Chapter 4. Alex #2
I can’t do it. Can’t survive the next thirty seconds. My heart is hot and sticky in my throat, clogging my airway. “He’s nowhere. He’s fucking nowhere. But he’s going to surface and he’s going to hurt one of them when he does. And Mack … Mack saw Ophelia and …”
And I’m not there to hold her, to walk her to her lectures. I can’t keep her safe.
“Alex, stop. Good, okay. Now breathe. Breathe.”
I manage a sorry excuse for a deep breath. “Mack visited Ophelia, and she got an anonymous text, and it … it’s a photo of us. A bad photo. And this could be the end of her.”
“Ophelia is stronger than you’re giving her credit for. She can hold her own. Tell me about the photo at lunchtime. I have another appointment in two minutes.”
The small crack in my voice fills me with disgust. “I can’t make it to lunchtime.”
There’s a smile in his voice when he next speaks. “Tell me about that at lunchtime.”
A small, disbelieving snort slips between two ragged breaths. “I struggle to like you sometimes.”
His laugh is genuine. “Survive until lunch, Alex. Then we’ll talk more. And ask Jacqueline for decaf for the rest of the day.”
I hang up, puffing a slow exhale from my cheeks, drawing random lines in my notebook. My heart rate slows gradually. This whole situation is laughable—me, twenty-three, sitting behind a CEO desk with no idea what I’m doing and a crushing sense of existential dread.
I breathe for another moment, sketching a robin in the corner of my page until I’m calm enough to join my call. I switch my camera on and attempt to tame my unruly hair. “Sorry I’m late.”
I’M ON THE treadmill at 11 p.m. with Mia crunching through a bag of chips beside me when she mumbles something. I slow the treadmill to a jog. “Huh?”
“Who’s Brendan?”
I hit the Stop button. “Why?”
“You’ve got two missed calls from Brendan. You got a boyfriend?”
An uneasy sense of alarm prickles my nape.
I already know from the late hour and the fact that it’s Brendan calling and not Mack that it’s probably something serious.
I pray to a god I’ve never believed in that Ophelia is unharmed.
I grab my water and my phone from where they sit beside my sister. “I need to call him back.”
“Is it work stuff?” she asks, holding the bag of chips toward me.
I shake my head at the bag, trying to catch my breath. “Get yourself to bed, M.”
I head out the kitchen doors and into the garden outside, pacing the length of the small space while the phone rings and rings. It’s unbearable. I call him for a fifth time, raking a hand through my hair. I fire Belladonna a text asking her if she knows if Ophelia is okay.
Belladonna
Let her go, Alex. She’s the human equivalent of wet cardboard.
Great.
When Brendan picks up, I half expect him to have been shot, or for someone to be holding him hostage, or something. He never fails to pick up immediately. His voice is muffled when it comes. “Sorry, was refilling my cereal bowl. Do you think they’re putting less marshmallows in Lucky Charms?”
We’ve put people on the moon, yet we can’t punch people through the phone line yet. Science is letting us down. “You’re thirty-five, Brendan. This better be fucking good,” I grit out. “Is she okay?”
“Ophelia? I think so, yeah. Can you see my screen?”
I look down at my phone, where Brendan has started sharing a photo. It’s blurry, like the camera it was taken on was greasy, but I’d recognize Sorrowsong’s distinct glasshouse swimming pool anywhere. “Yeah, I see it.”
“Ophelia got sent this. Only just told Mack about it.”
I zoom in on the small screen, realizing why he’s showing me it. Ophelia is in front of the door to the pool, glancing over her shoulder like she knows she’s being watched. Even with the low quality, I can make out the worry on her expression. “When was this taken?”
“Yesterday.”
My eyes flick to the soft glow emanating from Fleur’s bedroom window to the silhouette of Mia brushing her hair in hers. I feel like I’m stretched too thin to protect everyone who’s important to me, despite my best efforts.
I chose the girls over Ophelia, I chose my family over her. It’s the decision I always knew I’d have to make; it’s the right decision. But I can’t help but imagine how it feels for Ophelia. Left behind, like she always has been.
Fuck.
I drag a cigarette out of the box and light it. “And you of all people can’t trace it?”
“I can trace it, but it’s no help. It was taken at Sorrowsong, obviously,” he says, like I’m three years old.
“But sent from New York?”
“Sent from Sorrowsong, too.”
“So either Ophelia has herself a new enemy, or …?”
“Or your father has made his way to Scotland to punish Ophelia for the article. Would he do that?”
I open my mouth to ask how my father would cross continents with an international arrest warrant but don’t bother. He has endless connections in the aviation industry and bottomless wealth, both in cash and in private banks.
Would he do that? It’s a good question. I try to put myself in my father’s shoes, imagine I’m on the run with nothing left to lose. “I’m not sure that he would. She’s a nobody in his eyes.”
Ophelia lost a lot when that article went live, but from an outsider’s perspective, I won.
Inherited a company I had no right to inherit, gained the favor of the media, got rid of the father I never liked.
I imagine my father hates me more than anyone else right now.
“I think if Cain were to want to punish anyone, it’d be me. ”
“That’s what Mack thinks, too. He thinks your father is waiting for a good time to corner you. He might still believe he can get his life back.”
Dread trickles down my spine, too hot, too sticky. I’m not afraid of whatever he has planned for me, but if one of the girls were to get caught in the cross fire …
I shudder, my next drag on the cigarette a burning fire beneath my freezing skin. “I have to go to her.”
“I think your team is really against that idea.”
The unspoken reasoning behind his statement drums up a visceral rage, boiling and volatile in my chest. “We are not throwing Ophelia under the bus for what happened to Bancroft.”
“If Rocco has done a good enough job of burying him, we won’t need to, as long as we silence whoever’s texting her before they leak the photo.”
“Leak or not, it’s not happening,” I bite out. “If she’s getting a manslaughter charge, I am, too.”
“Do you hear how you sound? You have a family.”
Maybe I sound ridiculous to him, but for me, there is no debate. I will not be one more person using Ophelia like that. My father used her parents’ death to mop up the evidence of an affair. I won’t use her life to mop up the evidence of a murder. “Drop it.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, defensively.
“I’m going to visit her,” I declare into the cloudless night, more to myself than Brendan. Like I’m giving myself a little pep talk. This’ll all work out marvelously, Alex. Ophelia will be delighted that you came and definitely won’t tear you a new one as soon as she sees you.
A sigh is all I get in return.
“There’s an aviation conference in London this weekend anyway.”
“Oh, is there?” he says, and I think he’s convinced I’ve lost it. “Amazing. I, too, love to take eleven-hour detours when I’m on business trips. Do me a favor and keep your trip to Scotland off any electronic records. Don’t fly to Inverness. I’ll book you a rental car from London under an alias.”
“Will do,” I say. “And my seven-year-old sister thinks they’re putting less marshmallows in.”
“Fucking knew it,” he mumbles before hanging up, like he’s just solved the biggest case of his career.
With the New York February chill biting its way through the thin fabric of my gym top, I open up my texts and ask Jacqueline to book my flights.
I’m going to see Ophelia again.
I should text her first. Give her some kind of warning.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, cigarette dangling from my lips.
Hi. Absolutely not. Hey. Even worse. We should talk.
Jesus, no. I sound like I’m about to suggest a divorce.
I’m coming over. I spam the backspace button, reminding myself that I’m actively trying not to get a restraining order from her.
Above the dread that sinks itself right into the marrow of my bones, an unfamiliar buzz of excitement skates along my skin, and as I let sleep drag me under later that night, for the first time in a while, I actually want to wake up.