Sinfully Mastered: Naughty Nookie

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “So, she didn’t ruin you for other subs?”

  He snorts and the sound is infinitely reassuring. “Hell, no. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. I just thought she’d be loyal to me. If the situation had been reversed, I would have cared for her, or helped as best I could. She just dropped me like I was some repulsive monster. It didn’t help that nearly everybody close to me treated me like I was some kind of beast as well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d have to understand the way my family works to really know what I mean.”

  His dismissive statement causes me to tighten my grip. “I have all the time in the world, Nate.” And to learn about Nate, who he is and why, I do.

  “They’re perfectionists. Every last one of them. I’m from Naples, and in Florida, the Conroys are one of the local big names. My father runs iConroy conglomerate, mother heads up God knows how many charities and foundations. They’re clichés. As is every single member of my extended family. My parents love me. I know that. They’ve been good to me and even now, that hasn’t changed. But when it counted, they fell short.

  “When I got back to the States, I think my being an amputee hit them harder than it did me. For me, it was like someone bashing my head in with a brick. For them, they just couldn’t look past it. Like Natalia. Although they stuck around. Most of them. But I guess they’d have looked like bastards if they hadn’t.

  “When I was transferred from the hospital to my parents’ home, it was a nightmare. I just wanted out, but I couldn’t. Doctors were still calling at the house. I had physical therapy. I couldn’t just leave. And I remembered my great-uncle John. Mother’s uncle.

  “He was a Kelly, and he might have been a generation removed, but the only thing missing was the accent. He was Irish through and through. Called a spade, a spade. I only ever saw him at family events, and even then, we didn’t really talk to each other, but when we did speak, he was always friendly. Caustic about the bullshit hovering over those kinds of parties and I liked him for that.”

  “I didn’t know him all that well, but I know that’s the truth. He definitely wasn’t one to hold back. I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me he was your great-uncle before. Why keep it a secret?”

  Hearing the hurt in my words, he hugs me back and nuzzles his chin against my hair. “You have to understand, Marina. When I came out of hospital, I was at my lowest. I remembered my great-uncle. A fellow amputee. I remembered his death and all of his stuff coming to the house and being dumped in the attics. I remembered all the diaries.”

  “Diaries?”

  “Yeah. John had tons of them. He’d been writing them ever since the accident that took his leg. That’s why I read them. I wanted advice from someone like me, from a similar familial background. I needed his help, even though he was long gone.”

  “I can’t deny it; I’d like to read the diary that covered his last year,” I tell him, gently stroking his chest as I talk. “See what was going on in his head. Suicide isn’t exactly out of the ordinary here, we both know that. The circumstances always did seem so odd to me. I mean I was only a kid when he took his life, and my parents didn’t listen to me at the best of times. But no matter how often I said John didn’t seem to be the sort to just give in, they ignored me.”

  At my side, Nate stiffens and then, blowing out a breath, he disentangles himself from me and sits up. We’re still close, but now, we can look into each other’s faces. There’s something there, a hungry fire in need of dousing. It isn’t sexual.

  I frown at him and ask, “What is it?”

  “John didn’t commit suicide, Marina. He was murdered.”

  Staring up at him, a scowl mars my brow as I take in the seriousness of his statement: the severity of his tone and the topic as well. “How you can be certain?” I mutter, lifting myself so I’m leaning on an elbow. I’m not exactly humoring him, just waiting to hear more details.

  “His diaries. I read every single one of them. I won’t deny, there were times, when he was at his lowest and things looked bleak. Like you said, he wasn’t a quitter. It wasn’t in his nature, Marina.

  “He’d just finished this algorithm. He was happy. As big a bitch as Greta is, he liked her. I know he’d had a fall out with James and Alexei, but it didn’t seem to matter. His spirits were high.”

  His fervency is unnerving. I sit up, raise my knees and curl my arms about them. “This is why you’re here, right?”

  “No.” He shakes his head and places his hand on mine. “It’s why I came here. It’s not why I’m here now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t be dense. This place is everything John wrote about. I’ll never be John, never have his genius and the problems that come with it, but I’ve had problems of my own. Here, everyone’s on the same page as me. All my life, I felt like I was at the end of the book while the rest of the world was at the beginning. Blue Ridge changed that.

  “I came here looking for answers and I found peace and...you.”

  Despite myself, my cheeks flush and his chuckle has my lips twisting with embarrassment. “I don’t want you to lie to me anymore, Nate. I promised I wouldn’t lie to you, and I need that same promise to be returned.”

  “Of course. I haven’t kept anything else from you. Not on purpose, at any rate. There are things you don’t know about me, but that’s because of how our relationship started. Not because I’ve actively kept them a secret.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you believe me about John’s murder?”

  I wince at the word. Murder. If what Nate’s saying is true, someone at Blue Ridge is a murderer. If they haven’t left the commune between John’s death and now, or if they haven’t died, they’ll still be here. Living among us.

  The very idea is nauseating. My eyes dart away from the urgency in his, an urgency that is begging me to believe him even if what he’s talking about is so out there. It’s hard to believe that a murderer could be among us. But I knew John. Not very well, admittedly. Even as a kid, I could sense the weak members of the commune. I knew when one of them was close to the edge, and I’d have told my parents if I’d thought they’d believe me. Whenever anyone made an attempt at suicide, it came as no shock to me.

  There’s nothing spiritual about it. I have eyes, and I use them. I see what people can’t be bothered to look for, and John was not a man on the edge of suicide. He wasn’t despairing, depressed. He showed no signs of distress. Dim memories of that time recall him as being slightly out of it. We all knew John was absorbed by his work so there was nothing unusual there. But absorption and suicidal are two different things.

  Trusting my instincts, even though they were only those of a pre-teen kid, I look up at Nate and say, “I don’t want to believe it, but I do. I don’t know if you can even prove it; if we can bring the bastard to justice if John was murdered.”

  “Why do you think I was so happy last night when you found Greta here?”

  “You think she’s the murderer?”

  He snorts. “No. I think she’s the mastermind; she’s too clever to get her hands dirty. It’s either Alexei or James. Until last night, I’ve never managed to find anything out. Until you came back.”

  “Their behavior, their friendship...” I shake my head. “It all just felt weird to me. I can’t even describe the level of animosity between John, Alexei, and James back then.

  “I mean, it was the talk of the commune. Greta was trouble. Everyone knew that. She’d almost wrecked a few marriages, but my father had always waded in and settled things down. There was no settling down the hatred that just appeared overnight with those three.

  “I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire was an understatement. It was like that. But deadly serious.” My words convince me of the truth of Nate’s belief. “I could easily see one of them killing John. Especially because, I mean, I’m not one-hundred percent sure, I’d have to ask Uncle Sam, but John was brilliant. I’m talking at a l
evel that shocked most people here. While he was friends with Alexei and James, there was always rivalry. Do you think Greta was the motive? Or, I guess not, if you think she was behind it.”

  “I think they wanted it to look like Greta was the motive. But I think money was the key.” He raises his arm, the bionic one and taps it. “Before he died, John was working on an algorithm. He detailed all the calculations in his diary. That algorithm is listed in the patent for this mechanism. There’s no acknowledgment for him either.” He sucks in a breath. “Until you came back, I had no idea where to look. No one mentioned John. I’d expected that considering he’d died such a long time ago. But everyone was so close-mouthed, I almost gave up. I just fell deeper into the job and found a home for myself here.

  “Then, you mentioned how weird it was, all three of them being together after the animosity between the two men. I looked into their backgrounds, the patent and found they’d listed the algorithm.”

  “They stole his work?”

  He nods at me. “It works the trigger from my brain to the hand moving. That’s the only way I can describe it, and that’s extremely simplified. It does a lot more than that, and when John created it, he was ahead of his time by decades.

  “I think that’s why they’ve been holding out. Only recently, did we have the capabilities of using the algorithm to its full potential. I know from John’s diaries he wanted to publish it as soon as he completed it. He wouldn’t have patented it either. It would have been open source. The algorithm is priceless, and John would have given it away for free.”

  Tingles shoot up and down my legs as rage pummels me with iron fists. It’s almost painful, but I’m so mad, it’s hard to sit still. In the end, I leap off the bed and start to pace. I don’t care that I’m naked. I need to think.

  Money.

  They killed a brilliant man to get their greedy, grasping fingers on his work.

  This goes against everything Blue Ridge stands for. Everything I’ve been bred to protect. If Alexei, James, and Greta were behind John’s death, I will punish them. Even if I have to do so outside the arms of the law.

  Nate breaks into my bloodthirsty thoughts. “That’s why, when Greta was in here last night, I was so relieved. I knew the shit had hit the fan between the two of us, but don’t you see? She was here. Digging for dirt. I’ll bet she was looking for something to blackmail us with.”

  I snort at that. “She found it. Only thing is, if you’re not ashamed of your secret it holds no power over you.”

  He beams at me. “You took away her only viable source of protection. She wouldn’t have been in here if she wasn’t in this up to her eyeballs. Why look through my things? She doesn’t know I’m related to John. She has to be looking for something to hold over me, something to keep me quiet.”

  “I think you’re right. She’s just the type to resort to blackmail. By being here, she’s cast herself as the main suspect. Even if you don’t think she’s the one who actually ended John’s life for him.” I lift a hand, cup the back of my neck as my rage at Greta’s deceit permeates my very being. “We need a plan,” I rasp, my anger making itself known in my voice.

  “A plan?”

  I stop and frown at him. “Yeah. We need to catch those bastards. Because you’re right, Greta wouldn’t get her hands dirty. Either Alexei or James killed John.

  “That bionic arm...we’re looking at a Nobel prize in the making, Nate. Dead people can’t win Nobel prizes, but no one, least of all the Three Stooges, is going to get their greedy mits on it if John can’t.”

  And that was a promise.

  * * *

  The emotion on Nate’s face when I told him I believed him, that I believed John had been murdered, and that I was going to help get the man justice...it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. He sagged on the bed, muscles turning into limp spaghetti with the relief he felt.

  Minutes later, he told me his parents thought him a fool, told him John was on the brink of suicide for many years. They refused to help him, refused to believe in him. It was why he came to the ranch and sought the foreman’s job. And in all these years of working here, he’d never been so close to discovering the truth.

  We woke up earlier than usual, and I take advantage of the extra time. Between then and now, at ten AM, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve managed to get done. A plan formulated and very firmly in place. Thanks to friends who don’t mind me waking them up at God-awful hours, and who, regardless of the fact it was four AM on the West Coast when I first called, will immediately start analyzing text that will make most math professors’ eyes cross.

  It’s hard to sit here staring Greta in the eye, without the desire to smack her overrunning me. It’s always difficult. She has one of those annoying mouths. Constantly pouting, it’s in desperate need of a slap.

  Now I know what Nate’s been through, the torment he’s suffered in his great-uncle’s name, it makes me want to hurt her all the more.

  Torment sounds like I’m being a bit melodramatic. But I’m not. I’ve never seen Nate cry. Not once in the hospital as pain racked him, nor afterward when the infection in his wounds must have caused him agony. He’s strong, stoic. The silent type. But his eyes glistened, when he realized I believed him. They were wet, dewy with moisture.

  I gave him something this morning. Faith. Blind faith. I trust in him, trust in his analysis of John’s state of mind scribbled down in his diaries. I trust my own reading of the situation.

  Even as a kid, I was a watcher. Always monitoring the commune; mostly because I could never get involved. My position put me on the outside. It shouldn’t have. When I was a kid, really young, and my grandfather was alive, I was a part of the commune. Once my father took control, mother and he segregated themselves off, and I was shuffled to the outskirts of the ranch. I watched, saw, and witnessed what most didn’t realize. And I agree, even though the memories are old and hazy, John Kelly was not suicidal.

  And this woman, this—there is no other word but bitch—Greta is the reason behind a good man’s death. The world lost a jewel when John died. God knows what else he could have created had he not been taken away before his time.

  In my office, surrounded by too many stuffed animals—and I don’t mean teddy bears—I’m in control. She just doesn’t know it yet.

  “Why were you in my bedroom?” I ask her, knowing how she’ll reply but asking anyway.

  “I was there to clean.”

  “Ah, I didn’t realize the cleaning roster has people working while they should be in the mess enjoying dinner. I’ll have to see to the schedules and amend them. Although Nate did shoot out a memo, our quarters are out of bounds now. You mustn’t have received it though.” I eye her, studying the self-satisfied smirk that makes my insides crawl. “Were you involved in a deep clean?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her frown has me smiling pleasantly in reaction. “You must have dug down deep to have found those photos. Were they in need of a dust?”

  “No one was more surprised than I was when I came across those photos. When I saw John in them, I couldn’t help myself. I had to look through. He was a good friend of mine. You probably can’t remember John. He was a good man. Killed himself, you know? Those types; math geniuses, they get so caught up in their numbers, it’s hard for them to find a way out.

  “Suicide was on the cards for a long time. I did what I could, but...” She shrugs, throwing in a low sigh to try to convince me of her sadness. She’s as neat as a pin and is showing no other signs of discomfort.

  Sitting there in a twill pencil skirt with a cream blouse, she looks like a secretary. Me, in my jeans and ratty Tee, I look anything but the guardian of this great commune.

  “It wasn’t enough to save him? You shouldn’t blame yourself, Greta.” My brow creases in faux-sympathy. “We can only do what we can.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, Marina,” Greta replies, lifting a hand and patting it against her heart. “I’m touched. You do
understand I was only there to clean, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, why else would you be in my room? I thought about it last night and I was wrong to accuse you of anything.”

  “Well, it must have looked peculiar. My being in your room, looking through private photographs? I can only imagine what you thought. I had a breakthrough on something that has been bothering me at the lab. I worked through my cleaning shift and had to do my round when everyone was having dinner. I hoped you wouldn’t discover my little shift-around. After all, it is a break of the rules.”

  I smile at her, my eyes cold even if my lips move. Twice, yesterday, I smelled her shitty perfume around the house. Twice. She’s lying. I already knew that but she’s laying it on so thick I’d hate to disappoint her. The woman obviously thinks she’s a class A actress.

  “These things happen. But do remember, Greta, my room is now out of bounds.”

  “I understand. Is it okay for me to leave now?”

  “Actually, I could have come to you and told you I understood what happened yesterday evening. But then, I recalled some paperwork I was looking through a few days ago. I need to talk to you about it.”

  “Oh? Paperwork? Concerning what?”

  Again, I smile at her, trying to be as nonthreatening as possible, and say, “The patent filed for the bionics you’re working on.”

  “The patent?” She frowns at me, obviously not understanding why I am mentioning it.

  “I’m interested in this particular algorithm.” I lift up a copy of the patent request and show her the numbers I circled. “Remind me, Greta, James is involved with math but he’s a statistician, correct?”

  “You’ll have to ask him about his specialties.”

  “Yes, I will. To your knowledge, however, his subject is math but he deals with the collation of information?”

  “As far as I’m aware, yes.”