Chapter 10
10
If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
Bella hit the sidewalk at a jog, her breath fogging the morning air, ear buds Bluetoothed to her phone and playing a song that she hadn’t heard since her teens. She thought of the girls’ WhatsApp messages. Astrid seemed happy enough with the progress she was making with Aiden, Sienna was being extra careful with Harvey. He was such a slippery one that she needed to be. Because really, of all of them, Harvey was the one that absolutely everyone wanted taken down. Bella had already messaged Sienna offering any kind of help she needed. Because somewhere along the line, she’d actually discovered that she was quite good at this.
It hadn’t taken Carlton long to take the bait. And when his email arrived, it had been full of false obsequiousness, in what Bella presumed was an attempt to lull them into a false sense of security about what she was 99 per cent sure would be a hit piece on Chase.
At least, it would be if she had anything to do with it.
And she did.
So, it would.
But reading through the WhatsApp messages again earlier that morning, she’d realised what was niggling at her. Paige had been unusually quiet and Bella couldn’t help but wonder if something was wrong. It wasn’t the first time that Bella found herself thinking of Paige and not Olly, or the revenge. And it was happening more and more.
Bella checked the time. It would be early morning in the UK and Paige should be up. She pulled her phone from the case on her arm as she did calf stretches just inside the entrance to Central Park. But every time she went to type something out, it sounded either too formal or too familiar.
Hi Paige. How are ? —
Delete.
Paige, how are things going ? —
Delete. Delete.
Hey hun ? —
Delete, delete, delete!
Hun?? She’d never said ‘hun’ in her life. Finally, Bella told herself off for being stupid and creating tension where there wasn’t any.
Bella
Just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing. Hope everything’s okay.
She put her phone back into the case on her arm and set out along the full loop that would give her at least six miles if she did it only once. She’d seen Chase the day after the meeting with Sascha, looking and sounding like a bear with a sore head.
She’d also seen him roll back and forward on the chair that she’d doctored again since he’d last sat in it. But her greatest delight had been watching him hover over the coffee station in his office, eyeing the sugar packets suspiciously, tearing off the top of one and gently tasting the contents and promptly hurling it into the bin, accompanied by a wholly unnecessary amount of cursing for a place of business, in Bella’s considered opinion. The cherry on top was the rather concerned glances Maurice sent his way, before masking his features in a ‘business as usual’ visage when he caught her looking at him.
But since then, she’d kept missing him. He’d sent emails and updates, and had assured her that if she needed anything he’d be available. Meanwhile, Ali had been in a state of perpetual bliss as Ye-Joon made use of his office space to work on the written part of his BA while also arranging the early deliveries of some of the other artists’ work that would be showing their work for the opening.
And as much as she hated to admit it, she could see how Chase’s vision was beginning to develop. And it was exciting. Her mind was waking up with the challenge work presented her with, under the creativity of it. But no matter how good it made her feel, she had to remember that once she was done with Chase, she was done with the gallery.
She ducked under a particularly low hanging tree branch, making way for a group of elderly ladies putting Bella’s pace to shame, and upped her speed.
She’d been at Nayak almost a month now and while it still felt almost scarily new, she also couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out. She had to take Chase down before the gallery opening. She just had to.
Because a part of her was beginning to worry that she shouldn’t be doing it. She’d seen him with other people, she’d seen him with Sascha, and while he was still autocratic and difficult, she wasn’t sure that she was seeing the cruel, womanising, cheating bastard that she’d thought he was at the beginning of her time here. It was all going the wrong way. Familiarity was supposed to bread contempt. But what she was feeling wasn’t…
Her phone beeped and she checked her smart watch. Seeing who it was, she pulled off to the side and took a beat on the bench, retrieving her phone to read the message.
Paige
Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet.
Bella
Is Olly being awful?
She doubted it even as she typed it. Olly just wasn’t horrible, even if he had left her at the altar.
Paige
No, no. Really… it’s fine.
Bella
I can call if you want?
There was a pause.
Paige
Would love that BUT Oliver’s started yelling about Pavarotti escaping again and threatening to take him to the pound and Bunky will never forgive me. I should go help.
Bella didn’t think that there was a pound for hamsters, but she got the idea.
Bella
If you’re sure you’re okay?
Paige
Absolutely!
Are you okay though?
Was she? Yes, she was okay. But things with Chase were getting complicated and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She just… didn’t want to tell that to Paige who had literally flown to another country and moved into the house of a man she was getting revenge against for Bella . Paige who had moved a menagerie of animals into Olly’s pristine Cornish show home, one of which was a hamster of extreme girth and the other was a chaotic stray dog called Casper whose favourite thing in the whole world was a soggy tennis ball. She had done so much and Bella felt bad. And not the good kind of bad. She felt as if she wasn’t quite meeting the standards she needed to. As if she wasn’t playing her part.
Bella
I’m good. I’ve finally set up that interview for the day after tomorrow.
And that will be the beginning of Chase’s downfall.
Paige
Go Bella!! Astrid will be THRILLED.
Oh God, sorry, gotta run. Oliver is threatening to make
Pavarotti sleep in the garage. Talk soon xxx
Putting it in writing made it real. Telling Paige about the interview was making a commitment. One that, of course, Bella would follow through with. But it was different to sabotaging Chase’s coffee and his chair. It was different to hacking his work account. This was properly, purposefully, ruining someone’s career. Or at least, giving Chester C. Carlton the means to do so.
Astrid will be thrilled.
And what about her? Bella hadn’t even asked about Olly. Was she thrilled that he was getting terrorised by a chaotic and utterly loveable redhead, a sugar-addicted hamster in need of a diet, and a dog that needed daily walks? What possible revenge would satisfy her?
The question pulled her up short, unknowingly forcing another runner to side-step her at the last minute.
Bella just wanted him to know . To know how much that had hurt. To know what it was like to have the future they’d discussed taken away from her. To have the floor beneath her shake and crack.
But did she regret it? That he’d walked away from her?
She frowned and pressed on with her run at a distracted pace. Because surely marrying someone who didn’t love her would have hurt more in the long run.
In the last few weeks, she’d been thinking of him less and less. But she wasn’t sure whether that was because she was focused on her plan to bring Chase down or whether it just didn’t hurt so much any more.
She thought about the life she’d wanted. The house, the children, the picket fence, and the charity galas, seeing it for the first time through a bit of a haze.
She’d loved Olly. She had . They’d been together for two years before the wedding. They’d had a friendship that had deepened their love. And yes, much of it had been spent apart, the long-distance relationship necessary because of her charity work in Upstate New York, and Olly’s socialising in California.
But as Bella slowly looped round to the starting point of her run, she realised just how much of their relationship had been about what happened after they were married. What life would be like after . What she would get after . And for the first time since the wedding had been cancelled, she wondered whether Olly might have perhaps been right to call it off.
* * *
Chase was a glutton for punishment. That was the only possible reason he was here, Chase thought as he got off the train at Secaucus. Immediately he felt as if he’d stepped into an Escher painting, as if the past and the present were colliding staircases of confusion.
Half of his brain still felt stuck in Sascha’s studio. And he had to think of it like that, because every time he looked up to see someone else’s art on the walls he felt like he’d been tasered. Full body electric shock and not for therapeutic, or sexual reasons.
He followed commuters off the platform, down the stairs and out onto the main drag and decided to walk. It wasn’t that far. Forty-five minutes? He could do with stretching his legs.
Coward.
In absolutely no fucking rush whatsoever he started the walk back towards the house he’d grown up in.
When Chase had first made it big, he’d tried to give his dad some money, but it hadn’t gone down well. His father was a proud, hard-working, blue-collar mechanic who looked after his home, his business and himself. The most Chase had been able to do was pay off his mother’s medical bills and the mortgage on a house he knew his father would never leave.
Too many memories here, son.
The cold winter’s breeze took bites from the tops of his ears and he hunched into his coat. He passed by places he remembered as a child. His mother on nearly every corner, collecting him from school, shopping at the grocery store, meeting up with a friend and making small talk while he played in the park.
Urban, but still local, his mother would say with pride. An English teacher at the local high school, he should have dreaded going to school, but secretly he’d loved it. Loved knowing that his mom was in the same building. Loved the fact that she was most kids’ favourite teacher. Enough so that he wasn’t actually given any grief over it either.
He passed a couple walking their dog and looked across the street to where a woman struggled to put a toddler into his car seat.
Get married soon and give me grandbabies , his mother had demanded. He’d been fourteen.
His father had nearly sworn the house down. No fucking kids! Not until you’re at least thirty.
She’d slapped her husband with a dishcloth and his father had swept her up into his arms and covered her in a thousand kisses. His stoic, monosyllabic dad had done that. Because Daisy Miller could make even the hardest hard melt.
Christ, he’d wanted a marriage like that.
His mother had been beautiful. Thick dark, Snow-White hair, pale skin, and so damn kind it would break your heart. She’d filled the small square patch of grass at the back with as many plants as she could, hanging bird seed in the winter and any number of different kinds of food for whatever other wildlife could be found nearby. Half of the time, she was feeding the neighbourhood cats, but no one had the heart to stop her.
She’d loved hard, Chase thought, amazed by it, unable to imagine what it would take for him to love like that and that openly after the betrayal he’d experienced. No wonder his dad had all but disappeared in the wake of her loss.
Chase swallowed as his memories of the area turned into the ones of her last few months.
The weight loss, the nose bleeds. It had taken a while for her to be taken seriously by the doctor, in part because they didn’t have a huge amount of money for healthcare but also because she didn’t want to make a fuss, or cause a scene.
He’d never forget her apologising to a busy attending physician at the hospital, as if her fucking death was an inconvenience she needed to excuse. Wet heat pressed against the back of his eyes and his heart thumped painfully. Snatches of memories assaulting him from all sides now.
He never should have come back.
You’re going to go to art college. You’re going to travel the world. You’re going to show them all. You’re going to be famous. You’re going to be an international success.
She’d said it with a wave of her hand, like a gameshow psychic, a jazzy husk to her tone, as if she were dropping prophecies upon him. Even now he could still feel the wires that connected her to the machines pressed between them as he tried to get closer and closer to her, even though she was getting further and further away. His father, poised on the threshold of the door to her room, desperate to give him some time with his mother but physically unable to leave the woman who had his heart for even a second.
When the university offer came through from the UK with a full scholarship, he’d thought it had been a sign from her. And everything he’d done since that day had been to make his mother’s words true. He’d worked harder, been more focused, more determined than anyone in his year. He’d hurled his grief at canvases and slashed his fears into colour, grazing his pain into texture and…
And now that he couldn’t, it was like it was all coming back to him.
He looked up to find himself outside his father’s garage on Main Street.
‘Been staring up at this place for a while, son.’
His father stood in the shadows, wiping one of his tools in a rag. It was the first he’d seen of him in about, fuck . Seven years? His father hated to travel and had never visited him in the UK. And he’d been so damn busy. He’d come here, years ago, with Annalise, and the thought just curdled his stomach.
‘Yeah,’ he replied to his dad. It was pretty much all he was capable of saying. Seeing him again, it was both terrible and fucking wonderful. Terrible because of all the things Chase couldn’t say. All the ways in which he’d lost a hold of his home, his wife, his art… And amazing because no matter what, his dad would always be his dad. In Chase’s mind he experienced a thousand memories of running up to him and being swept up in his arms and in that moment he’d have sold his soul to do just that. To run so hard, and so fast, knowing – knowing – that no matter what, there were two arms that would take him up and make everything better.
‘It’s been a while,’ Chase said instead, hoping a wry smile would make it easier. It didn’t.
His father just nodded. ‘I’m closing up. Are you staying for dinner?’
No, how are you? What are you doing here? How’s life been treating you?
Where’s your wife?
‘Was thinking about it,’ Chase hedged.
His father nodded again. ‘There’s enough for two.’
His mother had had all the words. She’d made everything pretty with them. She’d made his father smile and love and she’d made Chase see the world with a beauty he’d been chasing ever since she’d died. That was why he hated coming back to visit his dad. Because he remembered too much, hurt too much, felt too much.
‘I brought something for you,’ Chase said, pulling the bottle of scotch from the deep pocket of his wool jacket.
‘Don’t want none of that pish now. It’d better be the good stuff.’
‘For you? Always,’ Chase said, a genuine smile this time at his dad’s gruffness.
His father scanned the label, a final nod deciding the evening. That was as much appreciation as Chase would get for a bottle that cost nearly three hundred dollars, but he’d take it. Because sometimes you didn’t need all the words.
As his father pulled down the shutter and locked up, he said, without looking at Chase, ‘Thanks for coming, son.’
Chase nodded, just like his father.
It was his mother’s birthday. He couldn’t have not.