Chapter 26 #2
“What are you doing here? Nobody told me you were coming. The other one was already here today. Why are you… dressed like that?”
Nonetheless, Natsuko moved out of the way when Sarah shouldered her way into the large house up in the hills.
“I need to see him for a few minutes, okay?” She spared the future Mrs. Moreau a heated look from over her shoulder.
“I’m leaving town. Not sure how long I’m going to be gone.
Starting a new life, you know? I have a few loose ends I need to tie up. ”
Natsuko slowly closed the door behind her.
Even so, bright springtime sunlight shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the front gardens of this little hideaway Russell Moreau had done nothing to deserve.
“He’s in the salon upstairs. I’ll give you fifteen minutes.
His bodyguard will be right outside the door.
I’ll let him know how long you’ve got. Then you need to leave. ”
Sarah nodded. As if she understood.
Russell’s wheelchair was pointed toward the window, his slumped-over body as vacant and frustratingly silent as it had been since he had his major stroke several months ago.
Sarah spared the bodyguard on duty a glance and went inside.
The bodyguard stared at her blond wig – and her ass, because damn if her ass didn’t look great in that outfit.
He’s probably thinking that his boss was a lucky man to tap this. Sarah wouldn’t disagree.
She left the door ajar before approaching the man who tried to ruin her life. Every step she took shook the beads around her wrist, a constant, audible reminder that not everything was okay, even on this beautiful day.
Could a man look any more pathetic, though?
The only way Sarah knew he acknowledged her presence was from the way his eyes moved.
He was basically a quadriplegic at this point in his life.
The karma stick had smashed him so hard that Sarah should have been content that he got his after everything that he had done.
But he was still alive, wasn’t he?
The whispers around the office and the Moreaus’ homes were that this was worse than death for him.
The eugenicist who ruined women’s lives and condemned his own children to death had to suffer, powerless, watching the only child he allowed to live marry a commoner.
Russell made so many disparaging remarks about Alicia’s brother and his health issues.
Sarah had to hear most of them, unfortunately.
What had he found so unsavory about her genes?
Was it the middle-class background? The British genes?
Did he look at Nigel’s nose and decide that thing was never coming close to the Moreau gene pool?
Was it the rumors – that he fueled – saying incest was common between the twins?
Did he simply not want to deal with a bastard child at this point in his life?
What nobody could understand, however, was how willingly he pushed the only Matsuda heir on his daughter before agreeing to marry her for himself.
It turned out that Natsuko couldn’t have children after all – something she and Sarah shared, although for different reasons – but Russell hadn’t known that before his stroke.
But… she was Japanese! Asian! A purist like him couldn’t possibly be okay with a non-white woman entering the family. So what gave?
Sarah knew. It had never been about race.
With Russell Moreau, it was about class, money, and family history.
The Matsudas had controlled half of Osaka’s technological sphere for the past hundred years.
The family was older than the Moreaus. They had so much money that not even he could say no to that fusion of family assets.
He was still a racist, though. And a misogynist. He probably thought that he could control Natsuko Matsuda because she was an Asian woman.
What he never anticipated was a woman who knew what she was about – and had a father who held no qualms about his daughter achieving her own level of fame Stateside.
For fuck’s sake, Natsuko had a Japanese boyfriend she still regularly saw, and would continue to see after the wedding.
Marrying the old man was a formality to get both families a mountain of money.
Russell Moreau had lost his dignity. His family.
His grip on the world and the throbbing heartbeat of his business.
This man had killed his own grandmother so he could get control of Moreau Industries at a ridiculously young age.
To watch his daughter do as she willed with it?
With a woman brought in from the other side of the tracks?
While his dutiful, submissive Japanese wife told him to fuck off and rode another man into the sunset?
That should’ve been enough. Fate had decided Russell had finally gone too far and clobbered him until all he could do was watch the rest of his life go by so slowly that he would one day die of sheer boredom.
It wasn’t enough for Sarah, though.
She stood beside him, hands behind her back as she gazed upon the evergreen trees and birds flitting from one branch to the next.
A marble-colored cat with hair so long it looked like a pillow kept a careful eye on a squirrel.
Eventually, it scratched its chin and sauntered off, tail swaying back and forth behind it.
Russell’s amber eyes were bright and alert when Sarah looked into them again. He may not be able to tell her how he felt about her presence, but she could sense it.
She discomforted him. Alicia made him feel such anger that he couldn’t stand to exist, but Sarah? Every time she came over, his discomfort was palpable enough to choke the room.
“Remember me?” she asked. “I look a bit different, don’t I?
What do you think?” Sarah fingered a strand of fake blond hair.
“Think I look better as a blond? The clothes aren’t that different from what you’re used to.
Remember the first time we did it? I was wearing a dress similar to this.
Night of a gala. Don’t remember which one, though.
” They all ran together in the end, especially when Sarah’s job was to mind her bosses and not have fun.
She was paid to dress up and act professional.
That night in the windy Chicago winter, she had been the only one to accompany Danica and her father to that gala. Nigel was too sick to leave their apartment. The perfect opportunity for Russell to approach Sarah late at night and ask her to come back to his suite for some “late-night habits.”
Sarah knew it wasn’t love. She knew it was nothing but convenient sex. He didn’t even think she was that beautiful. He certainly never called her beautiful. It was all about his pleasure, his dominance.
Why or why had she gone along with it?
Desperation.
“Remember when I told you that I was pregnant?” Sarah’s fingers wrapped around the handle of his wheelchair.
Didn’t take long to turn off the brake and spin the monster around.
The wheelchair was of such high quality that it didn’t make a single sound, even though Sarah had been far from gentle.
“Remember when you told me to come up for some drinks?” Her voice dropped to a hideous whisper as she braced her hands near his and kept her teeth only a few inches away from his wrinkled nose.
“Remember when you drugged me and made your old bodyguard give me the ol’ Miscarriage Special? Huh? Do you remember?”
His expression did not change. Of course it didn’t.
It couldn’t. This man had a team of male and female nurses who bathed him, fed him, changed his diaper, and moved him around the house based on where they felt like sticking him.
The only agency he had was through blink once for yes and twice for no!
He blinked once.
Sarah’s grip on his hand rests intensified. The expression beneath her plainly read, “Do whatever you want. Kill me, for all I care.”
How easy would it be? To smother this man until he could no longer breathe?
To slit his throat with her pocketknife?
To put a bullet in his head, like he hired someone to put a bullet in Alicia’s head the moment he heard she was pregnant?
This man hired a freak to light his ex-wife on fire because she dared to seek custody of her son.
Nobody would miss him. Natsuko might be pissed she didn’t have the chance to marry him yet, but nobody would miss him. Not even Danica. Sarah was one of the few who had a front row seat to that dying illusion.
“I only want to ask you one thing, Russell.” No, she wasn’t going to ask him why.
She knew why. That was a waste of the one question she got to ask before the bodyguard peeked in and saw the volatile situation unfolding.
While nobody would miss Russell, they would likewise not be pleased to deal with a murderer.
“Were you there when he did that to me? Or were you such a coward that you left the room while your goon beat the shit out of me and killed our son?”
He didn’t blink at all.
Sarah shoved his chair back with a frustrated grunt.
Russell rolled back a few inches before coming to a sudden stop.
Stupid fucking expensive wheelchairs. The automatic brake must have kicked in.
Why? Was it too much to ask for his chair to simply tip over and cave his head in? Better than he deserved, honestly.
“Fuck you, Russell.”