Chapter 28 #3
‘I hate myself for evening thinking it, but… I’m pleased his suffering is over.
I haven’t admitted that aloud to anyone.
I wasn’t ready to lose him and it wasn’t his time to go.
I can’t stand the thought of how terrified he must’ve been in those last moments.
I’ll never forgive Pearson for what he did.
I wish I’d been there at the last minute to hold his hand and tell him everything will be okay, better even, where he was going.
But I think Dad was tired, sick of being ill and being dependent.
I miss him, I miss him so much, but more…
more my dad from before. Before he got sick.
That’s how I want to remember him and that’s how he would want to be remembered. ’
Gregory presses his lips against my scalp.
‘I’m sorry, Scarlett. I’m sorry that your dad ever got sick, that I didn’t get to meet him and ask his permission to date you.
More than anything, you’ll never know how much I hate myself for the way it ended and how I wish I could go back and stop it.
I didn’t protect you. I should have and I’ll never forgive myself.
This will end, Scarlett, and it’ll end the way Pearson deserves. I swear to you.’
The flames become blurred in the mist of my eyes. I wrap my arm around Gregory’s waist and hug tightly into his warm skin. I wonder where Pearson is right now and how this is going to end.
‘Will you be honest with me if I ask you something?’ I say after a long, contemplative silence on both our parts.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you make my firm promote me?’
‘No. I told them how good you are, which is the truth, and what a great job you did for me. I told them I’d stay with the firm on the proviso that you were the lead contact but I didn’t ask them to promote you. I actually found out about it because Amanda messaged Williams.’
A half-smile curls onto one side of my mouth but quickly subsides.
Procrastinating by rolling a finger around his chest, I finally mount the courage to ask my next question. The question that’s been bugging me and remained unanswered for too long. ‘What about Jack?’
Gregory shakes his head and sits up, knocking me from his chest. ‘Jack fucking Jones.’ He pulls two hands through his hair and I know I’ve ruined the evening. He stands, hands me my wine glass and takes a gulp from his own, then leans over the fire, one hand against the wooden mantel.
‘That son of a bitch. He deserves everything he gets and more. I can’t stand the thought of what he could have, what he wanted to do to you.’
‘But he didn’t,’ I whisper into his back as I rub my hands down his biceps.
‘If he’d touched you. If he’d even?—’
‘Shh,’ I say, turning him to face me.
‘People shouldn’t cross me, Scarlett. And now, they really shouldn’t cross you, either. He’s lucky things ended the way they did.’
My body shivers despite the blazing heat of the fire. Gregory makes me feel safe, but he’s dangerous. ‘Tell me.’
His muscles are rigid under my palms.
‘Jackson had the security team look into Jack. They threw up a load of old cases which had started to be investigated but been dropped, most because the victims were unwilling to testify or there wasn’t enough evidence.’
‘Jack? I just. I can’t believe it. I mean, he’s, he… Jack? I mean, I knew. He could have?—’
‘Jackson was irate when he found out but I think he was worried about telling me, worried about what I would do. He left it a day and asked his friends to get the details of the victims. Then he told me. I wanted to rip his fucking head off. Men like Jack deserve to go to hell. But Jackson kept telling me, and I suppose behind the anger, I knew that I couldn’t deal with it the way I wanted to. We couldn’t trust?—’
‘Me. You thought if you hurt him, I’d know and you couldn’t trust me.’
‘It’s not the way it sounds. I’m in the public eye enough as it is. We have to be careful.’
I try to put this all together. The way Gregory lives and deals. His morally grey, sometimes outright black world. But his reasons are… right.
I lift my palm to his cheek. ‘You can trust me.’
His face contorts and his eyes shift, soften, like that little boy. He shakes his head. ‘Jackson said there had to be another way. He went to see some of the girls, told them about you, us, but they wouldn’t testify.’
‘I can’t believe Jack could do that, that any human being could do that. There were so many times, so many nights when we were working together. I just thought… I don’t know what I thought; I didn’t think. I guess it’s hard to believe.’
Gregory takes my hands in his. I’m instantly protected. ‘We didn’t have a choice in the end. The only way was to make him confess, so that’s what we did.’
He lifts my hands to his lips. I watch as he moves. His usually perfect hair falls forwards, a strand covering his eyes as he gazes at me.
‘What did you do to him?’
‘No more than he deserved. Men like that make me sick. Fucking dregs of society. They deserve a fucking bullet between their legs. I’d never have let him go free once I knew. That’s the choice we gave him. Live in prison or die.’
‘Shit, Gregory, that’s?—’
‘He’d have been dead if he ever laid a finger on you again. He got off lightly.’
‘Kiss me,’ I whisper because I don’t know what else to say or how I feel about his confession.
He does. He kisses me slowly, in a way that liquefies me in his arms. He runs a hand up my right thigh, lifting my gown, then winds my legs around his waist. He lays me back onto the floor and runs a finger from my hip, across my stomach and up to my chest. The feel of his touch through the silk is smooth, elegant, not like the man he just described.
I struggle to reconcile the two versions of him: dark, ferocious, tender and safe. But I’ve fallen for both.
I push up to place my knees either side of his hips and slowly pull my dress over my head…
After he’s made me see colours I’ve never seen before, I lie on his chest in front of the fire. As he kisses my brow, I swirl my index finger around the few hairs on his pecs.
‘What was it like growing up in South Africa? I mean South Africa the country, you know, not home life.’
‘Dark. Dangerous. There was a lot of crime and, though I was born right after apartheid ended, there was still a lot of entrenched racism and animosity.’
‘I can’t imagine a place like that.’
‘But South Africa is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen too. The coast is ethereal: high cliff drops, white sand, crashing waves, penguins. The land is lush, the deepest greens. And the animals, they’re proper: lions, elephants, rhinos.’
As he speaks, I visualise the green pastures with zebras grazing and lions bathing in afternoon sun.
It’s as if I’m there, walking on the plains.
Then the sky grows darker. I pass a cheetah devouring its blood-doused prey.
I continue to walk south past two grey-brown hyenas with matted fur, scowling through a menacing laugh.
The open plains turn to cliff tops: rocky, lifeless.
The cry of a child startles me. I peer over the cliff’s edge and see the familiar young boy in shorts, a shirt and braces.
He sobs, his knees tucked tight into his chest, perched on the edge of a rock.
A grey-haired man approaches from my left.
I recognise him. He takes the boy’s hand and makes him stand.
The boy stops crying and smiles at the man. My dad.
Dad smiles back, ruffles his hair then leads him down to the beach from the rock.
I dart my head right to where I hear heavy breathing, almost snarl like.
Pearson. He sneaks from rock to rock, moving closer to my dad and the boy.
I know he wants to kill them. I try to move but my legs are rooted to the ground.
I try to scream, to alert my dad, but nothing comes out.
Pearson moves from behind the last rock standing between them and pulls a gun from the back of his stained, stonewashed jeans.
I try again to scream, I try with all my might but it’s not until Pearson has his gun to my dad’s head that I’m able to make a noise.
Eventually, I scream, ‘Dad! Dad!’ and Pearson turns his gun on me.
I wake abruptly, panicking and hot. I’m alone in front of the rescinding fire. Gregory is in his jeans and on his phone, his back to me.
‘Don’t leave their side,’ he’s saying. ‘I don’t care, Mother. For once, would you do as I ask?’
He turns to see me awake.
‘Ja. All right, then. We’ll see you for lunch tomorrow.’ He ends the call. Looks at the phone in his hand then places it on an oak sideboard. Without looking up, he says, ‘Scarlett, move in with me.’
‘What was that about?’
He fixes me with a stare – not one that’s full of honeymoon and new-home vibes. ‘Nothing.’
‘Gregory, why would I move in with you if I can’t trust you to be honest with me?’
He pauses for a second, then pulls a hand through his hair.
‘That was my mother,’ he finally says. ‘After what happened to your dad, I asked Jackson to bring in some extra guys. He’s brought in two to stay with her and Lawrence.’
‘You’re worried he’ll come after Lara?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s why you want me to move in with you,’ I mumble. ‘You think he’ll come for me. Again.’
He sighs. ‘It’s possible, yes.’
Tears form in my eyes. I nod, roll back my shoulders and straighten the sides of my nightdress as if it were a suit and I was about to walk into a meeting at work.
‘Okay then.’
‘No, Scarlett,’ Gregory says as he moves swiftly across the room towards me.
‘Yes, I want to protect you but I want to have you around because… because I don’t know how to let you go.
I don’t know what you do to me or how. My life is a certain way, structured and controlled, grey.
But you, with your sarcasm and wit, your insightfulness and hot-headedness, you make things…
different. Fascinating.’ He steps close to me and brushes my cheek with his fingertips.
‘I’ve got no idea what someone like you would want with me but somehow, for some reason, here you are, and I never want you to leave me because I’m worried you’ll realise what I am and you won’t come back.
I’m not ready to lose you, Scarlett. You make me feel… alive.’
‘Really?’ I whisper.
He lets out a short laugh and shakes his head.
‘Are you making fun of me, Mr Ryans?’
He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his tight embrace. I close my eyes and absorb his scent.
‘For the record, I’m not going anywhere, Gregory. I’m not afraid of who you are or who you might be whenever you decide to let me in.’
He kisses my brow and pulls me tighter into his chest.
‘About moving in, though,’ I say, leaning back to look at him.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to be with you but I have a lot of stuff to sort out at the moment, with the house and Sandy.
I mean, if I’m not living in the house, it doesn’t make sense for me to keep it.
I could at least rent it out. Then there’s Sandy: it’s her home as well and at least in theory, she still works there. ’
I break from his arms as I ponder the situation.
‘I’ve been so wrapped up with everything else that I haven’t thought enough about Sandy.
She’s lived with me nearly all my life, always been there, and now…
I can’t afford to keep her and I don’t have enough work to keep her busy.
If I leave, she’ll have to go too. Oh my God, what will Sandy do? ’