CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
What do you need? I tapped out quickly, and then I waited for her to reply … but it never came.
Time passed, I worked, and when I checked the clock and saw an hour and a half had gone by since she'd last texted me, I couldn't wait any longer.
Something was wrong. She needed me, and though I’d denied her touch before, I couldn’t deny her my help.
"I need to buy cigarettes," I called to Shawn, who was working in the office.
Then I hurried down the hall and toward the back door, knowing my mask was already in the hearse, waiting for my inevitable return.
***
I drove to Seint Manor in broad daylight for the first time, not knowing where else to go. The truth was, I wasn’t sure Analise went anywhere outside the estate’s massive grounds, and if she did, I wouldn’t know where to look.
Dean opened the door before I could climb out of the hearse.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, surprised and panicked.
I held up my burner phone. "Got a text. By the way, you want to tell me how Analise has my number?"
He fixed his jaw before dropping his gaze to the stone driveway. "I gave it to her. I told her only to use it in case of an emergency.”
That made me breathe a little easier, as I knew she hadn't gone snooping for anything in Gerald's office. But it didn't answer the question of why she had texted in the first place when she never had in all the years she’d known me.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Upstairs in her room," Dean answered, lifting his gaze back to mine.
I brushed past him to head inside when he grabbed my arm, holding me back.
"Sometimes, it's better to look the other way," he warned, his eyes full of sincerity.
“Is that what you do? Is that what you would do with your own girls?” I asked, my voice low and whispered, using the girls we had saved against him, the ones he and his wife were now raising as their own.
His lips pressed in a terse line as his eyes volleyed around the foyer, making sure nobody was listening, and then he muttered, “I do what I can to keep my head above water. Surely, you can understand that.”
Wrenching my arm from his grasp, I replied, "Not when it comes to her.”
And with that, I hurried inside and headed up the curved marble staircase.
In my years of involvement with the goings-on in Seint Manor, I had only been up here a handful of times, and the only room I'd ever been permitted to go into was Gerald's office.
I knew Analise's room was up here somewhere, but without ever having been there myself, I was forced to open several doors down the long hallway and peek inside, finding nothing but dark rooms and more secrets.
I didn’t know where Gerald or Virginia were, if they were somewhere inside the house or out conducting whatever crooked business they busied their days with.
They could be behind any of these doors.
I could walk in and unearth another one of their secrets, giving them another piece of blackmail to add to the accumulating mountain, but that was a risk I was willing to take now in order to find the woman who needed me.
But for once, luck was on my side as I went down the hallway, finally coming to a door with its edges illuminated with light.
I didn't know what awaited me on the other side. I didn't know what I'd see, what I'd have to do to stop whatever it was from happening. All I knew was, she needed me, and that was enough.
I pulled the handgun Gerald had provided me with from the waist of my pants and held it at the ready as I turned the doorknob and pushed the heavy wood open to step into an extraordinary bedroom fit for … well, a princess.
The room was clean and orderly. There appeared to be no sign of a struggle. I walked in slowly through a small seating area with a television, a sofa and chaise lounge, casting my gaze this way and that, surveying the grand suite with a wonderous, watchful eye.
Through an open doorway, I saw an enormous bed, complete with a canopy of fluttering fabrics of varying degrees of sheerness. I thought about my room back at the funeral home and the twin-size bed I slept in, even at thirty-five years old, and how horribly it paled in comparison to this.
"You came," said a small, fragile voice.
My attention was drawn again to the bed, where, hidden within the veils, Analise sat in the middle, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
From this distance, she looked okay, unharmed.
"You said you needed help," I answered, turning in a circle to take in the rest of the room and quickly realizing there was nobody else here.
We were alone, and as I approached the bed, I saw that my initial inspection had been correct.
She was fine.
"Did you lie to me, Analise?" I accused, tucking the gun back into my waistband and concealing it beneath my jacket.
"It wasn't a lie," she argued weakly without looking at me. "I did need someone."
"Dean is downstairs."
“I don’t want him,” she said, implying once again that she wanted me, as she shook her head and wiped her eyes, and it was only then that I realized she was crying.
My panic rose as I stepped toward the bed.
“What happened?” I asked with urgency.
“Benjamin proposed to me a few months ago,” she replied. “Did you know that?”
“I heard, yeah.”
Of course I had. Gerald had told me when it happened with an air of pride and excitement in his tone, though I couldn’t understand what stake he held in their marriage. Analise was only his stepdaughter, one he didn’t seem particularly invested in from what I could tell, and Benjamin was …
Well, he was still a bit of a mystery to me.
“My wedding is next week.”
“What?” This was news to me, and my heart sped with desperation I couldn’t do anything about.
“Yep,” she whispered, her voice choked by tears and sadness and unmistakable fear.
With their relationship being as drawn out as it was, I’d assumed their engagement would be as well.
But then again, with as insistent as these people seemed to be about her nuptials being finalized, I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
What the rush was exactly, I couldn't say, but none of it sat right with me—and that went beyond my feelings for her.
If I had a hard time stomaching the thought, I could only imagine how Analise felt.
"And you know what I keep thinking?" she asked, finally looking at me for the first time since I’d entered her room.
"What’s that, Princess?"
The nickname that had once made her disdainful now brought the smallest of smiles to her lips, and for half a second, I felt like I had won, while knowing that, in this situation, I was the biggest loser of all.
"If you had come into the picture sooner, would Gerry have insisted on us being married instead?”
I narrowed my eyes, shaking my head. "I don't know what you're talking about—"
"You are related to him, aren’t you?”
The question gave me pause as I lifted my chin and peered down at her, my tongue tied as she went on.
“I don't know what your relationship is to him, but I know he cares about you," she went on, as if to cover her own tracks.
"And he definitely favors you more than Benjamin, but he has …
less control over you for some reason. I don't know what that means or why, but Benjamin is … he's more of a puppet than you are.”
I couldn't help but laugh at the assumption she had about my relationship with Gerald Crowley and the control he had over my life. "If you truly believe I have any say over what happens in my life, then you know even less than you realize."
She turned her gaze onto me and tipped her head, resting her cheek onto her bent knee. "Then maybe that's what this is all about. Maybe he knows about your feelings—"
"Wait. Why would you think he'd want to pair us together?" I cut her off, now curious. "For what reason?"
She sniffled. "To continue his bloodline, I guess," she said. "And to ensure he, or at least someone in his family, is legally bound to this whole freakin' empire. And then, of course, there’s—"
"I’m sorry. What do you mean, to continue his bloodline?" I interrupted with the question, more confused than I had been before. "But Benjamin—"
"Is his nephew,” she finished for me.
The air left my lungs as I repeated, "Nephew?"
"Benjamin's father was Gerry's brother,” she answered, helping me to fill in the gaps. “Well, half-brother."
Benjamin is my cousin, I thought, suddenly desperate for a cigarette as I scrubbed my hands against my thighs and sat on the edge of the bed.
Gerald was arranging a marriage between his nephew and Virginia's daughter to ensure a spot within the family tree.
Is she right? If I had listened to him when he approached me when I was nineteen and taken him up on his offer, would he have insisted on me marrying her instead?
But no … no, that couldn’t be it. I shook my head at the thought. I had come into the picture years ago, before this engagement. If he had wanted us to get married, he could've put a stop to whatever arrangement he had with Benjamin.
"What happened to Benjamin's father?" I asked, not sure if it mattered or not.
"He was murdered," Analise replied matter-of-factly. "Shot in cold blood, right in front of Benjamin. He was thirteen at the time. Honestly, it’s very sad when you think about it.”
"Did they catch his killer?"
She shook her head. "No. Well, at least not that anybody is aware of. But supposedly, according to Benjamin, it was someone his dad was doing business with."
"What kind of business?"
She laughed without humor. "What do you think?"
"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it was something illegal."
"See, Doctor, I knew you were a smart guy," she replied, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I sighed, swinging my gaze around the room. She truly was a princess, I realized, taking in the lavish surroundings and realizing that, even if Gerald had wanted me to marry her, Virginia never would’ve approved.
I was trash in comparison, and what could I ever offer a woman who’d been brought up in such magnificent splendor?
But what does good ol’ Benny have to offer her that I can’t?