Chapter 5
It’sthirty minutes of hell driving my daughter to school.
From the French Quarter in Charleston where my hotel is, a narrow, flat city street leads you up a ramp. As the one-lane road climbs higher and higher, the nose of your car soars while concrete barriers that aren’t tall enough close in around you, trapping you in a climbing, tight right curve that never ends until you’re trapped…
On the Ravenel Bridge.
It’s the third longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western hemisphere, and it’s my hell. Soaring over seventeen stories high, the bridge is designed to endure three hundred mile-an-hour winds while I can barely endure driving over it.
My palms sweat. My ears ring. And the memory, like a gust of wind across the bridge, makes me sway with terror.
I’ve been the only one allowed to drive my daughter across this bridge for four years.
Gia’s new school is on the other side of it. Her mother went there, and Gia’s cousin goes there now. My wife’s sister lives near the school. That’s where we were that July fourth, driving home from her sister’s house.
We were right here…crossing this cursed bridge.
“Is Aunt Abbey going to be there? And Harper, too?” Gia calls out from the back, where I’ve secured her into her safety seat like a Formula One driver.
“No,” I can barely answer, gripping the steering wheel. “The open house today is for kindergarteners only.”
If I weren’t so terrified, I’d be embarrassed.
I try to hide my fear from my daughter, but now I have a new audience. Scarlett’s in the passenger seat of my black Escalade. I bought the biggest, safest luxury car for this daily torture.
“But I won’t have any friends if Harper’s not there.”
Anxiety fills my daughter’s voice, and it matches mine as we climb. Only the blue sky fills the horizon as the speeding morning traffic in the lanes around me races my pulse. I have to drive in the middle lane, my glare focused ahead.
“Harper’s in second grade. She’ll be there next week for your first day,” Celine soothes Gia. “And you’ll see her this Sunday at brunch.”
But Gia doesn’t reply with her usual glee. She’s nervous. I am, too, because the spot is coming up. The one on my left. The one that makes me sweat, it makes me sick, fighting not to remember.
And the silence watching me from the passenger seat makes this even worse.
Scarlett looks ravishing today.
When she met us in the foyer of my penthouse this morning, I had to grit my teeth, offering her a travel mug of strong Greek coffee, like an apology, feeling guilty after what we did last night.
At what she wore today.
It’s my punishment; I know it.
She’s wearing the same black pencil skirt, or one just like it, from our night at the club. The heels she compromised with are low but spiky. And her pink silk blouse makes her tan skin glow. She left a few buttons open to torture me. I can see the lace of her bra underneath, making me obsess over its color.
But the worst is she left her flaming hair tumbling down.
All I wanted to do on the elevator ride from the penthouse to the parking deck was sink my hands into her strands, crashing her lips against mine while I sucked her tongue.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
What I want with Scarlett is so wrong.
But how I need her is so right.
And like she can sense my vision threatening to blur with my terror on this bridge, she quietly asks, “Is this the same car that woman…you know…”
It makes me grin, the sudden change of subject that’s too inappropriate for my daughter, but she can’t hear it over the Moana soundtrack playing.
“No,” I whisper back. “I got a new car. Once she knew which one was mine and I knew what she did, I bought two. This and a Lotus I drive by myself for fun.”
I risk a glance at Scarlett, and she’s grinning my way.
Relief floods me.
I thought she wasn’t speaking to me after last night, after I made it very clear we were a mistake. It won’t happen again, but I guess at least around Gia, Scarlett remains professional.
I don’t know what got into me last night when I called her. It was to discuss her attire, to offer my credit card. I want to take care of her.
That’s a fucking lie.
I know what I want. I know what’s inside me—lust for Scarlett that feels like damnation and deliverance at the same time.
My wife never made me feel this way. She was always so innocent and sweet and nothing like me, and that only makes the guilt kill me, too.
Yes, opposites attract. So what do you do when you meet your match? The one who’s just like you? I felt it the moment we met. The moment Scarlett said those words to me, “Luca, I’ll be your whore tonight.”
Scarlett’s made for me. She’s strong enough to survive my darkest desires, tough enough to endure my degradation, and powerful enough to crave submission.
So it’s hell she’s working for me now, but at least the worst part of the bridge is past me as Scarlett mutters, “Did you give Gia the talk last night?”
Unfortunately, my daughter overhears that.
“Yes,” Gia chirps, “I know how babies get in bellies and how they come out nine years later.”
“Nine months.” Celine laughs.
“Nine months,” Gia corrects herself. “And Baba told me about boys’ penises and my fine china.”
I snort, all hell evaporating as Scarlett laughs, turning in her seat to ask Gia. “What did your Baba tell you?”
“Baba said that boys have penises and girls have fine china. And that no one can touch my fine china, and if they do, I’m not in trouble, but I have to tell Baba.”
“Gia,” I ease, “it’s vagina. No one but you can touch your vagina.”
“That’s what I said,” she replies, and once again, I survive hell for my daughter’s sake.
But when I hold her hand, walking her into her new classroom, I don’t know if I’ll survive this—letting her go. But she does. She runs to the brightly colored toys on the bookshelves under the classroom windows, and I watch my world discover a Slinky.
“She’s going to love it,” Celine assures me. “You loved school too. You were the smartest in the class.”
All while, I notice out of the corner of my eye how Scarlett is scanning the room. She looks like my sexy assistant, but her head is on a swivel.
“Luca, is that you?” A genteel voice calls over my shoulder, and I turn around.
“Maren, good to see you.” I kiss her cheeks before asking, “Where’s Thomas?”
Charleston isn’t that big of a city, especially the circles I run in. Bumping into my wife’s best friend doesn’t surprise me, but her reply does.
“We divorced last year.” She shrugs. “And as usual, he’s too busy with work to be here for Spencer.” She points to a little boy playing with Gia, and I haven’t seen him since he was a baby.
“Wow,” I sigh. “Spencer’s so big.”
“It has been four years.” Maren touches my arm, letting her fingertips linger. “How are you?”
“We’re fine,” I answer, remembering all our time together and her phone calls and messages since that I never answered.
Darby was close to Maren. They shared everything, including being pregnant, months apart.
“It looks like those two have found each other again.” I gesture to Gia, playing with Spencer. I’m relieved she’ll have a family friend in the classroom. I introduce Maren to Celine as such. And to Scarlett.
“This is Maren Banks,” I tell her. “She was best friends with my wi?—”
I choke on the word. At what I’m about to say. At how it flies off my tongue.
This is awkward.
It feels wrong introducing Scarlett to my wife’s best friend, knowing Scarlett’s the woman who makes me come so hard, I see stars.
“It’s nice to meet you.” Scarlett shakes Maren’s hand, saving me from finishing the sentence, and I don’t know why I still do it.
Why do I still say “my wife” when she’s been dead for four years? People must think I’m in denial, but I’m not. I just don’t want to say “my dead wife,” particularly around our daughter. But there’s no word for it.
What do you call your other half, your first love who died before your eyes?
“Scarlett is my new personal assistant,” I lie to Maren. “I’m going to need help when Gia starts school.”
Maren nods, smiling, but I know women too well, and I’ve lived in the South for too long. Maren doesn’t believe me and doesn’t like Scarlett. It’s like she’s judging her. She disapproves. It’s like she’s…jealous? But why? She’s a beautiful woman, too, but I’ve never been attracted to her.
“Scarlett,” Maren coos. “What a pretty Southern name. Where is your family from, dear?”
Scarlett chuckles. “From a pretty trailer park off Highway Seventeen, just north of here.”
Maren smiles. I don’t remember her lips being that plump as they purse. “And just how did you find yourself working for our Luca?”
“Some friends introduced us,” Scarlett answers before I can. “I met Mr. Mercier at a birthday party, and we quickly realized I met his demands.”
Scarlett’s fucking with me, and Maren can smell the half-truth.
Yes, I met Scarlett at a birthday party. Redix and Cade’s thirtieth birthday party. But that was at a private sex club, not a country club where Maren is used to seeing me.
“Oh really?” Maren asks, “Luca, which friends? Leanne and Scott? Hallie and Dave?”
She’s asking about my dead wife’s friends, and to be fair, Maren doesn’t know how much I died, too. I don’t do much anymore but be a father. It’s too hard. Our daughter is the only thing I live for. The only family I see is my wife’s sister and her daughter, my niece, who live nearby.
The other company I keep…
Maren doesn’t know about it.
I don’t blab to the world that I’ve become close friends with Redix Dean. Redix is too famous, and I’m too protective of him. We’ve both been through hell and seek solace together on the golf course. Or a sex club.
And Maren hates Zar.
Probably because Zar fucked her sister at a fundraiser years ago.
Darby thought it was funny. She adored Zar. They were close, though Darby worried about him. She always said that Zar seemed lost, like he was missing something and hiding his pain.
My wife had no idea what Zar was hiding.
But I did.
I still do.
I answer Maren, “Scarlett and I met through friends from work. No one you’d know. But how is your mother…?”
I barely get out of that uncomfortable conversation and back over the damn bridge once the open house is done. Gia falls asleep on the ride home, so does Celine, and Scarlett doesn’t say much.
After she spends the afternoon meeting with Zar, after he takes her up to my penthouse to say goodbye to Gia—I watched them with my cameras—she appears in my office doorway.
“Need anything else today?” she asks.
My needs are so grave, they make me grin. “No, thank you,” I answer from behind my desk. “You’re free to go.”
She slants her eyes, half pissed, half amused. “Am I free to use the gym before I go? The pool too?”
“Please, do.”
“Will you be watching me?”
She sees the array of flatscreens on my right. With the click of a mouse, I can monitor any of my sixty hotels worldwide.
I smirk. “I always watch what’s mine.”
Her eyebrow arches. “So, you’re a voyeur?”
“No,” I answer. “I’m telling you I’m watching you. For voyeurs, it’s a secret. I’m a scopophilic. I derive great pleasure from you knowing that I’m watching you. As you’re well aware.”
I relish revealing a few of my dark secrets to her while I silently guess she’s wearing a pink lace bra under her blouse. It thrills me, knowing how her nipples match.
But now I imagine how they’d look pinched in silver clamps with chains, red from my crop marks.
“You don’t mind, do you?” I enjoy the control, teasing her, “Being watched?”
“As you’re well aware, I derive great pleasure from you watching me.” She grins. “But this is business now, Mr. Mercier. We don’t make more mistakes, right?”
Checkmate.
I change the subject.
Sort of.
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pull out my wallet. “Indeed, so here.” I pluck my Black Card out. “Take this. Go shopping. There’s no limit, no budget, but you need to keep looking as you do today.”
Pinched between my extended fingers, I see if Scarlett will obey. If she’ll take the bait.
But she smirks, stalking my way. She knows damn well what I’m doing, and she doesn’t care. “So I can go to Ross and spend hundreds?” she asks.
“What’s Ross?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Gucci, Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton,” I answer. “They’re around the corner, and you can spend tens of thousands.”
“Great.” She takes my card, eyeing it like a foreign object. “I get to be Julia Roberts for the day.”
I shake my head, confused.
“Pretty Woman?” she huffs. “You’ve never seen the movie?”
“Should I?”
“Who are you, and where did you grow up?”
“Your client,” I answer. “And Mykonos and Paris. And what’s the movie?”
“A lonely, mean rich man falls in love with an escort, a poor, pretty red-headed whore he hires for the weekend.”
I pause, letting the joke reveal her truth. “Scar…I mean, Ms. Jones, you are not my escort. I’m not that kind of man.”
She raises that scarred brow, conjuring all the dirty things I’ve done and said to her. How that one word—whore—sets my soul on fire. It could twitch my cock, but my heart is too distracted.
“You know what I mean,” I assert. “That was private. This is public. This is my world, and you’ll be treated with respect. I respect you, and so will others.”
She scoffs, “Watch how they’ll treat me at Gucci Charleston tomorrow.”
“But you have my Black Card.”
“But you,” her smirk falters, “weren’t raised in a trailer park. Trust me. Women in your world can smell it on me.”
Though I know Scarlett’s tough, she’s the most breathtaking woman I’ve ever seen—the snobby women in this city have nothing on her—it’s her weak spot. She was raised poor, while I was raised rich. We’re from different worlds, and she’s not comfortable in mine. I suddenly see it, and it finds my vulnerable spot, too.
“I’ll go with you,” I offer. “They’ll respect you if I’m there.”
“No.” She squares her shoulders. “They’ll respect me because I’ll demand it, poor or posh.”
“You need my help.”
“You need to watch the damn movie because that’s Hollywood, this ain’t.” She pivots on her heels. “Besides,” she calls over her shoulder, “we’re strictly professionals. Right, Mr. Mercier?”
I watch her incredible ass sway, bound tight under that skirt, and this isn’t strictly business.
Yes, Scarlett will get the job done. She’ll protect the only thing that matters to me. The way she smiled at Gia today, gently guiding her with her hand on Gia’s tiny shoulder, like Scarlett genuinely cares for my daughter. I watched the sight, and it gave me a warm feeling. A forgotten one.
A terrifying one.
Though I’ll never do anything about it, this is far more than business as I watch Scarlett leave for the night…because she looks so goddamn beautiful doing it.
“She’s the one,isn’t she?”
Zar swirls his whisky. Stars twinkle above while we smoke cigars on my rooftop terrace, and here comes the interrogation.
“Who?” I play coy, watching tendrils of smoke fade into the warm September night.
“Scarlett: she’s the one you finally fucked,” he says. “I can tell.”
Yes, Zar is my best friend. We share…a lot. But I can’t be that obvious. Just in case I don’t answer and Zar laughs. “I fucking knew it.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“The fuck I don’t. You’re clenching your left fist. That’s your tell when you’re lying.”
I don’t even realize I’m doing it. My right hand is busy with my cigar, while the only thing on my left hand…is my wedding band. I’ve only taken it off once. Still, I fight the truth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know Scarlett Jones is a zipper ripper.” Zar grins. “She’s so fucking hot; all the blood rushes from your brain to your cock because Jesus Christ—and she’s an MMA fighter? In fact,” he baits me, “we’re sparring tomorrow.”
“The fuck you are.”
“You only own me on Saturday nights.” He leans back in his chair, enjoying our power exchange. “Tomorrow’s Wednesday, and I’m sparring with a hot redhead with incredible tits and a mean uppercut.”
“She’s off-limits,” I growl, feeling a vicious jealousy foreign to me.
I’ve shared almost everything with Zar, from tears to temptations, but not Scarlett.
“No,” he puffs his cigar, “she’s a titled MMA fighter, and I’m a big fan of the sport. You know it. You’ll deal with it. And you’ll love it because she can whip my ass, too.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I’ve tempted you every Saturday night for three years straight. That’s how I know it’s her.” He taps his ashes. “You started acting weird last December after you told me you went to that sex party for Redix Dean.”
I roll my eyes. “Fuck, you know too much about me.”
“Apparently, I don’t because you never told me what happened at that party, but I knew something did. Your…requests changed.”
He glances my way, and I raise my eyebrow.
We don’t talk about this in my home.
I’m very strict about it.
Only on the executive floor. Only on Saturday nights. Only in that suite.
Zar smirks at my silent warning. “I figured it out while we met today,” he says. “I gave Scarlett a tour of the property, all the access codes, and I made some introductions. But it’s when I showed her the file on your stalker that I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“She cares about you.”
“She’s doing her job.”
“Bodyguards don’t care like that.”
Zar sips his whisky, and I barely remember a time before him. My childhood feels like a forever ago, but all I’ve known since I was eighteen was Zar by my side. While we were at Harvard, my family was in Greece, and his family was too wealthy to care about him. They disowned him, so we became close.
Very close.
When Darby died, Zar was the only one who saw my tears. He found me on my knees in the shower, pink rivulets running down the drain as the dried blood washed away and the agony set in.
He never judged. He had a broken arm, but he never left my side. No, he shared my guilt and grief as he sat silently in a chair beside my bed, and then he kicked me out of it a week later, saying that was enough. I had to get my shit together, for Gia’s sake.
That’s the kind of love we share. Tough and silent.
“She asked questions about Brooke Turner,” he says.
I cut him a look. “You mean she asked questions about my stalker, who’s your fault.”
“Pussy just goes crazy for you, man. That’s your fault.” He grins. “But it sure is my pleasure.”
I don’t answer him. Again, Zar’s bringing up shit we don’t discuss in my home, even though Gia is asleep.
It’s been one of my saving graces of single fatherhood; my daughter sleeps like a rock. She’s a whirling dervish all day, but once her curly head hits the pillow, she’s out.
Celine has her room next to Gia’s. She watches her when I’m not here. Usually, I am. I never leave Gia except for work or Saturday nights. Celine never asks where I go because I won’t answer.
Only Zar knows.
He arranges it.
“What kind of questions did Scarlett ask?” Still, I like saying her name, and I want to know. I want a lot with Scarlett; all that I can’t have, all that I can’t admit to myself that she made me feel. Again.
“A lot of security stuff,” Zar answers. “Mainly about Brooke’s background. If she’s been institutionalized or has a record, or if she met Gia.” Zar gets quiet, his voice deepening. “When Scarlett saw the pictures Brooke left on your desk, she might’ve figured it out.”
I wince, closing my eyes to the humid night. It’s heavy. It’s peaceful, but not my mind, thinking about those photos. They’re dark. They’re taboo. They’re a desperate plea from a woman obsessed with me, with what I did to her.
Zar explains, “When Scarlett saw those pictures, man, it was written all over her face.”
My pulse quickens. “What?”
“She was hurt.” He turns, glaring at me. “You fucked her, didn’t you?”
I’m in charge. I have the power. Zar knows it; he needs it. He knows better than to challenge me, especially over this.
“So what if I did?” I growl. The half confession makes my soul-crushing burden lighten just a bit. It’s like I can finally breathe.
Can I tell him more? Can I finally admit what I did? What I feel?
I trust Zar even more than I trusted my wife, and though she died, my guilt never will.
Now it’s just me and Zar. I know he has other friends. I do, too. It’s no coincidence I’ve found myself with friends like me, people with nontraditional notions of love…and sex, it seems. But no one knows me like Zar. And no one knows about Zar. He’s one of the dark secrets I keep.
So when I glance at him to finally confess because he’s the one who saved me years ago, he glowers at me before he turns his dark eyes away. They reflect the starry night sky.
“I thought we had a rule,” he snarls.
“Rules break.”
“So do hearts,” he replies, and fuck…
I broke his.