s a splotch of blood in the crotch.
My period came.
Tears gather in my eyes, and I don’t know if I’m happy or sad.