Chapter Ten #2
Fresh sobs rolled out of Esme. Her normally perfect makeup was smeared across her face. She looked so different from the woman who had just delivered a fiery and impassioned speech on behalf of her father. Something was seriously wrong for Esme to display such unfettered emotion.
Worry filling her, Angela crossed into the living room and nudged aside the ceramic snowman to reach the box of tissues on the coffee table. “What’s wrong?”
Esme drew in a ragged breath, gripping the velvet pillow tassels. “It’s over between Jesse and me.”
Angela’s eyebrows raised in surprise. But then she pushed aside her thousand questions to be there for her sister. Reaching a protective arm around her sister, she gripped Esme in a side hug. “Oh, sis, I’m so sorry.”
“We haven’t even known each other long.” Her face was lined with pain. “It shouldn’t hurt this much.”
“Our hearts aren’t tied to time.” She understood too well about love and heartbreak because of her rocky relationship with Ryder. Angela stroked her sister’s shoulder, attempting to soothe her as much as she could.
Wishing she could take her pain away.
Losing their mother early on had forced them to be close. And Angela was grateful for that closeness. But at times like this, her heart ached for their mother. What would Tamara have said to soothe Esme? To soothe Angela, even? She tipped her head closer to Esme’s, doing her best to comfort.
Clutching a tissue, Esme blew her nose. Tears still leaked down her face. In a cracked tone, she continued.
“Thank you for understanding, for not writing me off as histrionic.”
“Of course not. I’m glad you reached out to me. You shouldn’t be alone.” She plucked another tissue from the box and passed it over.
Her cell phone rang from her purse back at the door. She glanced at it, but looked away fast, not wanting her sister to feel like she had anything other than Angela’s full attention. It was rare that Esme showed vulnerability to her. She had always seemed a bit jealous of Angela and Melinda’s bond.
Esme dabbed at her eyes. “Please take the call. It’ll give me a chance to pull myself together.”
“If you’re sure…” Angela hesitated.
“Absolutely.” She nodded, standing and grabbing her purse.
“Okay, then, but I’ll make it quick. Don’t go anywhere.
” She retrieved her own purse and fished out her phone.
Her eyes scanned the screen. Tatiana? Angela still hadn’t quite wrapped her brain around the fact that her friend had given up a baby for adoption and never told her about it.
She would have wanted to help, even if just to listen. Maybe that’s what this call was about.
She answered. “Hello, Tatiana, what can I do for you?”
“Angela, I need you.” Tatiana sobbed hard on the other end of the phone.
She bit the bullet and plunged right in, her gut telling her the timing of Tatiana being this upset couldn’t be a coincidence after Ryder’s conversation with his youngest child. “Is this about Maya Currin…about your daughter?”
“Yes,” Tatiana whispered. “That’s exactly what this is about. And I really need to talk to you. Everything is so out of control. My half brother’s in prison and he’s clearly mentally unstable. He’s been threatening to say all sorts of awful things about me.”
“I’m so sorry you’re going through that. Let’s meet for breakfast in the morning.”
Tatiana hiccuped on another sob. “I need to talk to you now. In person.”
Angela glanced to her still-hurting sister standing at the kitchen counter wiping her tears around her eyeliner. Shaking her head, she answered her friend. “I’m afraid I—”
Esme turned, her brave face on. “It’s okay. Go. I know she’s your friend and it’s okay.”
“But you’re my sister.” She wanted to be with Esme. To find out why things had ended so quickly between her and a man she’d been so excited about.
“Thank you,” Esme said with a watery smile. “How about we go over together?”
Angela nodded, relieved not to be torn between her sister and her friend. Of course she would choose Esme, but with Willem in jail, Tatiana didn’t have any family left.
Other than Maya.
Her heart pinched at the thought. “Tatiana, Esme and I can come over right now. Just let us know where you are.”
Angela reached for a notepad and jotted down the location and time. The new club. In a half hour. So simple, she wondered why she’d bothered to write it. She was such a jumble of emotions today.
But it helped take her mind off her own relationship to be there for others.
Angela ended the call and turned to her sister. “We can talk in my car on the way over.” Then she grabbed her purse and went to the door.
Esme followed close on her heels. “Getting to be with you helps. Even if we don’t talk. I just don’t want to be alone right now.”
Taking Esme at her word, when Angela got to her car, she turned on soft Christmas carols. Esme sat silently beside her, her head resting against the window, her sniffles further and further apart.
Angela’s cell phone rang a couple of times with calls from Ryder, but she wasn’t ready to talk to him, not yet.
The third time he called, she sent him straight to voice mail and turned off her cell.
She couldn’t handle another emotional conversation sidetracking her tonight.
It felt like the whole world was falling apart.
A half hour later, Angela pulled up outside the back entrance of the club, the historic building rather foreboding at night.
While Christmas lights lined the street and lit up the other buildings, the club was pitch-black inside, the only illumination a Christmas tree in the lobby.
She was glad she’d brought someone along with her.
Tatiana’s car was parked in back, too, so she had to be inside the building already. Why would she be sitting in the dark?
Arriving at the back door, Angela tapped in the security code, something Tatiana would know, too, since she was with Perry Holdings.
“Tatiana,” Angela called as she walked inside, her sister following a step behind.
A faint light shone from the back parlor, the dim glow giving the place a creepy vibe that reminded her that the body of the murdered Perry Holdings assistant had been found in this building. Of course she had to think of that now, when she was already uneasy.
“Tatiana?” she called again, reaching for a switch to flip on the lights.
Tatiana stepped into view, her red hair in wild disarray. A step closer and she was bathed in light.
And her arms were extended, a gun held with steady hands.
Esme gasped behind her. Shocked and confused, Angela couldn’t figure out what her friend was doing.
Tatiana waved the gun, gesturing toward the parlor. “Both of you. In there.”
What the hell was going on? Was Tatiana unhinged? Angela cast a quick glance at her stunned sister. She wasn’t sure how they were going to get out of this, but she had to believe they would figure something out.
Angela kept her voice low even though her heart pounded so very hard with fear. She needed to stay calm. Stay in control of her emotions and de-escalate the situation. Giving herself completely over to fear would only immobilize her. Which might interfere with any way to keep her and Esme safe.
Her hands clenching so hard her nails cut into her palms, Angela struggled for the right words for a situation she never could have imagined happening. “Tatiana, my friend, whatever you’re feeling, I understand—”
“Shut up,” Tatiana shouted.
Angela snapped her jaw shut. She tried to get a read on the events quickly spiraling out of control. The woman who stood before them might as well have been a stranger. Her expression, her tone, her actions… Angela didn’t recognize any of them.
“You’re not my friend, Angela, and you can’t have any clue what I’m feeling, or what I’ve been through. Showing up here with your sister when I said I needed you? You’ve just proven what I already knew. Perrys always look out for Perrys and to hell with the rest of us.”
Fear for her sister constricted her throat.
If only she hadn’t brought Esme along, she wouldn’t be in danger. “Esme has nothing to do with whatever grudge you have against me. It’s not fair to keep her—”
Tatiana closed herself inside the empty parlor with them, the gleam in her eyes vicious.
“Nothing in my life has been fair. My father lost everything because the land he was promised by your grandfather went to that idiot Ryder Currin instead. And your sister Melinda gets to have a baby when I had to give up mine.”
Tatiana Havery was a madwoman, and Angela had never seen it. Never known. She felt stupid and foolish, all the more so because she couldn’t focus on getting out of this situation. Panic clogged her airways, making it hard to breathe.
Esme took a step forward with the signature calm that stood her in good stead at work. “What can we do to make this right for you now?”
She was buying them time. Angela looked around the room, taking in the high windows and lack of furnishings. Tried to formulate a plan that didn’t end in death and gunshots. And so far, she came up empty.
She wanted Ryder. Why hadn’t she taken his call in the car? If something happened to her and she never got to speak to him again… The hurt of that made her legs wobble beneath her.
Tatiana’s gaze swung wildly to her. “It’s too late.
I thought I was going to get my revenge by bringing down the Perrys and Currins for taking what was rightfully my father’s.
Yes, I was responsible for spreading all those rumors with the help of my brother.
And it was working, too.” She pointed the gun back and forth between them.
“But then that stupid Vincent Hamm overheard one of our conversations. So I had to kill him.”
Angela swallowed down a knot of horror as she looked around and realized that Tatiana had brought them to this building, where Hamm’s body had been dumped, with a grisly purpose.
And there was nothing in this empty room to defend herself with.
She gripped her purse harder, trying to remember what was inside, what might be used as a weapon, all the while trying to keep track of what Tatiana was saying.
“I tried to pin the murder on your father but of course Mr. ‘Teflon’ Perry got away with it. The Perrys and Currins get everything and my family got nothing. That land would have given my dad a fresh start.”
But Tatiana’s father had lost everything because of his addiction. He’d gone broke just as Tatiana finished boarding school. She must have had her baby not too long after that.
“Tatiana,” Esme said softly, “I remember your dad. We were all so sad when he died in that accident. It had to have been hard for you.”
“Accident?” Tatiana shrieked. “It wasn’t an accident. He killed himself. Because of your family…and that vile Ryder Currin, who got the land my father should have had. And now Ryder has my daughter, too?”
Esme backed up a step, no longer the conciliatory, smooth businesswoman.
Angela agreed. Talking wasn’t going to work. Tatiana was crazed, her speech dripping with bitterness and hatred. She had already made up her mind to murder them.
Angela’s purse slid from her shoulder, hitting the floor with a thud.
Her cell phone skittered out, a reminder of all those missed calls from Ryder.
She would give anything to hear his voice one more time.
But she was never going to see Ryder again, never have the chance to hold him, tell him how much she loved him.
She reached for Esme’s hand, needing to feel her sister’s presence. Wanting to offer whatever love and comfort she could.
Tatiana’s face spread in an evil smile. “It’s time Sterling Perry and Ryder Currin learn what it feels like to have their hearts torn out by losing what’s dearest to them.”