Chapter 22 #2
Time fractures.
I don’t hear the approach until I feel strong hands already on me. I’m enveloped in the clean scent of vodka, smoke, and his earthy scent that makes my toes curl. He had come in from out of the shadows of the Estate, Archie behind him with his gun half-drawn.
Hayden grabs my arms. “Martine—”
But I can’t move.
I saw it.
It’s his.
My knees give out before I realize I’m falling, and those safe arms catch me, pulling me close to his hard chest. Muscles and warmth are all I feel, and I cower in like a child, folding my hands into my chest and gasping a sob.
All of these weeks, I’ve repressed. I’ve behaved. I’ve held my head high and searched for ways to please Hayden, at the expense of mourning my own brothers, but now it’s here. The pain is ripping through my chest as I can barely control my sobs.
The marble is cold. It bites through the silk of my dress as I collapse farther onto the steps, my hands trembling against the stone as I nearly slip through his arms. My breath won’t come right.
It stutters, catches in my chest like it’s snagged on a wire.
Everything tilts. Everything warps. The lights blur. The sounds smear.
Hayden drops to his knees in front of me, hands on me, his voice cutting through the noise like a blade.
He brushes my hair out of my face to grip my cheeks, trying to get my eyes to reach his, but they just can’t seem to.
“Darling,” he says, his voice firm yet low, “look at me.”
I can’t. I can’t lift my head.
Hayden moves quickly, instructing the butler to remove the guests.
Luckily, guests are already leaving.
I glance up and see Hayden, his face stone-cold, standing in the center of the foyer, issuing quiet, deliberate orders to staff. No panic. Just control.
He gestures to security. The front gates. The perimeter. Everyone is being escorted out. Quietly, efficiently. No one dares argue.
They came for champagne and spectacle.
They’re leaving with blood on their heels.
He brushes the hair from my face, tucks it behind my ear with sure fingers. His hands are warm. Steady. My body is not. My breath comes in shallow, broken gasps. I can’t seem to stop it.
“Darling, breathe. Look at me,” he says again, more urgently. His thumb presses against my cheekbone. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
I look up.
His face is too close, too sharp, too calm for what I’ve just seen. And I hate him for it.
That was Ford.
That was his ring.
That was his finger.
Something inside me cracks wide open, and I think I’m going to scream, but nothing comes out.
Something tells me my husband has something to do with this.
Behind us, Dale is yelling.
“What do you know, Archie?” Her voice is ragged, furious. “What the fuck do you know?”
She’s shoving at him, hands on his chest, her eyes wild. Hudson runs up, worried as to why Dale is yelling at Archibald like a rabid animal, demanding to know about my brother as though she has some claim on him.
Archie grabs her wrists to steady her, but she’s shaking with rage. “You’re always three steps ahead. Always smirking. Tell me right now what the hell you know.”
“We can discuss this once the guests leave,” Archie says, motioning to the people still trickling out, but his voice is too quiet, too practiced. Underneath, you hear the plea in his words.
Not here. Not now.
But still she pounds at his chest, demanding answers.
“You’re lying,” Dale spits, tearing away from him. “You know something. You always know something.”
The party is a corpse around us now. No more music. No more laughter. Guests are pouring out of the house like vultures in designer gowns, drawn to the rot but too afraid to get close.
Hayden pulls me into his chest, arms wrapping around me like a fortress. I bury my face into him because I don’t know where else to go.
“I’ve got you,” he says again.
“I don’t need you,” I grit out venomously, wanting to shove him away and find solace in his arms at the same time.
My chest feels like it’s caving in, breath caught somewhere between a sob and a scream, but through the noise, through the sting of tears and the white static in my skull, one thing cuts through with brutal clarity.
It was never a murder.
Ford is alive.
And Hayden knew. I have no proof, but just as certain I am that my father killed my mother, I know Hayden knew my brother was alive. Maybe Dexter, too.
I stare at the ring, the monogrammed shirt, the careful way it was all arranged.
I turn to Hayden, hands shaking.
“You knew,” I whisper.
He doesn’t deny it; his silence says everything.
“You knew,” I say louder, shooting up and out of his arms, shaking as I cower away from the arms I so desperately want to fall into, voice trembling with rage. “You’ve always known. He isn’t dead. You’ve been letting me drown in this lie, letting me mourn him like a fool, and you’ve known.”
The room is now empty, all the guests are gone, and my shout echoes throughout the room.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he says calmly. “I withheld what you weren’t allowed to know.”
My hand slams into his chest. “You let me think he was gone. And all this time, he’s been what? Underground? Hidden like some Brotherhood secret? A ghost in your sick little game?”
“They aren’t being honest, Martine, they know something!” Dale shouts, eyes full of tears, and for the first time, I can honestly believe that Ford meant something to her. Means something.
His eyes flash. “Of course we know something!” he yells, grabbing me by the throat in one fluid moment. Forcing me to choke on a gasp, barely able to gather my breath as.
“Then what was it? Some rite of passage? A test? You expect me just to understand that my brother is alive and you’ve known all along?”
“It has to do with the Brotherhood,” he says, finally. “You think I had a choice?”
I stare at him, the words sinking in like poison.
“So you’re saying the Brotherhood made him do it.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“And you stood by it.”
“Yes,” he says again, softer now, “because that’s what we do. We follow orders.”
“I’m not one of you,” I breathe, gasping around his hand at my neck.
“No,” he says. “But you’re married to me. Which means whether you like it or not, you’re bound by it as well.”
I shove him again, his hand barely loosening at my throat. “All you do is tear my life apart and then hand me scraps like I’m supposed to thank you. Ford and Dex were—are—everything to me!”
His jaw clenches. “He’s alive, Martine. Isn’t that what matters?”
“No,” I say, tears spilling over. “What matters is that you made me believe he wasn’t.”
I try to shove at him, and Dale pounds at Hayden's arm to release me.
Tears stream down my face as I look at the man I love, who held a horrible secret from me.
But I know better now.
Nothing I feel for Hayden will ever be untouched by this betrayal.
And nothing about this night is over. I look over to Dale and am devastated by what I see.
A single, gasping sob cuts through the silence, sharp and wet and awful. When I turn, she’s standing just beyond the threshold, still barefoot, mascara bleeding down her cheekbones; her hand is pressed to her mouth, as if she’s holding her entire soul in.
Then she drops.
Right there on the marble, in the dress she picked to seduce half the guest list, she folds in on herself and begins to cry in a way I’ve never seen. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just wrecked.
I move without thinking, and by some grace, Hayden lets me go.
My knees hit the floor beside hers, and I reach for her, pulling her against me. She doesn’t resist. She clings to me like she’s drowning, her arms wrapping tight around my ribs, her body shaking against mine.
I don’t speak. There’s nothing to say.
We stay like that, tangled and shaking, as the sound of doors opening and the staff echoing behind us. Archie is standing over us, watching with his icy, observant eyes.
The music has stopped for good. Trays of untouched caviar sit abandoned on the credenzas. A pair of Louboutins is lying near the stairs. Everything feels surreal, like a dream that has been interrupted before it could become a nightmare.
Dale hiccups against my shoulder, her fingers digging into the thick silk of my dress.
“He promised me,” she whispers. “Ford promised me forever.”
I don’t know what to say. So I hold her tighter.
Because even in the quiet, I can still feel the scream trapped in my throat. Dale is just as wronged as I am, and instead of losing a brother, she lost a lover who chose to leave her. Who promised her forever and then decided to walk away.
I don’t know who has it worse.
I hold Dale tighter, one hand running down her back like I can somehow soothe both of us at once. But something in me starts to itch. The air shifts and grows heavy.
I lift my head.
There’s no one directly in the doorway, no obvious movement in the shadows, but every nerve in my body screams that we’re not alone.
“I feel like I’m being watched,” I whisper.
Hayden’s head snaps toward me immediately. Archie steps forward from the shadows near the corridor, where he has been keeping his distance but listening. He rolls his shoulders like he’s preparing himself for war.
“I’ll stay the night,” Archie says. “No one should be coming or going until we know what that was. Dale, that includes you.”
Dale lifts her tear-streaked face from my shoulder, still dazed. “I’m not staying here.”
“Yes, you are,” Archie says firmly. “It’s safer here than anywhere else.”
Dale doesn’t argue. That, more than anything, terrifies me.
Hayden steps forward slowly, his expression unreadable, but his voice has lost the smoothness it always wears.
“Things have changed,” he says. “I believe your uncle is behind this threat.”
The words hit me like a slap.
I sit up straighter, my hand still holding Dale’s, but my eyes lock onto Hayden. “You believe my uncle is behind this?”
Hayden nods once.
I stare at him, cold and shaking. “You’ve been investigating him all along. That’s what this is about?”
His silence is answer enough.