4. Alex
Alex
Ihear her bedroom close a little after eleven.
The click carries down the hallway and through the glass wall of my office.
I should be reviewing the acquisition contracts. I have read the same paragraph six times, and all I can see is Belle at the living room window an hour ago, staring down at the street with both hands wrapped around her elbows.
I asked what was wrong. She said nothing. I asked again. She looked me in the eye and told me she was fine.
Belle has always been a terrible liar.
The last time she kept telling me everything was fine, I believed she was nervous. A week later, she was gone, and the rest of us were left standing in what she had torn apart.
Now her voice goes flat.Every word arrives measured, as if she is stepping around broken glass.
She only sounds like that when she is trying very hard not to let me hear the lie.
Tonight, she gave me silence and a lie.
Her book lies face down on the sofa. The spine is cracked, blue ink filling the margins.
She used to argue with every author she read, even whens he agreed with them.
For someone who loved books, Belle had no trouble committing the one sin guaranteed to horrify librarians everywhere: writing in them.
She crowded the margins with her thoughts, underlined every line she loved, and filled the empty spaces with tiny doodles.
I pick it up.
The cover is still warm from her hands. Vanilla clings to the pages. And honey, her shampoo. I bring it closer before I can stop myself and breathe her in like a man starved long enough to forget shame.
My body answers first.
Heat pools low in my stomach. I sit where she sat and open to the marked page.
A love scene. The man is admitting that every cruel thing he did was another way of keeping the woman near him.
I close the book and return it exactly where she had left it.
Three doors down, a floorboard creaks.
I stand in the hallway, staring at Belle’s door. I could knock. Ask again. Tell her I know she is lying.
Or I could open it.
The thought tightens every muscle in my body. I picture her awake in the dark, hair loose, sleep shirt sliding up her thighs. Her eyes widening as I cross the room.
I turn away before I become the man standing over her bed without permission.
Back in my room, I cancel my morning meetings. The message to my executive assistant, Camille, says I will work from home. I tell myself that the commute would waste time. But the reality is I am staying because Belle is afraid, and I cannot leave her alone with whatever put that look on her face.
At 5:03, Bee plants both front paws on my wrist while I hold a plank above the bedroom floor.
Twenty seconds remain. Her claws press through my skin.
“Move.”
She sits.
A cabinet closes in the kitchen. A spoon circles a bowl. Then cinnamon reaches the bedroom. Brown sugar follows. Cardamom cuts through both.
Bee’s ears turn toward the hall.
“Stay.”
She steps over my hand and leaves.
I finish the plank, shower, dress, and open my laptop in the glass-walled office.
I last forty minutes before walking into the kitchen.
Belle stands at the island with her hair twisted off her neck. Loose strands cling below her ear. Her sleep shirt falls over shorts; I can barely see.
My body goes hard so fast it feels unreal.
She glances over her shoulder. “Your breakfast is packed and ready.”
“I’m working from home today.”
Her hand working over a bowl of dough pauses. “Oh”
I reach for the coffee she left beside the machine. Black, too much sugar, enough room below the rim so that it will not spill. Exactly right. I didn’t have to tell her how I liked it. She remembered it from before, and some things never changed.
The first swallow tastes exactly as it did ten years ago.
She reaches for a jar above the refrigerator. Her shirt lifts, baring a strip of skin.
My mouth remembers that place. The studio wall beneath her palms. My teeth at the base of her spine. Her voice breaking when I marked her lips, tongue and teeth.
Her balance tips.
I am behind her before thought catches up.
One hand closes around her waist. The other braces against the cabinet.
Her back hits my chest.
Warm skin beneath my palm. Her breath catches, and my body reacts with a violence that strips ten years from the room.
My thumb rests against the bare edge of her waist.
I could turn her. Press her hips against the counter.
Slide my hand under her shirt and take her mouth until she says my name the way she used to.
I could lift her onto the stone, step between her knees, and feel whether ten years had changed the way she opened for me.
Her body will remember the answer. The drag of her nails down my back.
The soft, helpless sound she made when I pushed deep and held there.
The image hits so hard that my grip tightens.
She goes still beneath my hand. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t come any closer either. She simply stands there until I release her.
Waiting. Just waiting me out until I let go.
The difference cuts through me.
I take the jar, set it on the island, and step back.
“I had it,” she says.
“Use the lower cabinets.”
“You put the cardamom up there.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, I didn’t put it up there.”
“Then perhaps Bee is reorganizing my kitchen.”
The cat sits at the far end of the island, offering no defense.
The purple beneath her eyes has deepened since yesterday. Something is worrying her. Badly enough that she isn’t sleeping.
“Did you sleep?”
“Some.”
“Is that why you were staring out the window?”
“I told you. I’m fine.”
“No, you told me a lie.”
Her chin lifts. “You don’t get to interrogate me because you stayed home.”
“I’m not interrogating you.”
“What would you call this?”
I look at the shadows beneath her eyes and the pulse beating too fast in her throat.
Concern is not a word I permit between us.
“Quality control. A tired housekeeper is a liability.”
Hurt flashes across her face.
She turns back to the rolls. “Then fire me.”
We both know I will not. “You are free to leave anytime you want.” I tell her, not meaning a single word.
Housekeeper and cook are the titles on paper. Coercion is the honest name. Liam’s scholarship. The Moralez family’s loans. The malpractice suit hanging over Luis. The damage I could do to Sofia with a few calls.
Belle knows every piece of leverage I hold.
So do I.
“No one is forcing you to stay.” I’m lying through my teeth. “You agreed to the job.”
Her mouth curves without humor. “You made the benefits difficult to refuse.”
She presses her mouth flat and turns away from me, effectively dismissing me in my own kitchen. I grab Bee, and she comes with me willingly, unlike her owner. An hour later, Bee sleeps against my forearm while I review contracts.
I do not move her.
After dinner, Belle appears in the office doorway wearing jeans, a dark sweater, and the locket she grips when she is trying not to show fear.
“I need to ask you for something.”
“You can ask.”
“I want to see Liam play next weekend.”
“No.”
“It’s one game. I want to have dinner with him afterwards. Frank can drive me. Send security into the stadium if that makes you feel powerful.”
“No.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I am aware.”
“He called twice today.”
Something in her voice changes. A crack she seals too late.
“What did he want?”
“To talk.”
“About what?”
Her grip tightens until the chain bites her neck. “His game.”
Another lie.
“You are not going.”
“I have done everything you asked.”
“Not everything.”
Her hand falls from the locket.
I should stop.
Instead, I lean back. “You’re asking me for a favor, Belle. What lengths are you willing to go to?”
The filth in the question lands exactly where I aimed it.
She goes still. Her gaze moves over my hands, the desk, my mouth. Not with fear. With the flat assessment of a woman finding rot beneath polished wood.
Then she walks out.
For one minute, I tell myself the point needed making. She cannot ask me for things and expect mercy. Then the sentence replays in my head.
My grandfather would have admired the leverage. That thought alone makes my stomach turn. I built my life around becoming harder than him without becoming him, and one sentence has put his voice in my office.
I pour two fingers of Laphroaig and leave the glass untouched.
Through the office wall, I watch her sit on the sofa with her book. She holds it open for twenty minutes without turning a page.
My phone buzzes.
Danny:
How’s it going?
I type Fine. Delete it.
Danny:
You stayed home. Does this mean we are getting the answers today?
I turn the phone face down. I have to do something.
I have waited long enough. My family deserves the truth.
Danny deserves it most of all. I don’t know why I am not forcing it out of her yet.
I should corner her. Press until the truth breaks loose.
So why am I still sitting here instead of opening that door?
I spend an hour in the pool trying to organize ten years of questions into something I can ask without losing my temper.
It does not work.
By the time I return to the penthouse, my muscles are exhausted and my anger has only sharpened.
The place is quiet when I step out of the elevator.
Belle stands at the stove with her back to me, stirring something that smells of garlic, tomatoes and basil. Her jeans follow the curve of her hips, and the wide neck of her sweater has slipped off one shoulder, exposing the pale line of her neck.
My attention catches on the exact place where I used to put my mouth.
I can still remember the way she tilted her head to give me more access, the small sound she made when my teeth grazed her skin.
The memory hits hard enough to make my jaw lock.