19. Sienna
19
SIENNA
“What is it?” Kyle’s face has been drained of color. “What’s happened?”
The excitement that I’d been feeling about the trip to Ireland evaporates, leaving me feeling weak and unprotected all over again. Whatever it is, the expression on Kyle’s face is enough to tell me that our plans are about to be rewritten.
“It’s Cash. The Titan has been raided.”
“By the police?”
Okay, I know I’m not helping, but although I know what the Murrays do, and I’m aware that some of their activities are probably illegal, I’ve never connected their businesses to being on the wrong side of the law. Until now.
“What does this mean?”
“I have to stay and help him. I can’t leave him, Sienna.” He stares at the phone as if awaiting another phone call to pile on the bad news. “I’m the family lawyer.”
“Yes of course.” My hand finds the handle of my suitcase and I lean on it for support.
I should’ve known better than to allow myself to get excited. The instant something good comes my way, the universe waggles its finger and says, “ Nu-huh. This is not for you Sienna Walker .”
Meeting Kyle at the nightclub on New Year’s.
The gallery.
The trip to Ireland.
I swallow. This isn’t me. I don’t lie down and take whatever shit gets thrown at me. I don’t wallow in self-pity and wait for someone else to come along and bail me out.
I get back up and I keep on fighting.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down —isn’t that how the saying goes?
Deep breath. “I understand. Family comes first.”
He meets my eyes, and I can see the disappointment in them. While I’m thinking about myself, he’s trying to do what’s right for everyone.
“I’ll go home, Kyle. It’s okay. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Kyle rubs a hand across his jawline, and my brain automatically pictures his face buried between my legs.
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’ll get Seamus to take you to the airport. The family jet is waiting for us. I’ll meet you there.”
“But what if you get held up?”
“I won’t. I’ll be there, Sienna.” His eyes widen; he wants me to believe him.
“How? What if this can’t be resolved tonight?”
I’m disappointed at the vulnerability in my own voice. Is this what Kyle has done? Has he thrown a protective arm around me, promised to take care of me, offered me bodyguards and safe passage to Ireland so that I lower my barriers and stop fending for myself? Anyone can climb into the back of a chauffeur-driven car, board a private jet, and disembark at the other end, clean, well-rested, and woozy on expensive champagne.
So, why am I making such a big fucking deal out of it?
“It will. I promise. It’ll all be a misunderstanding. The NYPD won’t be able to pin anything on Cash.”
It isn’t lost on me that not being able to pin anything on him isn’t the same as saying he has done nothing wrong. I’m reminded all over again that this way of life… This isn’t what I wanted.
I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for a phone call to inform me that someone I love has been killed.
“And if it isn’t a misunderstanding?” My voice is small.
I have no idea what Cash has been arrested for, but it isn’t going to be for something as mundane as shoplifting or failure to stop at traffic signals.
“I’ll sort it.” He pulls me into his arms and kisses the top of my head. I can feel his heart beating in sync with mine. “I’ll be there.”
He releases me and checks his phone again.
“I have to go. The flight is cleared for take-off between eleven-thirty and midnight.”
“If you’re not there by midnight?”
I already feel myself pulling away from him. Rebuilding the wall that he’d so easily demolished last night. Self-preservation.
He left me once before…
“I want you to stay on the plane and go to Ireland. I’ll make sure that someone is waiting to meet you at the other end, Sienna, I promise. Go to the family home and wait for me there.”
“Sounds as if you already know that you’re not coming with me tonight.”
I feel inexplicably crushed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, for letting him in, so that he could hurt me all over again. How do I even know that he didn’t plan this down to the last detail: the phone call just as we’re about to leave for the airport, the disappointment in his eyes.
I have to stay, Sienna. I can’t leave now.
“No, that isn’t true. Please believe me. I want to be there. I want to travel with you tonight, Sienna. I want it more than you’ll ever know. I love you.”
I see it in his eyes, and I realize that I’ve known it all along.
Because I feel the same way about him. It’s as if he tethered my heart to his in the nightclub six years ago, and the silk ropes knotting us together have been there ever since.
“It’s just, this is family…”
Despite the knots, this is the way that it will always be …
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
“Good girl.”
It’s hard to believe that these two words have sent tremors of excitement down my spine before and made my pussy drip with anticipation. Now, they sound flat.
“I’ll send Seamus up for your luggage. Promise me that you’ll wait here for him.”
“What about your luggage?” I hate the accusation in my voice.
But something inside me seems to curl up into a tiny ball and die when his eyes flicker back and forth between me and his open suitcase. He had no intention of coming with me.
“Seamus can bring my luggage too.” It feels as if he has already checked out. “I don’t want to leave you like this, Sienna.”
Like what?
With a promise that you know you can’t keep?
With your cum still trickling out from between my legs?
“Go. Your brother needs you.”
There appears to be a whole bunch of stuff perching on the tip of his tongue, waiting to dive into the room and convince me that he’ll be there.
But instead, he turns around and walks out of the bedroom, his phone already pressed to his ear. It’s like watching him morph into a different person as he leaves, every footstep erasing another tiny piece of the man who whispers to me in Gaelic when I’m lying contented in his arms and replacing it with the Murray family lawyer.
An hour later, I’m sitting on the Murray’s private jet at Teterboro Airport, peering out of the window at the city lights in the distance. I haven’t heard from Kyle since he left his apartment. I don’t know if he is handling Cash’s incarceration from the comfort of his office in the Wraith, or if he’s sitting with the Police Commissioner pleading his brother’s case over a bottle of brandy.
I check my cell phone again.
Nothing.
The aircraft belongs on a movie set. The seating area is ivory, the cushions upholstered with ivory velvet, the trimmings polished mahogany, the strip lighting understated and classy. Seamus showed me the bedrooms when we boarded.
Fucking bedrooms complete with ensuite shower rooms!
No chance of having your knees crushed by the seat in front or turning into a contortionist while you try to wash in the poky restroom, not when you travel by private jet.
How did Victoria keep this to herself?
How does anyone ever learn to take this for granted?
It’s another reminder that Kyle and I exist in different universes.
The steward—because the Murrays employ their own private fucking airline staff as well—has stopped trying to offer me a glass of champagne. I’ve barely touched the ice-cold water served in a crystal tumbler that he served with a selection of ‘nibbles’ when Seamus and I first boarded.
My mouth is dry. My palms are sweaty. My brain hasn’t been able to focus on anything other than the minutes ticking slowly by towards take-off.
He isn’t coming.
He promised that he would do everything in his power to make this flight, but if he was coming, he’d be here by now.
My hopes keep soaring and dipping like a gull trying to navigate a sea storm, but each dip is sinking lower and lower, until the moment of truth arrives. Then, the doors will close, and the steward will tell me to buckle up during take-off, and I’ll be leaving behind the only home I’ve ever known for a strange country. On my own.
Eleven-twenty-five.
The flight is cleared for take-off between eleven-thirty and midnight.
Is Kyle sitting in a dingy police department somewhere in the city trying to convince the cops to release Cash, and panicking that he isn’t going to make it in time? Or is he waiting for an alert to inform him that the flight has taken off without him so that he can forget about me for a while?
I unbuckle the safety belt and pick up my purse and my phone.
I don’t even know how I allowed myself to be talked into this situation. This is where I belong. I should be at the gallery, overseeing the repairs that Kyle requested, reading emails, and getting back into the art studio.
Seamus is already on his feet before I can go anywhere. “Mr. Murray has just arrived.” His lilting accent is more pronounced than Kyle’s, but there’s no mistaking the relief in his tone. “You might want to fasten your safety belt. Once he boards, the pilot will prepare for take-off.”
“Kyle is here?”
Anticipation, joy, the thrill of knowing that Kyle kept his word and got here as soon as he could all surge through my veins, making me feel giddy.
He came!
My heart starts skipping as Seamus leaves me to go and welcome his boss. I should never have questioned his promises. I should’ve trusted him the way I did the night we met.
Sunrise over the Giant’s Causeway here we come.
I peer back out of the small oval window at the city lights. Perhaps I will ask the steward to open that bottle of champagne after all.
I’m still smiling when I turn back to the cabin to face Kyle.
My stomach plummets like I’m riding the Tower of Terror in Disney World rather than sitting comfortably in a private jet that hasn’t even left the ground yet.
It isn’t Kyle who takes the seat opposite me.
It’s Nick.
He’s wearing a black polo-neck sweater and black pants, his cashmere coat draped casually over his arm as if this were a regular vacation that we’d planned together. His hair is a little ruffled and his cheeks are tinted pink from the chill of the night air, but the smile hasn’t altered. It’s the same smile with which he greeted me at my first appointment. The same smile that accompanied his unexpected proposal.
And now this.
“Nick?” I can barely find my voice to speak. “What are you doing here?”
I glance at the cabin entrance, expecting Seamus to follow Nick on board, but there’s no sign of him. My pulse is racing through the scenario, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when Kyle and Nick switched places, and failing epically.
“I know you weren’t expecting me.” He places his coat on the seat next to him and fastens the safety belt around his waist as if traveling by private jet is his preferred mode of transport, and one that he enjoys regularly. “Kyle has been otherwise detained.”
He hasn’t answered the question. My brain picks up on the way he skirted around it, waving red flags behind my eyes, but my body isn’t cooperating.
“He finally came to his senses.”
Nick slides his phone from the pocket of his pants and unlocks it, and I watch him. My fingers grip the handles either side of my seat. My throat clicks as I try to swallow.
“Here. This is the message I received from him earlier this evening.”
Nick turns his phone around so that I can read the words on the screen, but they’re just a bunch of jumbled up letters to my confused brain.
“What does it say?” I whisper.
He takes the phone back and reads the message out loud.
“I realize now that Sienna deserves better than the only way of life that I can offer her. She’s an amazingly talented beautiful woman, and I wish her nothing but the best of everything life has to offer her. She told me about your proposal. At first, I was angry, but I can’t stand in the way of her future anymore. Take care of her. You have my blessing.”
He locks the phone and peers at me from across the polished table between us.
I can’t meet his gaze. Instead, I stare at the phone, at the black screen behind which Kyle’s words are screaming at me that he’s a liar.
Liar.
LIAR!
“I-I don’t understand.” My head feels bunged up with tears that I refuse to shed over Kyle Murray, and I sniff loudly. “Why… Why would he do that?”
“He wants what’s best for you, Sienna.” He smiles. “At least on that we both agree.”
I stare out of the window.
My thoughts can’t seem to get a grip on anything and make sense of what’s going on.
Kyle wanted to get me away from Nick. He was holding stuff back from me, I know that much, but Victoria’s suggestion that I spend some time in Ireland played right into his hands. It would get me away from Nick, my father, and the gallery, and leave him free to do what exactly…?
No. I mentally shake myself. None of that sits right with me.
He calls me his leoin . His lioness.
He said he loves me .
When I’m with him, I feel like I’m the most beautiful woman to have ever graced this planet, and he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t care about me. Would he?
Was it all a joke to him? A distraction until he’d had his fun and was ready to hand me over to Nick?
I can’t believe it.
But the truth is, I don’t want to believe it, and my heart is still trying to keep that faint glimmer of hope alive, even when faced with reality.
What about Victoria though? She would never have suggested the trip to Ireland if she’d known about Kyle’s plans. She’d have warned me to stay the fuck away from him instead of trying to push us together.
“No. I can’t do this.” I unbuckle the safety belt and stand up. “I need to speak to Kyle.”
“It’s too late, Sienna. We’re already moving.” Nick’s eyebrows slide upwards, his eyes flickering across my face as though he’s afraid that I’ll try to leap from a moving aircraft.
I stare at the runway lights alongside the plane, the city moving slowly by, at the airport growing steadily smaller as we coast along the tarmac. In my bewilderment, I didn’t register the engines powering up or the door closing. I was trapped in a moment with Kyle. The moment when I handed over the piece of me that I’d shut down since the accident.
I should’ve heeded the warning in the song that’s been playing on repeat in my head since Thanksgiving.
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, and the very next day, you gave it away .
“I need to get off. Stop the plane, Nick.”
“Darling, I can’t. We’re already in the air.”
Right on cue, the aircraft’s nose tilts towards the sky, and I stumble back to my seat, sitting heavily. This feels all wrong. Kyle said that he would arrange for someone to meet me at the airport. He said that he would join me there later if he missed the flight.
“Where’s Seamus?” Finally, I face Nick. “He should be on board.”
“Kyle recalled him.” Nick shrugs. “There was no need for him to accompany us now that I’m here.”
“But you don’t know where I’m staying.” I know that Kyle would never have agreed to Nick staying at the Murray family home.
“We’ll check into a hotel, Sienna. We can go wherever we want.”
I feel the pressure against my chest as the aircraft takes off. Gravity. Pinning me to my seat. Trapping me on board with the wrong man.
We keep climbing, climbing, climbing.
And my thoughts keep spiraling.
This was supposed to be a break for me. Time to relax, breathe, and paint. It’s what Kyle wanted for me too; how can I do that with Nick by my side?
The aircraft reaches a certain height and then lists sideways as we circle the airport to pick up the correct flight path. I stare down at the ground. There’s the runway, lit up to keep us on track. The airport terminal. The buggies that carry the luggage out to the waiting aircraft.
Then I spot something else that draws my attention. A car. In the parking lot. It takes a few seconds for me to figure out that it’s the private bay where Seamus parked the car when we arrived earlier. But it isn’t the vehicle that’s making my stomach flip over and over.
If Kyle had recalled the driver as Nick said, the car would be gone. But it isn’t. There’s no sign of anyone else in the lot, but there is something on the ground next to the car, hidden from the view of any other vehicles entering the compound. I squint, trying to bring it into focus before we climb any higher and it becomes a speck of dirt on a terrestrial map.
My breath sticks in my throat.
It’s a figure.
A body.
And it isn’t moving.
I fixate on it until the plane leans the other way, and I lose sight of it.
My opportunity to call Kyle has passed now that we’re in the air. I can’t ask him if Nick is telling the truth, but I don’t really need to.
“Sienna, is everything okay?” Nick’s voice jolts me back to the present.
His eyes search mine, his expression unreadable. He’s waiting for me to tell him what I’ve seen on the ground. But then what? Will he tell me that I’m being paranoid, imagining things because his presence came as a bit of a shock? Or maybe he’ll laugh and tell me that I’ve spent too much time in the company of a mafia member and am turning shadows into corpses.
“Why didn’t Seamus come and tell me himself?”
“There was no time. The plane would’ve missed its time slot.”
“Would that have been such a bad thing?”
He smiles. His smile has always been so dazzling, so practiced, that it draws the eye to his perfect teeth, but now, I notice for the first time that it doesn’t reach his eyes. Sure, smile lines appear at the corners, but his eyes remain cold. Untouched.
“I guess not. But, well…” He presses his hands together as if in prayer and gazes at them, pensive. “I was worried that Kyle Murray would change his mind at the last minute and spoil everything again.”
“Again?” I can’t keep the revulsion from my voice, but if he notices, he covers it well.
“I’ve waited almost six years to tell you how I feel about you, Sienna, and now that I’ve plucked up the courage, he’s hanging around like a bad smell.”
He leans forward and reaches for my hand. I don’t stop him.
Being trapped mid-air with a man I don’t trust isn’t exactly ideal. I don’t want to antagonize him. I have no choice but to play along, for now, and pray that Kyle will know what’s happened when he gets to the airport and discovers that the flight has taken off without him, and Seamus.
Perhaps he’ll find a way to turn the aircraft around.
Will Nick even notice if we start heading back towards the city?
I force my lips to move. It’s the best I can hope for. “Well, he’s not here now.”
His smile stretches. Looking at him now, I can’t believe that I ever found Nick Morris attractive. The smile is slimy, like a serpent who knows how poisonous he is and feels absolutely no remorse about attacking his prey.
“You didn’t give me an answer, Sienna.” He sighs. Everything that he does, every word spoken, every action, is rehearsed, delivered for effect. “I know I told you to take your time, but?—”
“Why don’t you ask me again?” I feel nauseous saying the words out loud.
He fumbles in his coat pocket and drops the tiny jewelry box, which rolls under his seat. He unbuckles himself and drops onto his knees to retrieve it, then, perfectly placed, he swivels around and holds my left hand.
His fingers are trembling. There are tears in his eyes.
But I feel nothing but repugnance, knowing that this is all an act.
I swallow painfully. My heart is throwing itself against my ribcage as if screaming at me to get away from this man, to say no, to yell at him that he’ll never be Kyle. But I suck on my bottom lip and breathe deeply.
“Sienna, will you marry me?”
It’s laughable. Hysteria is bubbling inside my chest, and I know that if I acknowledge it, the plane will be filled to bursting with my messy, choking sobs. Where’s the declaration of love? Where are the terms of endearment or the well-chosen words that express his feelings for me? Where is the gleam in his eyes?
“Yes.” I squeeze it out, a brittle sound like a dry twig being snapped.
He slides the ring onto my finger. It feels cold, heavy, unnatural. The diamond winks at me in the overhead lighting, and all I see is a tiny rock with the power to crush my future.
“Do you like it? Does it fit? I guessed your ring size, but I can have it made smaller if it’s too large.”
“It’s … perfect,” I manage.
“This calls for champagne.” Nick is back on his feet. “Where’s the steward when we need him?”
He leans over me and kisses my cheek, and it takes all my willpower not to recoil. I feel queasy. His lips have no right to touch my skin, to kiss my face where Kyle’s lips have been.
Unfazed by my lack of enthusiasm, he marches off towards the rear of the cabin where the steward sits. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back with champagne.”
It’s only when he disappears and I’m left alone with my erratic heartbeat and the blood gushing in my ears that I wonder how he knew there was a steward on board.