Page 38 of The Count
My driver cut through the traffic easily. I wanted to get in and out and back to Mercy. She’d likely be pissed off if she saw I’d left her there alone. There were things Fernand and I needed to discuss, which she didn’t need to hear.
After he parked, I sent him off with the promise to text when I needed to go home. I didn’t know how difficult he would make things for me if he stayed.
I should have been nervous. In a moment, I’d slip the persona I’d taken up after I got out of prison and show him the true face of his attacker. In doing so, I’d finally confront the man responsible for twenty years of utter torture. The man who ripped away the dreams Mercy and I shared. He had so much to account for.
I walked in easily. He didn’t lock the door behind him. Safe house 101. I closed the door softly at my back and clicked both the door knob lock and the deadbolt into place. Privacy was an important commodity.
I surveyed the landscape. Everything appeared normal until my gaze snagged over a young man splayed across a velvet couch. Safe houses came with fuck boys now?
The small man caught sight of me and froze. “Are you playing tonight too?” He asked.
I wanted to say the look in his eye was fear, but I couldn’t entirely be sure. “No. And you better leave. It’s safer that way.”
He didn’t ask questions. The man gathered his clothes and headed for the back. Another door, I noted as it slammed and echoed.
Cursing came from a small corridor to my right. I waited. Fernand came out screaming for, I assumed, the man who just walked out. After a moment, he realized the other man left and someone else had replaced him.
“Mr. Lord. I wasn’t expecting you. And might I inquire how you got this address?”
I took off my coat and lay it across the couch. Then I loosened my bowtie, ripped it out of the collar, and then put my jacket on top of the pile. “We need to have chat, Fernand.”
He didn’t step forward. I took a seat on the couch and gestured at the other one across from me. “You can sit down of your own volition or I can drag you over and restrain you. Your choice.”
Smart man took the seat. He crossed his legs and started to launch in about his charity work.
I held up my hand. “No. Let’s save us both some time. There are a few facts to get straight and I need your help.”
“Of course, Mr. Lord. For one of our best donors, anything.” He spoke as if he weren’t wearing plastic shorts, a lace robe, and a gun holster against his rib cage. The consummate business man.
“First. My name isn’t Wilmore Lord. My name is Edmond Dantes.”
The act slid off his features like rain on a windshield. “Wh—.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get to that.”
He didn’t let me keep speaking. Instead, he crossed the room and sat next to me on the couch. As a cautious man, I tended to keep distance between me and anyone who wanted to crush my skull with their bare hands. To each their own, I guess.
“Eddy,” he whispered, and reached out for my face.
I leaned away and pushed his hands back. No doubt the disgust was written for her to see.
He sagged back and I said, “no. This look,” I circled my face with my finger. “Has nothing to do with your obvious sexual preferences. This look is because you are a bastard piece of shit who should be dismembered and fed to ravenous lions.”
He blinked a few times and studied me. “I don’t know what is going on.”
“I want to know why you told Mercedes I was dead.”
That hit the mark. He jerked back and then immediately started to unravel. “Look…I…you know…”
“Stop. Answer the question, or things will get messy here.”
When he sagged back into the couch I knew I had him. “You have to understand I loved you.” He sat up. “Love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“Bullshit. You might have loved me then. Fine. But I don’t buy for a second you love me now. You don’t know anything about me.” Despite my attempts not to, I slid down the couch away from the cloying scent of his floral perfume.
“I’m sorry. It was jealously. I knew you two loved each other. You always had. And then you were out of her life and I saw my shot.”
I exploded and flipped the table in front of me. It went flying across the room. “You selfish bastard. It wasn’t enough that you helped put me in jail, you had to make sure life there would be as miserable as possible.”
