29
Damian finds Bianca alone by the pool, eyes hidden behind enormous shades.
She’s undeniably gorgeous in her red bikini, her skin tanned and glistening with sunscreen and sweat.
But he can’t ignore the hatred that seems to emanate from her being, the palpable aura of bitterness.
It mutes her beauty, twists it. With just a nod, he indicates that she should join him in the van, that he has something to tell her.
Obediently, she gets up and follows him. She already knows.
It’s stifling hot inside the Westfalia, and Damian turns on the battery-operated fan. It spins fruitlessly in the sluggish air, but at least it camouflages their voices. Sydney mustn’t hear this. It would ruin everything.
“I’ve given Curtis a week to get the money together,” Damian says, voice low. “He tried to say he didn’t have it, but once I told him what we knew, he said he’d find a way.”
“Was he terrified?” Bianca’s voice is gleeful. “Did he cry?”
“He looked like he was going to puke,” Damian says with a chuckle. “I wish you could have seen it.”
“Me too,” Bianca responds. “Where is he now?”
“Dunno. He took off down the hillside path.”
She bites on a smile. “He’ll spend the next week desperate and panicking. I can’t wait to watch it.” She shifts herself closer to him, touches his chest. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“Coming to Spain.” She kisses him gently. “I want to watch that bastard suffer.”
Damian kisses her back, their hunger for each other rapidly escalating, as it always does.
It’s too warm for such close contact, the quarters are too cramped, but Bianca is already reaching for his zipper.
They have sex in a sweaty, frenzied rush, Damian’s hand over Bianca’s mouth as she climaxes.
When he comes, moments after she does, his mind is no longer in the van with Bianca.
It’s inside the house now. And it’s with Sydney.
Bianca collapses on top of him, her forehead sweaty in the crook of his neck.
He feels her heart rate slow, her body relaxing, becoming deadweight.
He’s suddenly claustrophobic in the airless space, hit with a strong urge to push her body off him.
But he resists it. Thankfully, Bianca soon climbs off, pulls a T-shirt over her head.
“I’ve been thinking,” Damian says, climbing back into his shorts. “About Sydney.”
“What about her?” Bianca keeps dressing, doesn’t meet his gaze.
He clears a clog in his throat. “She doesn’t deserve to be destroyed like Curtis.”
“Yes, she does.” Bianca looks up, her eyes drilling into his. “She’s too smart to be so blind. She had to know on some level what he was doing.”
“I don’t think so.” He swallows, looks away. “She should at least be able to keep the money her mom left her.”
“Curtis has probably already liquidated it.” Bianca digs through a plastic storage bin, extracts a pack of cigarettes. “I need a smoke.”
Damian sighs, leans back on his elbows. “Why did you start smoking again?”
“This trip has been a tad stressful,” she retorts. “And everyone smokes in this country, including Sydney. I’ve had to smell her cigarettes every morning.” Bianca shimmies into a pair of shorts. “I told her I had asthma so she wouldn’t smoke around me, but it still triggered my cravings.”
“You can’t smoke behind that oak tree anymore.”
“Obviously.” Bianca smirks. “You scared the shit out of them when you found those butts.”
“You did.” Damian can’t help but smile. “Who takes a machete to have a smoke?”
“There are snakes!” Bianca cries. “And your gloves kept my hands from smelling like cigarettes. I didn’t need you lecturing me about lung cancer. Not right now.”
“Sorry,” he mutters. They’d argued when Bianca admitted she’d been smoking again, hiding behind the oak tree so Damian didn’t catch her.
But they’d pulled it together, gone outside to confess.
And then Sydney had found the machete, the gloves, and she and Curtis began to make assumptions.
Bianca was quick to play along, to stoke Syd’s fear.
There had been a dull ache in Damian’s chest at the sight of Sydney so terrified, but by then, it was too late to come clean.
“Don’t get caught,” Damian says. “We still need Sydney to trust us for the next few days.”
“I know,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “If Syd catches me smoking, I’ll talk my way out of it. She’s basically in love with me now.” Shoving a lighter into her pocket, Bianca climbs out of the van. Damian hears her feet crunching down the drive as she walks away.
The best liars know to stick as close to the truth as possible.
Damian had learned that from his dad, who’d had a number of successful real estate scams before he’d been sued into bankruptcy.
Despite their false Australian identities and their fake jobs, much of what he and Bianca have told their hosts is honest. They’re high school sweethearts in an open relationship that allows Bianca to explore her bisexuality.
This understanding has allowed them both to pursue Sydney.
It didn’t matter who seduced her. They were only doing it to hurt Curtis.
And then Damian began to feel things.
He’s attracted to her, of course—Syd is a beautiful woman—but his emotions are more complex than that.
It all started when he was researching her online, digging into Curtis’s bride of twelve years.
He’d been impressed by Syd’s Ivy League education, her career choices, and the high-profile cases she’d defended.
There were a handful of media clips where Sydney stood by a defendant she’d freed from a corrupt justice system.
Sydney was so smart, so good, so passionate about righting wrongs. She was like an avenging angel.
But the Sydney Cleary he met in Spain was a faint shadow of the strong woman she’d been.
She was thin and frail, self-medicating with alcohol and cigarettes.
Syd had pharmaceutical support, too. Damian had seen the bottles of pills in the aqua blue bathroom.
Bianca thinks Syd is stupid and blind, that she’s nothing more than collateral damage.
But to Damian, she’s another victim of Curtis Lowe’s toxic net. She doesn’t deserve to suffer.
Slamming the van door, Damian walks toward the house.
The air is still, eerily so. Bianca’s gone off for a sneaky cigarette.
Curtis has wandered toward town to freak out or make panicked phone calls to his bank and his rich friends.
Where is Sydney? Despite their age difference, he feels an almost paternal need to check on her, to make sure she’s okay.
Damian’s loyalty is to Bianca, of course.
He’s loved her since they were kids. When he met her, she was emotionally shut down, damaged by her neglectful father, her poisonous mother.
He’d burrowed under her protective shield, made her open up to him.
They had connected on a soul level, the two of them against the world.
Damian had felt like Bianca’s savior, her personal Jesus.
But Bianca is different now. She’s so full of seething hatred, so bent on revenge, that he can’t reach her.
At first, Damian had stoked her rage, used it to develop their blackmail plan, but now it’s created a vast distance between them.
Damian has to believe that once Curtis Lowe is destroyed, once he hands them a life-changing sum of money, Bianca will find her way back to him.
They’ll disappear to a beachside bungalow on a Greek island where they can finally live out their dream.
So why can’t he stop worrying about what will happen to Syd in the aftermath?
Inside, the house is silent. Sydney must have gone back to bed to sleep off her hangover. He’s drawn toward her closed door as if it’s a magnetic field… as if he’s a creepy voyeur getting off on watching a woman sleep. But it’s not like that. He just wants to make sure she’s okay.
Gingerly, Damian presses open the door, just a crack.
He spies Sydney’s inert form in the bed, hears her steady breathing.
He wants to slip into the room, stroke her hair, ask if she needs anything.
Would she welcome his presence? Maybe even invite him to lie with her, to hold her?
Or would she panic, call out to Curtis or even Bianca?
No, she wouldn’t. There’s something between them—he hasn’t imagined it.
But their situation is so fucking complicated.
A distant rumble startles him, and he quickly closes the door.
It will be the truck from Girona delivering the lumber.
It’s a waste of wood. Curtis and Sydney’s winery will never happen.
Because this house, that dream, will have to be sold.
Everything liquidated. Curtis will be destitute.
And Damian and Bianca will be rich. That’s what matters. Not Sydney Cleary.
Silently, he closes the bedroom door.