Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
I COULD ACT
Wasp
In the green room of Madison Square Gardens, a huge venue compared with the others on the tour so far, Viking Blue was holed up with Hedonist, having a pre-gig pow-wow.
I hung by the door, prepared to say my piece to Rex but more than anything wanting the night to be done with so I could get back to Taylor.
“Rex will be up on a platform in the third and fourth song.” Freddie ambled over, tapping his screen, reading through notes.
“Make sure you catch it when he jumps back to the stage. He’s got this thing about having an epic shot taken here.
The start of their big US takeover. They’ve never played in the States before. ”
“Mm-hm.” A kind of anxiety gripped me, no doubt after the shite day we’d had. I slid my phone from my pocket. A message from Taylor waited, received over an hour ago, while I’d been capturing the setup and the waiting crowds.
I read it and baulked. She’d gone to see her father? Adrenaline hit my limbs. I should be with her, except I had no idea where she was.
“Sorry,” I muttered to Freddie. “I need to make a call.”
My sense of unease growing, I dialled Taylor’s number. It rang. A stranger’s voice answered.
“Why have ye got this phone?” I barked down the line.
“If you are trying to reach Miss Vandenberg, I can take a message.”
A group of stage technicians manhandled gear through the door, and I stepped aside. “No, I don’t want to give ye a message. Is she there?”
“She’s busy preparing for her engagement party,” the woman replied.
“Her…what?”
“Her engagement party. Tonight. Like I said, I can pass on a message, but I doubt she’ll be available to return your call until tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“I beg your pardon? I’m not at liberty to divulge—”
I killed the call and stared at my phone.
“Wasp?” Freddie hissed. “Rex is coming.”
On the balls of my feet, I swung around and grabbed my bag, stuffing my camera inside. “I need to go.”
“Go? Where?” Freddie clapped his hands to his cheeks. “You can’t!”
“Wasp. How are ye doing?” Rex entered the room, his cocksure grin in place and his hair newly dyed a bright blue. “Look, man, apparently I hit your brother by accident—”
“Not interested,” I uttered, needing to get out of there.
He grabbed my bag strap, jerking me to a halt. “Wait a minute. Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to leave!” I yelled and wrenched the strap from his hand.
“If you do, you’re off the tour,” he snarled. “I’ll see you replaced and I’ll bad mouth you to every fucker I know. We’re playing fucking Madison Square Gardens!”
“Taylor’s missing,” I snapped back. “I have to find her.”
He blinked. “She’s probably with her fiancé.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I got into his face, irrational with my worry for the lass. How the hell did he, of all people, know about her old plans?
“Effie recognised her. She’s engaged to Theo Miller. His dad is meant to be the next president. You’re up against stiff competition.”
Ah fuck, so everyone knew. No way would Rex keep this to himself.
“Wasp? There’s someone here to see you,” Freddie called from by the doorway.
I wheeled around to see a sharp-suited man at Freddie’s side.
Despite the fact I’d never met him before, I instantly recognised my visitor.
And despised him.
It was Taylor’s dad.
In a side room, away from the prying eyes of my colleagues, I stared with hatred at the man before me. With a steady gaze, he took me in.
“Where’s Taylor?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Using that name, is she? Interesting.”
I stepped closer to him, very aware that with my shaved head and scowl, I looked like a thug. At half a head shorter than me and a good thirty years older, the man didn’t blink.
“I asked you where she was.”
“I have little time and more important matters than this to deal with, kid. Tonight, my daughter, Irene, is attending her engagement party with her fiancé. This is a long-standing arrangement which is of vital importance to both families.”
“She isn’t going through with it.”
“She is. I left her choosing a dress with Theo at her side.” He sized me up. “So you see, it’s a done deal. You’re just a complication, and what I need from you is your silence. What will it cost?”
Something was badly, deeply wrong. Taylor couldn’t have agreed to this. I worked my jaw, debating over how I could prise out where this party was. If I could get to her, I could help her.
“I’m not for sale,” I muttered. Politics wasn’t my strong point. I had no idea how to cheat my way to information. But I wasn’t stupid. I could act.
“Everyone’s for sale. Let me make this perfectly clear.
” He slid an envelope from his inside pocket and unfolded a piece of paper.
“This is a non-disclosure agreement Irene wishes for you to sign. If the two of you are to continue seeing one another after her engagement and subsequent marriage, you will abide by the agreement. If not, we will sue you into the ground.”
I stared at the white sheet.
“Alternatively,” her father continued, “you get the fuck out of her life, and I give you a payoff to stay away.”
“What if I don’t want any of those things?” I kept my gaze on his, testing his mettle.
Steel crossed his eyes. “You don’t want to ask that question.”
I wanted to keep pushing. To tell him how I loved his daughter and would protect her from fuckers like him until the day I died. But I wouldn’t see her again if I did, I was certain of that.
“What’s your offer?” I repressed my shiver and dropped my gaze from his, beaten into fake submission.
The man stilled.
I doubted that he believed me.
Then, with malice in his tone, he said, “I’ll hire you for the evening. You’ll receive twenty thousand dollars for one night.”
“You want me to photograph her engagement party?” Christ, this man took the biscuit.
I met his gaze again, and he smiled. The cruelty there in his eyes told me all I needed to know. He believed himself. He thought he’d won. He planned to show Taylor that he’d bought me as much as he controlled her.
“Snap the happy couple. Then go and never darken her door again.”
Yeah, I was about to take the pictures of my career.
In the weirdest of parallel universes, I travelled in Taylor’s dad’s car, albeit up front with the driver, to her engagement party venue at the Yankee Stadium.
In my jeans, black t-shirt, and with my shaven head, I couldn’t have looked less like a guest if I tried.
Inside the vast hall, noise mobbed me. Loud chatter, people networking, a film crew making the rounds.
Then, across the room, Taylor appeared.
In a sparkling blood-red dress, with her hair and makeup inch perfect and stunning, she took in the room, the model of a politician’s daughter. Or wife.
A man arrived at her side, and my breath caught. If he touched her, I couldn’t keep up the charade. All I needed was to get her alone and to an exit and we were away. But if that arsehole in his shiny suit laid one finger…
Taylor smiled at a couple who approached her and her fiancé, then, before my very eyes, she took the man by his arm. And she laughed, bright and happy.
Horror glued me to the spot.
“Take a picture, kid. That’s what I’m paying you for.” Her father patted my shoulder then parted the crowd with his overblown ego as he crossed the space to join his friends.
I’d felt better since my meltdown of two days ago.
Now, it all came flooding back.
The stress. The tension in my head.
If I’d been anywhere else, I’d have made for the door. Found a street to run down or a gym to hit things in.
But I couldn’t leave her.
Desperate to look at anything but the apparently happy couple, I scrolled through the photos on my camera’s roll, flicking the wheel back and forth. Waiting for Taylor to move on or do something.
A particular shot caught my eye. Taylor lay on the bed in our mountain shack, grinning at me, her ankles crossed and her head tilted. In her hands, she held Charity’s diary. Her own handwriting stood out clear above her aunt’s. I zoomed in.
This was the benefits of quality kit: I could read every word on the page.
Make love to someone I’m in love with, read the original words.
And then some, Taylor had added. Underneath, and underlined, she’d added a new list item: Then lock him down.
Any uncertainty I had fell away. She loved me. I knew her.
Taylor and her would-be fiancé approached the stage, and I strode out onto the floor. Centre left, there for her to see. And if she didn’t notice me, I’d march right on up and join her.