But even as she’d thought there was nowhere left to go but up, Camilla appeared at the mouth of her office, her gaze a little frantic.
“Claire McDonall is here to see you.”
No, it seemed her day could certainly go from bad to worse, and it wasn’t even noon yet. “Did she say why?”
“Apparently she heard about the article you were writing on the hotels, and she thought it might be worth having her perspective as well, considering that’s how they’ve always done it in the past.”
Or rather, she wanted to know everything Karina did.
The thought wouldn’t have bothered her as much if Claire had sent someone on her behalf—that would have made this ruse more plausible—but the fact she had come in person, considering how they’d parted ways some days earlier, that was a little telling.
But no matter how she felt about her and her sudden, suspiciously timed appearance, Karina also knew she needed the other side of whatever this was between Claire and Hugh, even if she couldn’t ask outright.
It wasn’t enough to just take Hugh’s word—not when she knew how biased a person could be, especially during a disagreement—she would have to get the other side without tipping her hand.
The smart thing would have been to reschedule, to set a date and time when she would have her questions ready and knew how best to tackle what she was really after, but curiosity got the best of her as she stood.
“I’ll see her,” she said with a nod, reassuring herself as much as she reassured her editor.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Camilla asked, voice barely above a whisper.
No, she wasn’t.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do it anyway.
Sensing her decision, Camilla stepped out, her role as boss instead of concerned friend washing over her as she gestured to someone Karina couldn’t see, but she wasn’t standing there long before she caught sight of the woman in question and the army of suits trailing behind her.
It was certainly easy to see the allure behind the woman with her flawless skin, radiant smile, and impeccable fashion sense, and since she’d graduated from one of the top three universities in the country with a degree in business finance, she fit the mold.
But there was also a hint of something simmering beneath the surface.
Something she was careful never to let anyone see.
But Karina wasn’t anyone, and she knew what to look for.
“Miss Ashworth, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” Claire said with a tempered smile, making it abundantly clear she didn’t believe a single word she said.
“Lovely to meet you—officially, I mean. Please,” Karina continued, gesturing to the pair of ornate chairs. “Can I get you anything?”
“Fiji water, if it’s no trouble.”
At least the request wasn’t too outlandish, though she was pretty sure the office didn’t actually carry anything other than a generic brand. But there wasn’t much she could do about that now.
Idling in the break room to figure out her plan of attack, Karina was interrupted by Samantha walking in, her brows up to her hairline as she met her gaze.
“Should I even ask how you managed that?”
Karina chuckled beneath her breath, finally pushing off the counter to open the small refrigerator in the corner. “I’m lucky, I guess?”
But even she wasn’t sure how or even why Claire was here, considering the way they had left things back at the hotel. To be fair, she was almost expecting the woman to be here to threaten her—wouldn’t be the first time someone came here to do it—but then again, she could have just as easily sent her lawyer to do it.
It was more than that.
“What are you working on?”
That … she still didn’t have an answer for. “I’ll let you know once I figure that out.”
She certainly hoped by the end of this meeting that she would—or that she would have the answer she was looking for about the woman and her husband and a problem she had yet to figure out.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. McDonall, we’re out of Fiji water, but I hope this will suffice,” Karina said, hoping the attempt she made at sounding sincere came through in her voice.
But from the way the woman side eyed the bottle even as she accepted it, Claire wasn’t happy about it.
Taking a moment as she circled around her desk, then slowly sat and rested back in the chair, she considered how she would proceed. She didn’t know Claire’s motives just yet—though she doubted they were anything good—she also knew she had to treat the particular interview delicately.
Most of the people she did stories on knew quite well why she was interviewing them, but only Claire was supposed to wonder why they were sitting across from one another. As far as she knew, Karina didn’t know about the impending divorce.
Or the dirty details surrounding it—though all of that was still rumor as far as Karina was concerned.
She had to proceed carefully without tipping her hand too much.
“What can I help you with, Mrs. McDonall?”
“If you’re going to be writing about my husband’s hotels and business, I thought I would come by and share some additional details.” Her smile grew an inch. “To add that special something, I think.”
It was a miracle that she managed to keep a straight face at that. “By all means.”
Claire set her purse aside before folding her hands on her lap and adopting a content expression. “Ask me whatever you’d like.”
“You married your husband right around the time he built his first hotel, isn’t that right?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“So you would say you understand his business and the hotels themselves?”
Her chin tilted up a fraction. “Absolutely. My husband enjoys my insights. We’ve made a great team.”
Karina scribbled that down before looking up. “Did you say you make a great team?”
The height of emotion usually made a person make their first mistake. This was also one of the things she’d been trained to look for in deception. If everything was as great as they proclaimed it to be, she wouldn’t have made the mistake of using the past tense when referring to their relationship.
Claire didn’t make the same mistake twice.
Besides the one misstep, she spoke not only highly of Hugh but about their relationship as well. And by the end, she had little more than she already did.
Except she did have a clearer picture of what she was dealing with here.
“Well, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Mrs. McDonall.”
Nearly to the second Karina reached over and pressed the button along the side of the recorder, Claire cleared her throat rather forcefully—that careful mask she’d been wearing for the entirety of their time together came crumbling down.
Karina hadn’t been foolishly enough to believe there hadn’t been an ulterior motive for their time here together, but she hadn’t expected her to reveal that fact quite so quickly.
“I was surprised to find you in my building the other day,” Claire said with a dainty smile as if they were old friends merely having a conversation.
“It was an impromptu visit,” she said, turning the pen around between her fingers.
“I thought perhaps you were looking into something with my hotels.”
Karina’s gaze cut to her, maintaining her own easy expression. “Why would you think that?”
“You’re an investigative journalist, aren’t you?” she asked, perfectly arched eyebrows raised high as if she were clueless about what she so clearly knew. “I remember the article you wrote on William Paxton. It was just a little surprising that the person who wrote an article on that would be writing a fluff piece about hotels.”
She wasn’t … wrong.
Even Karina would have wondered the same if she was in the other woman’s shoes.
“I’m merely the writer,” she answered simply. “I do what I’m told.
”
“By your boss, Camilla, no?” Claire asked with a little tilt of her head. “She is the editor here, isn’t she?”
Old friends, Camilla had said.
She couldn’t help but wonder just how old it really was if Claire seemed to know who she was.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. McDonall?”
Her lack of an answer seemed to put the woman in better spirits. “No, I believe I have everything I need.”
Karina was almost afraid she did.
Even with the day she’d had, Karina wasn’t at all tired as she arrived back at her apartment later that day.
And to her surprise, Uilleam was there, looking surprisingly comfortable on her sofa with his feet kicked up, his gaze on the row of televisions he’d insisted on having. She couldn’t figure out how he could make sense of anything with three different news stations on all reporting on different things, but it seemed to work for him just the same.
It was hard to associate the man she’d seen last night who had almost thrilled at the idea of torturing a man in front of a roomful of witnesses with the one currently wearing a plain white T-shirt and black sweats.
They were two opposites, so extreme that she wouldn’t have thought they could both possibly exist in the same man if she hadn’t been looking at him.
As one of the channels turned to commercials, he glanced back at her, his gaze scanning over her front as if to ensure she was in the same physical condition he’d last seen her.
“Taking a day off?” she asked, unable to hide her surprise at finding him there, not that she was complaining.
Most days, she thought he worked too hard.
“An easy one, at any case.”
She wished she could say the same.
“What’s their name?” he asked, his voice drawing her in.
“Who?”
“The person who’s put that frown on your face.”
She thought of explaining and telling him everything she knew. It would certainly make her feel better, but in the end, she thought better of it.
Forgetting about the last nine hours as she curled up with him on the couch, she let the day drift away.
16
Complicit
Karina had asked him once before how he found his clients, but she hadn’t believed him when he said they usually found him.
He couldn’t help but wonder what she would say if one saw him now, sitting alone in his office staring down at the unfamiliar number currently illuminating his screen.
He’d received enough calls from associates in Mexico to recognize the area code. And considering whoever it was had his personal number and he wasn’t merely returning a call, he figured whatever it was, it would hopefully be worth his time.
He considered for a moment whether he wanted to be bothered at all before he finally deigned to answer the call and put his mobile to his ear.
“Speak.”
A soft gasp sounded before a throat cleared delicately. “This is Carmen Santiago, and I want a meeting with the Kingmaker.”
She said her name as if he was supposed to know who was calling, but she was direct, and he appreciated the trait.
“Unless your net worth is in the high six figures, Miss Santiago, I don’t believe you can afford me.”
“Whatever you want,” she said quickly as if she’d known he’d been seconds from ending the call, and before she could even think to call again, her number would be blocked. “I’ll pay whatever your price is for a meeting.”
Sounded good enough for him.
“Very well. In the next five minutes, someone will call you with an account number. Wire two-hundred thousand dollars into it within the next two hours. If you do, I’ll see you the following Tuesday at the time of your choice. If you don’t ... well, I’m sure you already know what that will mean for you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, sounding far too grateful, though he hadn’t actually accepted a job from her quite yet.
They were all the same that way.
The phone call couldn’t have come at a better time—a mere hour before he was meant to tour the facility again. Very soon, the men who had ventured into this place would be accompanying him, putting their new skills to use.
But like before, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to this visit.
Uilleam was quite familiar with torture—far too intimately, in his opinion—and he couldn’t very well erase the knowledge that had imprinted itself on him since he was a child.
Which was why seeing it had no effect on him—at least when it came to the men standing on the other side of the glass, oblivious to his presence there. Not that it would have changed much if they did know.
If anything, they probably would have preferred someone not casually observing them in their weakened state.
But they didn’t know he didn’t find them weak in any way—that he rather admired their willingness to suffer if it meant the chance at something more. That they even proved stronger than some that even ventured within these four walls. He knew the process was grueling—that it could break even the strongest of men—and that it was nearly too much to ask a single person to withstand.
More than a few had walked away before it was all over, but the others … they withstood it all.
As Zachariah had said, he owed them for their resilience—for their willingness to suffer this process—to at least observe what they were willing to give up in his name. Even as it brought back painful memories.
His death hadn’t come soon enough.
The first crack of his ribs almost brought relief—to finally feel it snap beneath the force of his father’s booted foot—but on the heels of it came a nearly unbearable agony that made him wish he didn’t need to breathe since it felt as if the bone was going to puncture a lung.
“For once would you just leave him, Alexander,” Abigail snapped, her glare directed toward the back of her husband’s head.
She wasn’t tucked away within her rooms where she could pretend the violence Alexander inflicted upon everyone around him wasn’t happening. Where she could play innocent and venture out only afterward to bandage the wounds.
As much as Uilleam hated his father and the very air he breathed, he loved his mother just as much. It wasn’t rational, and more than once, he had wondered how he could possibly feel any affection for the woman who had never bothered to help him in any way against the fists of the man they both seemed to despise.
Yet it was there.
Thrumming away inside him.
Reminding him that he was all too human, considering he felt anything at all.
Even now, as he lay curled into a ball on the floor at his father’s feet, doing the best he could to protect his vital organs, he wanted to go to her. To protect her, even though Alexander, in all the years Uilleam had suffered, never raised a hand to her.
“The boy doesn’t know—”
“Whatever he doesn’t know,” she interrupted, her stare turning flat, “won’t make a difference if he’s not alive to learn it.”
For a long while, Alexander merely stared at him, silently demanding she back down from this and leave it alone, but for once, his mother stood her ground. She remained standing there with her delicate hands balanced on her hips.
Finally, blessedly, his father took a step back, his arms falling to his sides.
Uilleam didn’t have time to feel relief, nor did he completely trust that the lesson was over until he watched his father through his one good eye as he headed out of the room and his footsteps disappeared in the distance.
Only then did he finally sag in relief, letting the pain radiate through all of him. Finally acknowledging that every breath he drew in hurt like fucking nothing else, and he would feel this for days on.
It was a miracle he was still conscious, considering the beating he’d taken, but Alexander had learned rather quickly to avoid hitting him in the head, considering the size of the man’s fists could put a m
an out with one punch.
And there was no lesson to be learned when you weren’t awake to receive it.
“I wonder why I ever bothered to marry that man,” Abigail mumbled, though loud enough for Uilleam to hear.
He liked to imagine she didn’t have a choice—that an arrangement of some sort had forced her to wed a man like Alexander.
“We could leave,” he offered quietly, hesitantly—surprised he had even voiced the thought aloud, knowing his father was still within the house.
And in his current state, he wouldn’t very well be able to fend him off let alone his mother if Alexander chose to turn his wrath on her.
More than that, he knew how his father would respond. He’d seen the ramifications after his brother had walked out those front doors without looking back.
If Uilleam chose to leave, he doubted his father would react rationally to that idea.
“He just forgets himself,” Abigail said carefully, gingerly dabbing at his bloodied lip with the cloth in her hand. “With work being as it is, he forgot about the dinner we’re hosting.”
Uilleam’s head had grown fuzzy somewhere in there—as if someone had stuffed his ears full of cotton—but as much as he wanted to believe his clouded mind was playing tricks on him, he couldn’t help but think he’d heard correctly.
That those words had actually fallen from her lips, and she believed every word of it.
“A party ...?” he said before resolving into a coughing fit, praying he would pass out at any point with the way his chest felt, but unfortunately, he remained awake and aware of everything around him. “You’re concerned that I won’t look presentable for your stupid fucking party?”
Abigail tsked beneath her breath, swatting his arm as if he’d been the one to say something outlandish. “If you would stop angering your father, he wouldn’t respond the way he does, Uilleam. You’re starting to remind me of that brother of yours,” she said disdainfully as if that was the worst person in the world for him to imitate.
White Rabbit Page 20
