38. Elyse
Elyse
I’m stuffed full of food and gratitude, although not as stuffed as I suspect Fleur is. I keep looking over at her, wondering if and when she’ll throw up, thanks to her sweet potato casserole overload.
I knew those marshmallows would go down well.
Eventually, I manage to make my way off the sofa and into the kitchen so I can set the teakettle on the stovetop.
What our collective digestive tracts need right now is a soothing cup of tilleul, the lime blossom infusion I can make from the loose-leaf tea that Sinclair brought me from some super-fancy Parisian tea brand.
It’s absolutely delicious. It’s the taste of my childhood. And I hate that I’ve thought of him, not my mom, whenever I’ve taken a sip this past week.
We are all slumped on the couch and the floor and on kitchen chairs when the doorbell rings.
It’s past ten, and Reggie and Gloria have just left with a humungous portion of foil-wrapped turkey breast. Everyone looks around dopily.
Even the dog has had way too much turkey to care who’s at the door right now.
I blow out a breath of effort as I haul myself off the couch once again.
Standing on our porch is a courier dressed in motorcycle leathers, his helmet visor pulled up. He’s holding an envelope. “Delivery for Ms. Elyse Ward,” he says.
“That’s me,” I say, frowning. I have no idea what this could be—until he hands it to me, that is, and I turn it over.
On the back of the envelope is a red wax seal whose V-shaped imprint bears the same pattern that Sinclair pressed to the back of my hand that day in the study at Fairwater. Right before he—
Anyways.
Shit.
I stare at it in horror, his words ringing in my ears:
You’re Voss property now. I own you.
And worse:
God forbid, a letter shows up in your mailbox with a wax Voss seal on it. You know you’re done for.
I feel a cold sense of dread, like when someone gets served in the movies.
Only this feels worse than a subpoena, because the possibilities of what kind of damage this letter could wreak are endless.
Are you freaking kidding me? He’s sending me some kind of, what, legal warning? On fucking Thanksgiving?
I don’t want to take it.
I want to hand it back and slam the door. I’ve blocked his number. Dad’s barred him from the house. And still he’s trying to get to me? Can he not take no for an answer?
“I’ve been instructed to wait for an hour,” the courier says, “in case there’s a reply.”
I shake my head quickly. “Oh, no. There will not be a reply.”
“Still, I’ve been paid to wait.”
“Honestly,” I tell him, “you can go. It’s too cold to wait around for an hour. We’re about to go to bed anyway,” I lie, and he nods, looking relieved.
“What is it?” Sylvie asks when I close the door.
“It’s nothing—give me a minute, okay?” I don’t want to upset any of them, tonight of all nights, at least not until I know what this is all about.
I close my bedroom door and sit on my twin bed, staring at the perfect, looping cursive on the front of the envelope.
I could go back in there and burn it on the stovetop.
He can’t make me read it.
He can’t make me listen to him, or obey him, or whatever else.
He and I are done.
But I don’t, obviously, because I’m far too curious. I open the envelope, I ease out the pages, and I begin to read.
November 26
My darling Elyse,
I’ve been slumped at the desk in our study for a half-hour, hiding from my own family on Thanksgiving and remembering being in here with you.
(Everything reminds me of you. Every single thing.)
I remember making some comment as I showed you our seal. Something about how much damage has been done in this room over the decades: lives ruined and tragedies concealed and wrongdoings erased with money and threats.
Money and threats.
Honestly, our family crest should be a carrot and a stick.
Anyway, it got me thinking. Thinking about how despicably I’ve wronged you. How badly I’ve hurt and betrayed you—but worse, how callously I played God with your career. Your life.
First things first. Attached is a deed of release for the initial NDA, like I promised.
I should have torn it up as soon as I invited you to my apartment. I should never have made you sign it. I should never have tried to silence you. Anyway, there are no longer any legal obstacles to your speaking freely to whomever you want about all the myriad ways in which I’ve wronged you.
I visited your home earlier this week. Did you know?
I’m sure you know. I’m sure your dad and your sister told you what a lucky escape you had.
But you needn’t worry. Your dad told me to go away and never to come back, and I want you to know that I respect that.
I won’t come back. I won’t try to blindside you.
And it makes me so happy that you have your family in your corner.
That they would do anything to protect you.
You need and deserve that, especially when there exist men like me in the world.
But I want to say how sorry I am.
I’m sorry for every single part of this.
I’m sorry for every way I wronged you.
In this new and alien spirit of radical transparency, I should tell you I did some digging.
I know you won’t be happy about it, and I understand that you’ll think it’s one more violation.
And you’re right—it was. I can’t justify it, except to say that it gave me the true picture of how fully I’ve wronged you, how completely I ruined your chances of financial security, and you’ll see in a moment that I needed that kick up the ass.
You told me about your sister’s injury, but you didn’t share that hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt became your family’s problem. It’s not fair, and it’s not okay.
I suspect it’s because you were in such dire need of money that you had to say yes to my proposal. I truly had no idea that I had put you in such an impossible position.
It makes the other two things I now know very hard to bear.
One. You wouldn’t take the money I offered you to come to my apartment, no matter how much of a difference it would have made to your family.
Two. The money I deprived you of, the campaign chances I killed, would have made a significant dent in your debt, and that makes me sick to my stomach.
Three. (I keep finding more.) That campaign was your opportunity to save your family on your own, without having to compromise your integrity in the way that our Alchemy arrangement did, and I robbed you of that opportunity.
I’ve also robbed you of many others, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that, once the public saw your face, the world would have fallen in love with you.
It would be impossible not to.
Every word I fed Vanessa in that meeting was a lie. A disgusting, sickening lie. Because she was right. You do have a once-in-a-generation face. (Although it’s your once-in-a-generation heart I fell hard for.)
If I thought it would help you, I would fall on Vanessa’s mercy in a heartbeat. I’d reinstate you so fast your head would spin. Say the word and I'll make the call; say nothing and I never will—it is yours either way, as it always should have been.
I can’t ask you to trust me again. I know that much. But, as I sit here, marveling at how much harm my family has been capable of inflicting by wielding pens and stamping paper, it strikes me that there’s only one way to show you how truly sorry I am.
Like I said, I can’t ask you to trust me. I have destroyed any chance of earning that.
But I can trust you. I can put my family’s secrets in your hands.
My own secrets. I have my first therapy session tomorrow—my very own Black Friday.
Seems fitting, doesn’t it? I’m hoping it will help me understand why I am the way I am and, more importantly, what work I can do to become a better man.
Not a man worthy of you—I’ll never be that—but someone who can look himself in the mirror.
I don’t have those insights yet. But one thing I do know is that, every time you’ve entrusted me with details about your family, it feels as though you’re celebrating your memories.
You enshrine your lore. We edit ours, and when they’re still not up to scratch, we erase them. Carrot and stick, remember?
So I’m going to do the only thing I can think of to do. I’m going to hide out in this room and I’m going to spill our secrets. I’m going to enshrine them, and I’m going to sign and seal them with the Voss stamp. They’ll be as legally verifiable as every fucking payoff and NDA we’ve ever issued.
Then I’ll entrust them to you to do with as you want.
I’m putting myself in your hands. And it might be the most reckless thing I’ve ever done, but it’s the only place I want to be.
More tomorrow, my darling.
Yours always,
Sinclair