Page 37 of The Count
“Just tell me.”
He swept me closer, and trailed his hands up and down the open back of the dress. “Good news and bad news. The good news, one man will be going away tonight, for good. The bad news, it’s your cousin Fernand.”
He didn’t appear to be particularly broken up about it. Neither was I, if I thought about it. After hearing that girl tell me what he did to her. What he’d been doing to other women like her, I wanted to claw his eyes out myself.
“I don’t consider that to be bad news.”
He released me and fixed his cufflinks. “He runs a charity to care for abused women and children. Tonight, we are going to bring our special friends and expose him for the fraud he is.”
She blinked a few times and dropped her gaze. Then nodded. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”
We said “disguise” at the same time. And then laughed together.
He cut his smile off when we stepped into the elevator and I mourned the loss of it. Something felt familiar and loving about it. Not that I’d seen it enough times to quantify it.
He held out his arm, led me to the car, and deposited me in safely. We rode in silence and I didn’t want to interrupt him. He seemed to be readying himself mentally for something. Which scared me in a way. What did a man like him need to prepare for? Fernand had always been a sniveling coward. Too chicken shit to come out, too stupid to take a real position in the family business. It was all too easy to push him out when I took over. As long as he had his diversions, he never bothered me. Now that I knew what that meant, I felt sick from the guilt of it.
The party poured out of the hotel when our car pulled up. Camera’s flashed, reporters called out to us, but we ignored everything until we were inside. Of the events he’d taken me to, his included, this was the most lavish. Apparently selling women had become big business for him. I forced myself not to curl my lip as I took it all in. This fuckwad was going down if I had to drag him to the police myself. And if that didn’t work, Taylor would get a call later tonight. Hell, maybe both.
We joined the crowd and I put a glass of champagne in his hand with a meaningful look. “How long?”
He leaned in and brushed some hair away wearing a fake smile. “Not long. I don’t intend to stay in this cesspit any longer than necessary. Right now, it’s the show, later it’s the fun.”
We sat at an empty table and surveyed the land. This felt better now that I’d been let in on the details. Or at least I thought I was on the inside.
I watched him too. He sat very stiff and still, a soft smile on his lips like he enjoyed the view of the dancers. It was an empty look, a mask, and I hated it now that I could easily recognize it.
Much the same way as the last party, it started with some older ladies whispering. They told their friends and soon they were buzzing. He pointed me toward a scene in the corner. An older man I didn’t recognize talked to one of them a little loudly. His words were quickly carried around the room and I knew he’d been hired by Will to spread the facts about the girls in our midst.
When they started to leave, the charity board gathered in another corner. The man motioned somewhere and quickly the girls rounded up and left, along with a few men who’d tailed them in. Most likely more of St. James’s men.
“This was fun. Like a spy operation.”
He didn’t smile though. His face was series as he watched Fernand slip quietly out a side exit. I headed toward the door but he pulled me back. “No. If he gets out of here it doesn’t matter. The police will get him soon enough. He won’t leave town without going home first. He has a lot of baggage to clean up before he can flee properly.”
We got into our own car and headed back to the apartment. I smoothed the silk on my legs. Would he let me take this one with me when I left?
The idea of me going home hit me. I’d forgotten. Between the kisses and the confessions, I’d forgotten how all of this started.
I faced the window so he wouldn’t spot the emotions flickering across my face while I wandered. What was wrong with me, I didn’t want to leave him? I enjoyed kissing him, and fighting him, and fucking him. I wanted more of it. But, once his plan finished, he wouldn’t need me anymore.
None of it made sense to me right now. If I tried to leave now would he stop me? Even if I didn’t want to go, a sense deep inside raged against the confines. Was it about the illusion of freedom, or the escape itself?
We pulled up at the apartment and I stayed quiet, still thinking, as we went upstairs.
He didn’t argue when I went straight into my room and closed the door. Space would help me think more clearly.
After a while though, the space started to close in on me, and I went in search of him. To talk things out? To decide what all this meant for me when he finished his work? I didn’t know.
I’d already stripped out of the dress. But I couldn’t bring myself to remove the slip. Without knocking, I ducked into his bedroom. Empty. The office gave me nothing as well.
We hadn’t been back long. Where could he have gone? And why the fuck did this pressure in my gut tell me I missed him?
Fifteen
Eddy
As I sat in the car riding to Fernand’s safe house, it hit me she’d never asked me why we were doing these things. Why did I have my sights set on these men? It was a train to follow later. Not one I could board now and see all the way to the end of the line.
