Chapter 37
RAFE
Our old Latin teacher at Belmont, who never liked how my Italian pronunciation slipped into the Latin, had a quote by Ovid framed in our classroom. James translated it flawlessly in an early lesson.
Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.
It fit Belmont. Through Hardship We Flourish, and all that, with the Latin motto emblazoned on our uniforms. I hated the saying then, as a fourteen-year-old boy waking nightly from dreams of drowning in snow and exaggerated my rolling Rs to make Mr. Yates even more frustrated with me.
But I understand it now, as a grown man.
Because the pain pulsing through my ribs from Fabrizio’s hits last night is useful. It always has been, on the days after my fights. I focus more easily, my senses are sharper, and the hum buzzing beneath my skin is gone.
It helps me handle the memory of seeing Paige between the two guards, in a place that she has no business being. The fear that shot through me at the sight. And then her trembling hand against my cheek. Her deep-brown eyes.
Are you scared of me?
No.
After we arrived home, I showered away the blood and sweat, then found her sound asleep in bed. Now that I knew she’d been faking it earlier, I could tell the difference. There was a relaxed looseness to her limbs that wasn’t there before.
In the morning, I kiss my mother goodbye. Karim and Wren leave, too, and the only guests remaining are my friends. They get up late and one after another end up sprawled out around the pool.
I’m grateful the sunlight and hangovers make no one question my sunglasses. There’s a bruise shaping up beneath my right eye. One of Fabrizio’s punches I didn’t manage to dodge.
Be patient, for one day this pain will be useful to you.
It was from Ovid’s collection of love poems, if I remember correctly. The Amores. It would be ironic if it wasn’t so fucking on the nose. The ache across my ribs is a constant reminder that she knows now.
She knows, and there’s no way she can ever unknow.
She looked concerned last night. That hurts almost as much as the bruises or the guilt of my recklessness. She wouldn’t have seen any of that if I hadn’t led her there.
“It’s too hot,” Alex complains. “It’s inhumane.”
He’s draped in one of the sun chairs, turning an old saber over in his hands. The dull blade glints in the sunlight.
“Where the hell did you get that?” I ask.
“From your attic. There’s another one.” He nods down toward the dock, where James has disappeared to swim. “I’ll challenge him to a duel when he comes back.”
“He will win,” I say.
“Of course he will,” Alex says. “He fences all the time, and I do not. But it’s something to do.”
“If you want something to do,” West calls from the pool, “read the financial statement your company sent you.”
“Not work. The answer is never work,” Alex says in a disgusted tone. “Where is your new wife, Rafe? Maybe I can spar with her.”
“If you impale my latest investment,” I say, “I will be very angry with you.”
Alex grins. “She’s fiery.”
“She is.”
“Good thing I like getting burnt.”
“Stay away from her,” I say. She was still sleeping when I left the bedroom. I haven’t seen her since. Hopefully she’s not busy packing her bags and fleeing far, far away from me. Who knows what she’s thinking?
The NDAs we signed are iron-clad. She won’t talk to anyone about it, at least. I hope. What kind of trouble are you in? she asked.
Her, I think. She’s the trouble.
“Don’t worry. You’ve already marked your territory. I saw that loud and clear,” Alex says. He’s still grinning, and I give him a look to shut up.
Nora swims toward my side of the pool. She’s wearing giant sunglasses too. “I really like her.”
I run a hand through my hair. My ribs protest at the movement, and the feeling grounds me. “You really couldn’t stay away, could you?”
“No,” she says. “I think cutting her uncle out should make you like her.”
“Family is everything,” I say. It comes out tired. Paige’s family is either dead or malicious and unhinged. She’s double-crossed her uncle, yeah. But that’s what I wanted from her.
“If my uncle was Ben Wilde, I’d do what she did, too,” West says. He comes up behind Nora in the pool and wraps his arm around her waist.
It should be easier to see them together, but it’s still new. Only a few weeks since I found out. I look up at the sky instead, and the wispy clouds that flock above.
“Are you an advocate for her now?” I ask.
“I told you this was a bad idea back in New York,” West points out. “But maybe it was time for you to make a bad decision.”
“Yes! Finally,” Alex says. Whether it’s his hangover or the new beer he’s drinking, his Scottish accent is stronger than usual.
He hated every single Latin class.
Alex does not think pain is useful.
“You don’t mean it that way, but it sounds like a compliment,” I say.
“Your other decisions have been very thought out,” Nora says, “but sometimes the unexpected is… I don’t know. Good.”
She smiles up at West.
I look away. There’s such an ease to their interactions, speaking of an intimacy that feels intrusive to watch. I’ve never had that with anyone. Not the way they are.
“Besides,” Nora says, “I think she’s lovely. She doesn’t seem to be a good liar, either, even though she’s doing her best to pretend like you two are in love. She’s very in the moment, you know? She feels authentic.”
That’s one way of describing the tornado of Paige Wilde.
“Open my wedding gift when we’ve all left,” Alex said. “Not before.”
I groan. “What did you buy?”
“You’ll see it when you open it,” he insists. He’s found a tennis racquet somewhere, too, and is holding it in his left hand. The saber is still in his right. “Where are the closest horses? Is the polo place across the border still open?”
“How are you not hungover?” I ask. Tennis does sound good.
I haven’t played with Paige for days, and I suddenly wish for all of this to be over, the guests, the noise, so it’s just us and the house again.
Charged silences and quick arguments that are maddening, and sharp, and more fun than I’ve had with anyone in years.
I don’t talk to anyone the way I talk to Paige.
And no one talks to me the way she does.
“Hangovers are not for Scots,” he says.
“You were up the latest last night,” I say. It’s a lie. Paige and I were, but it seems like none of them noticed that we left.
He grabs a new bottle of champagne and gets up to saber the top off. “Not the latest,” he says, and turns toward the garden. “West’s sister was up later.”
“And she hasn’t woken up yet,” West says. “Shit, Alex, don’t saber it into the pool.”
“Of course not.” He holds the bottle at a forty-five-degree angle and swipes the saber across its neck in a single practiced slice. The cork flies off, and he holds it up. “Who’s thirsty?”
“Me,” Nora says and swims toward him.
I reach for my own glass. This day is a wash anyway. If she doesn’t come down soon, I should go and check that Paige isn’t packing her bags. The thought gnaws at my insides.
James comes walking up from the lake. He’s dripping wet, his blond hair slicked back from his swim, and pale even in the summer sun.
I’m surprised he stayed all three days. With his kid at home, he doesn’t travel for longer than necessary.
“Hey. There’s a delivery by the dock,” he calls. “Come, all of you.”
I get up to join him, and West and Nora leave the pool. Alex keeps the saber in hand. With his thick auburn hair and build, he looks like a pirate of old.
There’s a new boat waiting by the dock.
It’s been hastily tied to the stone lion, and a man stands at the far end of my dock, dressed in a tuxedo and holding a giant bouquet of roses. They’re the same blood-red color as Paige’s nails.
“What the hell is this?” Alex says out loud.
I walk out first on the dock. The man looks us all over but only addresses me. “Per lei, signore.” He hands me the bouquet.
I take it. There’s a single card nestled amongst the flowers, and I reach for it. My stomach sinks. Of course we’d be invited to one of the parties now.
“Who is it from?” West asks.
“To the newlyweds,” I read. “May your marriage be as lucky as your hand. You’re all invited.’ It’s signed with a single V. There’s something else here, too…” I lift out a playing card tucked between two rosebuds. It’s custom, with a black velvet back.
Written on the card’s face are the following words.
Monaco. Tonight.
Come win something back…
I read the words out loud.
The dock is perfectly silent. Fuck. I thank the white-gloved courier, and Alex reaches for his wallet to tip the man. That’s when he gives us a set of four pearly white poker chips. Seat reserved is written on their backs.
The man gets back in the boat, and it takes off, leaving us all standing on the dock in charged silence.
Vivienne’s parties are legendary and just as dangerous. I haven’t been to one in over a year. It’s a great place to make deals, if you know how to handle them. It’s also a great place to lose yourself. The stakes are always astronomical.
But it seems one of us has already lost.
“Four buy-ins,” I say, and lower the bouquet. “Win something back?”
“Alex,” James says. His voice is clipped. “What did you lose?”
The large Scotsman has been silent since we came down here. Now he’s leaning against the lion pillar, arms over his chest, with an uncharacteristic scowl on his face. “Why did you immediately think of me?”
“Because it’s not James. It’s not Rafe. And it’s damn well not me,” West says. “Alex…”
“I was going to win it back quietly,” he protests. “None of you ever had to know.”
“What did you lose?” I ask. There’s a low pounding at my temples, and I think of the terror-induced anger I felt seeing Paige standing outside the cage last night. The anger was familiar. The terror was new.
I feel a shade of it now, realizing that someone I consider family is more reckless than I ever thought.
Alex holds the saber up. “You’re all going to come after me when I tell you, but remember, I’m armed.”
James’s voice is ice. “What did you lose?”
He tells us, and he survives the telling, but it’s a close call.
“Do you think he’ll be there?” I ask the others. They all know who I mean. We were once a friend group of five rather than four. We’d been inseparable at Belmont. Until everything collapsed around him... and until he broke the no-sisters-rule with Amber.
That was many years ago. It’s been a long time since any of us had the displeasure of crossing paths with Hadrian.
West came closest, this spring, when Vivienne’s last party was held at Hadrian’s family’s old estate.
The one they lost when the facade came crashing down.
We were all harmed in that wreckage. He lied to us and disappeared, and over the years the only traces have been brushes in the dark.
His name bidding against Alex on a property; a large purchase in one of my stores.
And recently he’s started to make a name of his own in the financial sector as being every bit as ruthless as his father. Slowly regaining his fortune, deal by rapacious deal.
“He was invited last time I was there, even if he didn’t show,” West says. “I can’t imagine he’d come tonight.”
“Why would he show up? No one trusts him,” Alex says.
“I think we’ll be fine,” James says.
And so we all go to Monaco.