6. Alex #3
She laughs. It’s the worst sound I’ve heard all day, worse than the dumpster, because there is no emotion in it.
“No one can help,” she says.
No one can help.
Not I don’t need help. Not leave me alone.
She says it like it has already been decided. Like there is nothing I could do that would ever make me the man she comes to when she is afraid.
Maybe she decided that ten years ago.
Maybe that is why she ran instead of telling me. I had nothing then. No money. No power. No name that opened doors or made people listen. I was a construction worker with dirt beneath my nails and a promise that I would build her a life someday.
Maybe someday was never enough for her.
Now I stand in the middle of an apartment I own, with more money than either of us could have ever imagined, and I still have no idea how to make her trust me.
I watch her hand tremble as she struggles to hold the cup of water.
I take the glass before it slips from her fingers and place it on the nightstand.
“Belle.”
Her eyes are struggling to remain open.
“I need you to leave. I want to sleep.”
I stand beside the bed while she lies down carefully, protecting her ribs. Her hair spreads across the pillow, darker at the ends from the rain.
I want to touch it.
I want to stay until her breathing evens out. I want to climb onto the bed behind her, gather her against my chest and keep one hand over her heart so I can feel every beat.
Instead, I step back.
At the door, I look over my shoulder.
Her eyes are already closed.
For one second, I let myself pretend she is sleeping in my apartment because she chose to be here.
Then she turns away from me, and the bruise beneath her sweater reminds me what my choices have cost.
I leave the door partly open.
Polanski calls a couple of hours later.
I am in my office with the door open, staring at the hallway instead of the Holly Lake development contract Danny sent last night.
“The attacker didn’t leave the area on foot,” Polanski says.
“What did he use?”
“Black SUV picked him up two streets east. Plate belonged to a rental company. The rental was booked through a third-party corporate account.”
“Whose?”
“We followed the invoices through two subsidiaries.”
I wait for him to get to the point.
“Valenti Group.”
Of course.
“Dante Valenti.” I knew that bastard was up to something. I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.
“The account traces to one of his security divisions. But the man who attacked Ms. Clarke did not enter their vehicle willingly.”
“What does that mean?”
“The footage is partial, but two men grabbed him and forced him into the back seat.”
Dante’s people did not send the attacker.
They took him.
I find Valenti’s number in Polanski’s file and call.
He answers on the second ring.
“Hartley.”
“Where is he?”
A brief pause.
Then: “I have him.”
Every sound in the office falls away until there is only the voice on the phone.
“How did you know I was calling about him?”
“You rarely call for conversation.”
“You have people following Belle.”
“I have people protecting her.”
“Without her knowledge.”
Dante waits long enough to make the hypocrisy mine. “You object to hidden surveillance now?”
My jaw locks. “Hand him over.”
“No.”
“He attacked a woman in my care.”
“In your care.” Dante turns the words over. “Is that what you call it?”
“You don’t know anything about what happens in this house.”
“I know how she came to be there.”
Heat moves through my chest. “Careful.”
“I am careful. That is why he is in a room answering questions while your people are searching empty streets.”
“Who sent him?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Then start talking before I send someone to bring him out myself.”
Dante laughs once. No amusement in it. “You can try.”
I grip the phone harder. “What do you want?”
“A meeting.”
“I don’t take meetings on demand.”
“You will if you want to know why men keep finding Belle.”
The use of her real name on his mouth scrapes across something raw.
“New York,” he says. “Next week. After Daniel’s event.”
“You know too much about my family.”
“You know even less about yours than you think.”
My free hand flattens against the desk.
“There will be an invitation waiting.”
“No need. I’m already a patron.”
The line goes dead.
I return to the Holly Lake contract because I need something with numbers, deadlines and consequences I can control.
The residential development is sound. Danny vetted the acquisition properly. The projections work, though the construction schedule is aggressive.
I read the same page three times.
If I do not force my attention onto it, I will walk down the hallway, enter Belle’s room and do something humiliating.
Like ask her to let me hold her.
Bee appears without warning. One moment my lap is empty. The next, an orange-and-black body lands on my thigh.
She circles once, looks up at me with green eyes that suggest I have disappointed her personally, then curls into a tight ball.
Her purr vibrates through my trousers.
I adjust the tablet with one hand. The other settles along her back.
She is warm. Soft. Entirely unconcerned that I am the man keeping her owner trapped in this apartment.
Bee wants proximity. A warm place to sleep. A hand moving along her spine.
Simple needs.
“She’s down the hall,” I tell her. “You should be with her.”
Bee kneads my thigh, claws finding skin through the fabric, then settles more heavily.
Belle is sleeping alone while her cat chooses me.
Has it always been like this?
Everyone leaving, while Belle stayed behind and worked out how to survive the damage?
She raised Liam. Worked at the bakery, taught art and painted in the hours when nobody needed anything from her.
Who took care of Belle?
The question should not hurt as much as it does.
I approve the contract, add a note about slowing down the first phase and send it back to Danny.
Bee stretches across my lap, forcing the tablet higher. My hand continues moving over her fur.
The office door remains open.
Every few seconds, I look toward the hallway.
This is what my life has become.
I notice the way Belle’s hair catches the morning light. I know when she changes shampoo because the scent lingers after she leaves a room. When her fingers come within an inch of mine, my body goes still waiting, anticipating, for her touch that never comes.
I drink the coffee she makes and taste the years that went by.
She still remembers exactly how I take it.
Not because I ordered her to learn. Because once, making my coffee was ordinary. She would hand me the mug without asking, steal the first sip and complained it had too much sugar.
Now I let her cat sleep on my lap because it is the closest I can come to the warmth Belle once gave me without fear.
It hits me then.
I am not watching her because I distrust her.
I am starving for her.
For the woman who used to move through my mother’s house as though she belonged there. For mornings when her hand did not tremble near mine. For the easy silence we had before I turned every silence between us into a weapon.
I trapped her and told myself she deserved it.
Then I watched her disappear a little more every day and pretended the hollow feeling in my chest meant I’d won.
It didn’t.
I was losing her.
And the worst part is, I’m the one who did this to her.
For ten years, I have fed my anger with one version of Belle. The woman who betrayed me. Ruthless enough to walk away while my family burned. A woman who chose money and safety over everyone she claimed to love. It was easier to hate her that way.
Except the Belle I knew could not even kill a fly. She would trap it under a glass, slide a piece of paper beneath it, and carry it outside while Danny laughed at her.
That woman and the woman I have spent ten years hating do not fit together.
Maybe seeing her hurt and bleeding for the second time since I found her is making me soft.
Or maybe I have been looking at the evidence through ten years of rage and calling every unanswered question proof of her guilt.
Someone killed her uncle.
What if Belle did not leave because she wanted to?
What if someone forced her out of town? Was it even her choice?
Now men are asking about her and Liam. One of them tried to drag her into an alley. And Dante Valenti has been protecting her without telling anyone.
Why?
Who are these men?
Were they after her ten years ago too?
Was my father’s death really just an accident?
My hand stops on Bee’s back.
The cat lifts her head, annoyed by the interruption, and glares at me until I start petting her again.
And Belle’s call that morning, the call I have treated as part of the betrayal ever since, could it have been just another coincidence?