Chapter 10 Silas
SILAS
Ipull out, and Ophelia looks up at me with sleepy eyes.
“Hey.” I kiss her cheek. A sheen of sweat dampens her forehead.
“Hm.” She closes her eyes.
“You okay?”
She nods, never opening her eyes.
I smile, slip out of the bed, and throw the sheet over her.
In the bathroom, I clean myself up and wet a washcloth with warm water and soap.
Her glasses are on the counter, so I pick those up and carry both the washcloth and the glasses to the bedroom.
She’s fast asleep. I set her glasses on the nightstand and roll her onto her side.
She is jelly, her body pliable and giving, not an ounce of resistance left in her.
I clean her, liking the idea of my come inside her.
I then tuck her under the blankets and drop the washcloth in the hamper.
From the top of the desk, I pick up the ring.
It’s delicate but strong. I bring it back to the bed and sit on the edge, looking at Ophelia’s sleeping face. How relaxed she looks. How peaceful.
I take her left hand, and she doesn’t stir as I slip the ring onto her finger before tucking her back in. Brushing the hair off her forehead, I kiss her there.
“Love, sweetheart. I marry for love,” I whisper against her ear.
She makes a sound but remains asleep.
“Sweet dreams,” I tell her.
I get up, collecting my clothes and going into one of the other bedrooms to shower and get dressed.
Once I’m ready, I pick up the envelope containing a copy of everything I’d found in Horatio Hart’s locked box and find Hamish waiting for me outside.
He flicks the cigarette he was smoking onto the driveway and crushes it underfoot.
“Those things will kill you.”
“If they don’t, something else will.”
“True enough. Give her this in the morning,” I say, handing him my phone. “Tell her to call Nigella.”
“I will. You sure you want to do this, boss?”
“Yeah. Keep her safe. She’s your priority. She’s your only priority.”
He nods and hands me the keys to one of the SUVs. I glance up at the window of the bedroom where my wife—my wife—is sleeping and force myself to climb into the driver’s seat and take care of what I need to take care of.
I will be arrested tonight. I have no doubt.
But I need to find out exactly what I’m dealing with when it comes to the Carlisle-Bents.
So, I drive to the hospital and walk in through the front door.
I take the elevator to the fourth floor, where two uniformed officers nod when they see me.
I glance at the nurse’s station. It’s empty.
I make my way down to room 414, where another officer stands guard.
When he sees me, he glances at his colleagues down the hall before stepping aside.
Money buys access. It will be an expensive ten minutes.
Horatio Hart is clearly expecting me. The light is on, and he’s sitting up in his bed looking like he’s lost a few pounds since last I saw him.
“Silas.”
“Horatio.”
I pull up a chair and sit.
“Where’s Ophelia?” he asks.
“Safe.”
“You married her.” His lawyer would have told him.
I nod.
He smiles. “I’m glad it was you and not him.”
I don’t mention I had to blackmail her into it. “Are you doing okay?”
His expression darkens. “I’ll be fine. The intention wasn’t to kill me.”
“No, I didn’t think it was. I don’t think you’ve had enough time to make an enemy in prison.”
He shakes his head. “It was a message.”
I nod, knowing this already. This is Sly’s doing. “If you don’t mind, we don’t have much time.” I set the folder on the table between us and open it. I watch him drag his gaze from my face down to that folder, and I see the blood drain from his skin.
It takes him a minute, and when he reaches out, it’s with a tentative hand as if touching the contents I set before him might burn him.
They’re copies. The originals are safe. I watch what he does, as he moves the papers around, and, as I suspected, he stops when he reaches the handwritten letter from Claire. Her suicide note.
“Where did you get this?” he asks, looking up at me.
“Your house.”
He’s confused. “The house burnt down.”
I watch him because I’m wondering something. Try as I might, I cannot come up with any motivation for the Foxes to have burnt down the Hart house. I just can’t put it together.
“I got to it before the fire.” He stares up at me like he’s trying to put the pieces together just as I am.
“I remembered delivering that envelope Sly had me bring over years ago. Remember how you were crouched over something in the floorboards when Ophelia opened the door, surprising you. On a hunch, I went over to see if whatever you were hiding was still there. It was.”
“These are copies.”
“Originals are safely hidden.”
“Has Ophelia seen—"
“No. It’s why I’m here in the middle of the night. And like I said, we don’t have much time.”
“You bribed the guards.”
“I did. Time to come clean. Because I’m not sure how much you know about what’s happened since my last visit, but Fox has tracked down Carlisle-Bent, and I need to know what the hell I’m dealing with.”
“Oh, God. No.” His face that had gone white earlier now takes on a gray hue. His shoulders slump and he pushes his hands into his hair. “No. Jesus, no.”
“Horatio. We do not have time for you to fall apart, so get your shit together and tell me what the fuck is going on. Because they’re going to drag me out of here in handcuffs in about five minutes.”
He looks up at me. “Why?”
“There’s security footage of me walking out of your house the night it burnt down. They think I set that fire. Ophelia thinks it. Thought it.” I think she knows it wasn’t me. Deep in her heart, she must.
“What? But…” he trails off, draws a deep breath in. “Ah, shit.”
“Talk. Now.”
“You can’t let her see this,” he tells me. “Any of it.”
“Yeah, well, both Gordon and Chandler Carlisle-Bent are in town. Sly picked up Gordon, and I’m sure he’s looking forward to meeting his granddaughter.
Chandler, the uncle, I don’t know jack shit about him but given the fact that he’s estranged and cut off, I can’t imagine he means well for O. So what the fuck is going on?”
“You need to keep her away from them. Both of them.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, Silas. If you have any feelings for her at all, and I think you do, just fucking do it no matter the cost.”
“The old man is dying.”
“Keep her away from them!”
The cop at the door peeks his head in.
“It’s fine,” I say. The officer taps his watch and closes the door. “Tell me what the fuck this is all about. Tell me so that I know what I’m dealing with. I can’t keep Ophelia safe unless I know, and I do want to keep her safe.”
He digs through to pick up one of the newspaper articles, the Daughter of Oil Tycoon Kidnapped one.
“It’s not true. She wanted to be gone. She needed to be gone.” He pushes a hand through his hair. “I loved her. I’d have done anything for her, but I didn’t know. I just… She never…”
He takes a deep breath in and wipes his eyes. I sit there and watch a grown man cry. A man who didn’t show the slightest emotion when sentenced to ten years in prison is now sobbing before me.
“Horatio,” I put a hand on his arm. “We don’t have time.”
He nods. “Ophelia can’t know about her mother’s suicide. She has to think it was accidental. She can’t ever find out, understand? It will kill her.”
He looks through the paperwork, realizing something, and picks up the medical report with the blood types. He glances at me.
“I know.”
He looks stupefied for a minute.
“I know you can’t be her biological father, Horatio.”
“Oh, Jesus. Fuck. Jesus fucking Christ! It was supposed to burn. It was all supposed to fucking burn.”
Now I’m the one who is surprised. “What did you say?”
He looks up at me, then over my shoulder, and I know my time is up.