CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
I T WAS FIVE THIRTY when his phone buzzed.
“You will regret trying me.”
His father’s voice, angry and acrid, came down the line, but before Matias could respond, he was gone.
Matias sat up. Auggie was lying in bed beside him, the sheets pushed down to her waist, her arm thrown up over her head. She looked like a marble statue in motion, her breasts on display, her beauty arresting. But he could not focus on her beauty. Not just now.
He got out of bed and pulled on his pants.
“Where are you going?” Auggie asked, her voice sleepy.
“I just have to...”
The next phone call was from his publicist. “About time you got in the game,” he snarled.
“We have a much bigger problem than we anticipated.”
“What is the problem?” He asked the other woman.
“Your father has decided to drag everything out into the open.”
Well. Not everything. Matias knew that without even checking. Because the truth would only paint him in a bad light. But what he had decided to reveal...
His phone buzzed, and he looked at his text from his publicist. At the headline there.
Matias Balcazar Accused of Corporate Espionage Against His Father, Causing his Sister’s Death!
“Bastard,” he said.
“What statement would you like me to make?”
“Isn’t my job to figure out what statement you should make. It is yours. Do it.” He hung the phone up.
He turned around and saw Auggie standing there with her sheet pulled up around her body, her hair in disarray. “What’s wrong?”
“This is... This has escalated.”
Auggie moved across the room and ran for her purse. It was obvious that she already had a raft of texts. “Oh, no,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hard. “Oh, no, indeed.”
“You’re not responsible for her death.”
“I am,” he said. “I am. I delivered the exact message that my father told me to give her. And I told her that with the shame she was bringing on the family would be better off without her.”
“Matias...”
“What was she to assume except that she would be better off dead?”
“A lot of people have issues with their family and they don’t overdose.”
“But she did. She did, because she was fragile. Because she needed me to be her ally, and I was not.”
“You can’t take responsibility for all of it.”
He turned, fury in his veins like fire. “Yes. I can. And my father is demanding that I do. This is what he’s doing. To eclipse our attempts at controlling this. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“We need to get out of the city. We need to rethink things.”
His heart was pounding harder than it should. He felt like he was perhaps about to have a heart attack.
“What happened?”
“He’s putting out everything about my sister. Everything. And my involvement in her death.”
She shook her head. “But you didn’t kill her. You weren’t responsible for her death.”
“I was,” he said. “Believe me, I was. And it is all being put out there in black and white, and anyone who reads it would think the same.”
“If you are responsible, then so is your father.”
“But it doesn’t matter to him. It doesn’t matter. It matters to me. That he would... This is sacred ground to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She looked small, hurt. He imagined that what she was hoping for was better treatment the morning after she had her first sexual experience, but he couldn’t afford to think about that right now. He couldn’t afford to let it matter.
She had seen him make a mistake with Charmaine. And now this.
He growled, moving into his bedroom and beginning to dress as quickly as possible. She blinked, and he noticed that her eyes were full of tears.
“I don’t have anything to change into.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you’re seen leaving my house in the same thing that you wore inside, it only lends itself to the illusion.”
“Do you honestly think that it matters now?”
“I’m sure that it’s in the news somewhere. Buried beneath this.”
“Then I will make a show of standing beside you. Whatever you need.” She would make a show of it. Because of course it was a show. For a moment, last night, it had felt like perhaps she knew him. Much in the same way it felt like he might know her. It had felt like something different. Something real. Something that he had never experienced before. But it had been a game. All of this was a game. Every moment of every day that he had breathed since Seraphina had died had been a game, and forgetting that had been his first mistake. You could not escape your past. You couldn’t escape the darkness there.
She left, her clothes in her arms, and returned moments later, dressed in the same clothing from the night before. The color that had seemed so suitable to her last night seemed somewhat garish today. In the bright light of the morning, clearly announcing that he had debauched her, that he was using her.
That’s what he was doing. That’s what he had been doing to every woman that he had ever met since he had embarked on this.
How he had thought that he had escaped bad behavior simply because he was a good lover, because he considered himself respectful, he didn’t know.
It was all a game.
He might not have chosen to play it. He was.
And in the end, when the headlines were released, the truth was he was no different than his father.
He was a man who had his own way of doing things and did it regardless of the impact on others. A man who behaved in supremely selfish ways, and treated those around him as if they were pawns in a game, rather than human beings.
But this was not even the time for self-pity. Because this was a mess of his own making, and he would do what needed doing to clean it up. Because it wasn’t only what had been written about him, but what was being written about Seraphina. The way that it seemed to indicate that he didn’t care about her. “We need to get down to my office.”
“All right,” she said.
“I suppose you want to call your friends.”
“It can wait.”
They headed down the street, and this time, when he called for a car, he did not ask for a driver. But as his car was brought into place for him by the valet, he noticed that there were paparazzi. Everywhere. Lining the streets, their black SUVs a telltale sign.
“Quickly,” he said.
They got behind the wheel and he began to drive, maneuvering out of the city.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked as they crossed the first bridge.
“I have a house. In the country. If we make it there, then the paparazzi will not follow us. I’m certain that once we leave the urban sprawl, they’ll give up.”
“I thought that you had to get back to your company.”
“It would be a good idea, but do you not see...” He looked in the rearview mirror. “There’s an entire cavalcade.”
She looked, worried. And then she began to text.
“Your work wives?”
“Yes. I’m asking them for some help.”
“See if they can create a diversion.”
“I will.”
But the car was gaining on them, and there was a photographer hanging out the window, taking his picture.
It sent panic through him. He couldn’t quite say why. Because Seraphina was dead, so what did any of this matter? Except it was him. He disliked seeing all of this in black and white so intensely because it highlighted his culpability in all of it. And if he was going to take his father down, perhaps he should take himself down with him. Perhaps... Perhaps there was nothing about him that was worth much of anything at all.
Perhaps he deserved to be gone as well.
But it was better, yes, it was better, and perhaps it was for him, to go through life as an avenging angel. To act as if his mission to destroy Javier would atone for something. How could it?
A few of the cars abandoned them as they continued on down the winding roads, as he began to drive faster.
“Be careful,” she said, hanging onto the door handle.
“I’m being careful,” he said.
But then, they came to a crossroads, and a dark SUV pulled out quickly in front of them. He swerved, and the car went off the road, and when he realized that the passenger side was about to connect with the tree, he corrected sharply, hitting the front end, the airbags failing to deploy, his head making a cracking impact against the steering wheel. His face was throbbing, and he felt warm blood running down his cheekbones.
“Matias...” Her voice was distant.
“I’m fine,” he said, seeing if the engine would start. It did. He threw his car into reverse, and drove even faster down the road, blood spilling into his eyes. His vision blurred, but he kept on driving. At least the paparazzi were no longer in pursuit. He pulled off quickly to a hidden road, and then the other, which would take him to his gated estate here in the country. He entered the code, and started to drive up the road and toward the house. It was several kilometers off of the main road, and they would not be disturbed there. It was nearly impossible to get inside.
“Matias.”
For the first time, he glanced over at Auggie. She looked terrified, pale. There was a large bruise forming on her cheek.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m not great. Why didn’t the airbags deploy?”
“I don’t know. And I will buy the manufacturer and put them out of business.”
“I don’t know that that’s necessary.”
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your head has been split open.”
“It will heal.”
“You probably have a concussion.”
“I’m fine. I’m thinking clearly. I was able to drive us here.”
Admittedly, his vision was growing blurry.
“It’s just... It’s just the media. We didn’t have to run from them.”
Her words scraped him raw. “I am protecting you. And myself.”
“They’re going to print whatever they want anyway. Whether they have a picture of you or not.”
But he couldn’t bear their questions. He couldn’t. He didn’t know why he felt that with such certainty, only that he did.
“Here,” he said, the edges of his vision darker now. “There’s the house.”
“Do you have staff here?”
He shook his head. “No. There will be no one here. We can... Bring people out. Get food.”
His speech was beginning to slur, his mind beginning to turn slower. He couldn’t remember quite why they had been running. Only that he had felt like a hunted animal. Only that it had reminded him so starkly of the unending, unforgiving grief that he had experienced when Seraphina had died that he felt overrun with it.
Because that had been the darkest day of his life. Because it had been when he had discovered that his father was wrong about everything. Everything.
He suddenly felt gripped with nausea.
He got out of the car, and wiped blood away from his face. He looked down at his hands, the edges of his vision growing ever darker. And then he vomited onto the grass.
“Matias,” she said, moving over to him, throwing her arms around his back. “You have a head injury.”
“I just hit my head, that’s all. Let’s go inside.”
“I have to get back to London. I can’t be out here. In the middle of nowhere. And you need to go to a hospital.”
“I am not going anywhere. Not as long as that pack of hyenas is after us.”
“I agree, it’s terrible. But surely we can get another vehicle. We can go back to my apartment. We can—”
“We will stay here.”
He went to the front door, and entered his code, the doors giving for him as he ushered her inside.
“What is this?”
“One of my places. A place where I can go for privacy. I don’t like everyone to know everything about me. I like them to think that they do.”
“Oh. Of course.”
It was austere inside. Like him. It was the truth of him, unlike the apartment she had stayed in last night.
“We have got to stop the bleeding on your face. Sit down.”
He obeyed her, mostly because he was dizzy. This was an infuriating time to discover his own mortality.
“I’m sitting,” he said.
“Yes, you are. Do you have a doctor?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I assume that rich men like you have doctors who will drop everything and come see to them, is that correct?”
He waved a hand. “Of course it is.”
“Then we need to call your doctor. And get him out here immediately, because I might be able to stop the bleeding but I’m not going to be able to stitch you back together.”
“Soon,” he said.
He heard her retreat. And when she returned, she had a large white towel. She pressed it over his eyes, his forehead, and he leaned back against the chair, trying to relax.
She held it there, counting, whispering.
“It’ll be all right,” she said.
He remembered, with a start, what she had said about caring for her mother. He could definitely feel that energy now. That familiarity that she had with the medical.
He didn’t know how he felt about it. If he needed medical care, then there was a professional to do it. This wasn’t her job. And she had been hurt...
“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’m fine.”
“I feel like we don’t know that for sure.”
“I know it well enough,” she said. And when she removed the towel from his forehead, and when he opened his eyes he found that he could see nothing at all.