“It’s not like that.”
Daniel gave her a quizzical look.
“They don’t want money,” she explained, bracing herself.
“Then what do they want?”
Emma turned away from Daniel and dropped her chin to her chest. What they wanted was essentially priceless; they wanted her freedom, her name. How could she possibly explain to Daniel without him going crazy? Surely, he’d hate her father forever for this.
“Ems.” He reached across and stroked her arm. “It’s okay, you can tell me. What do they want?”
When Emma faced him, she had tears rolling down her pale cheeks.
“They want me,” she admitted in a small whisper.
“What?” Daniel looked at her in bewilderment. “What do you mean they want you?”
Emma sighed and looked down at her hands that rested in her lap.
“They... the... the guys that beat my dad up, they offered him a deal,” Emma said on the verge of tears.
“A deal that involves you,” Daniel sniped with disgust and smacked the steering wheel.
“Well... they said... they said they’d spare his life and write off his entire debt,” she said, shaking.
“On what condition?”
“On the condition that... I marry... the boss’s son, Nick.” Emma sniffed, her hands trembling.
Daniel was silent. The only sound in the car was the tense rise and fall of their chests as they each breathed heavily, causing the windows around them to fog over.
“Say something,” Emma pleaded after several minutes had slowly passed by.
Daniel could only grunt. He was incapable of words. He put his hands back on the wheel and held it so tight that his knuckles turned white.
“Daniel.” Emma was crying. Torrents of salty tears ran down her face.
“Emma.” He turned to her as he snapped her name. “Do you know how utterly ridiculous that sounds?”
“Yes! Of course I do!”
“What the hell is your father even thinking to entertain such a preposterous notion?”
“He’s thinking that he doesn’t want to die!” Emma defended, wiping some of the tears from her cheeks.
“Just when I thought that man couldn’t sink any lower.” Daniel shook his head in disbelief. “He gambled away his inheritance, his home, and now he’s even willing to settle debts with his daughter. He disgusts me.”
“It’s not like that!” Emma didn’t like to hear her father being talked about in such a way. A part of her knew that Daniel was right, but there was more to her father’s downfall than just blind selfishness. Her father was still grieving, and without her mother, he just didn’t know how to cope. Emma saw him as someone to pity, not hate.
“Then what is it like?” Daniel turned to her, his eyes glistening.
“He’s... he’s got no choice,” Emma said, stumbling over her words as her emotions began to overwhelm her. “He accepted money off the wrong people. Daniel, you should see how badly they’ve beaten him. He would never have entertained such a crazy notion unless he was certain of how far they’d go.”
“Why does this Nick want to marry you?” Daniel asked, his tone becoming cold.
Emma hesitated, knowing how much the answer would infuriate him.
“Well?” he pressed her for a response.
“His family wants access to the Delacourt name.”
“So they can access all the blue bloods,” Daniel said scornfully and narrowed his eyes. “Fucking lowlifes.”
“All I’ve got left is my name,” Emma admitted, placing her hand upon the fog-stained window. The parking lot beyond the glass was barely visible.
“I can’t let you do this, you know that, right?” Daniel’s jaw was set tight as he spoke.
“It’s not your choice to make,” Emma scolded him.
“The hell it isn’t,” Daniel roared. “You’re my girlfriend, for Christ’s sake. I’m not about to let you go and marry some mob boss’s son to save your scumbag dad.”
“Daniel, they will kill him if I don’t marry Nick. They’ll kill him.” Emma felt like she couldn’t reiterate the severity of the situation enough.
“How can you even consider such an archaic proposition?” he demanded. “You’re a beautiful, educated woman, and you’re willing to let your future be bartered away like it means nothing.”
“He’s my dad,” Emma whispered. “He’s all I’ve got left.”
“No, you’ve got me. Or maybe you forgot that.”
“Of course I didn’t forget. That’s why I’m so upset.”
They were yelling at one another. It was exactly the sort of reaction Emma had been hoping to avoid. She had enough on her mind without adding an argument with Daniel to the mix.
“He’s at rock bottom, Daniel. I have to help him.”
“By marrying some stranger? Are you listening to yourself?”
“Daniel, please try to understand—”
“How can I when you’re being completely unreasonable. What about our future? Did you ever think that we might want to get married one day?”
Emma’s tears intensified, causing lumps to catch in her throat as she sobbed. Of course one day she wanted to marry Daniel. Like most girls, she had dreamed of a fairy-tale wedding where she’d put on a pristine white dress and be escorted down the aisle by her father. But so much of her fairy tale had already gone wrong. Her mother wouldn’t be there at her wedding to calm her nerves or tell her how beautiful she looked. And now she was set to marry some stranger, not the man of her dreams. All she wanted to do at this moment was run away, find a hole somewhere and sit and cry. But she knew that wouldn’t change anything.
Daniel cracked a window in the car to disperse some of the fog and turned the key in the ignition, bringing the engine to life. Putting the car into drive, he prepared to leave the parking lot.
“I forbid you to do this,” he said as the car moved forward, and he turned the wheel. “I forbid it.”
“What?” Emma’s voice was hoarse.
“You’re not marrying that guy. You’re my girlfriend, and I won’t allow it. We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way.” Emma sniffed. “Besides, who are you to forbid it? You accuse me of believing in archaic propositions, and then you turn around and treat me like you own me. You don’t own me, Daniel, no one does. It’s entirely up to me who I marry and for what reasons. If I marry Nick in order to save my father, then that’s my choice.”
Daniel drove in stony silence, his eyes fixed solely upon the road ahead. Emma saw the tension in his jawline, the twitch beneath his right eye as he gripped the wheel with tense force.
“Just say something,” Emma pleaded, finding the silence unbearable.
“What the hell is there to say?” Daniel roared, but his eyes were still trained on the road ahead.
“At least tell me you understand.”
“Understand? How could I possibly understand? Emma, I love you. I’d never, not even for a second, consider marrying someone other than you.”
Emma felt subdued by Daniel’s admission. As their relationship was still new, they’d yet to discuss their bigger plans for their future together. She’d assumed that marriage would eventually happen for them, but she doubted that Daniel had thought that far ahead. She had been wrong.
Daniel continued to drive in silence. He never once looked across at Emma, his gaze remaining firmly on the road.
Looking out of the window, Emma watched the world whirl passed in a blur. She thought of her father, how terrible a beating he had already taken. He needed her. She would forsake her +own happiness to save his life. As hard as it was for him, she wished that Daniel could understand and potentially even support her decision. After all, he’d always been there for her in the past when things got rough.
Emma used to love driving at night. The way the streetlights glittered in the darkness appeared almost magical. Now, the night had lost its glimmer and appeared dense and oppressive.
She longed for the new day to come and cast new light upon her deepening problems. She wanted the day to end.
That morning Emma had been full of hope and optimism; as the day drew to its conclusion, those feelings had been completely squashed. Instead, she would be going to sleep fearful and depressed. Her life had turned on a dime, just as it had the day her mother was taken away from her. Just as she’d felt that day, she had a sense that nothing in her life would ever be the same again.
“I wish you’d talk to me.” Emma sighed as they drew closer to her home. At least Daniel was driving her home like a gentleman.
He was silent.
“He’s all I’ve got left, Danny. My dad needs me now; I can’t turn my back on him.”
No one ever called Daniel Danny. The nickname dated back to his early childhood, and he flinched when he heard it. Emma was blatantly drawing on it as a way to coax him into compliance, but it wouldn’t work. He was resolute in his stand against her decision.
“It doesn’t mean that things have to change between us.” Emma dared to touch his arm, but he swiftly moved out of her reach.
“How doesn’t it?” He finally spoke. When Emma failed to answer, he supplied an explanation of his own. “Would we carry on dating even though you’re married to a member of the mob? Will we see each other in secret, carrying out some illicit affair? Is that how little you think of me, Emma? That you’d marry someone else and maintain me as your bit on the side?”
“Daniel, please, I’ve got no choice.”
“Of course you have a choice,” Daniel yelled as he turned in to the estate where Emma and her father lived. “You always have a choice. Stop being a victim of circumstance and take control of your own life.”
Emma didn’t know what to say. Had Daniel always regarded her as a self-imposed victim of circumstance? Was he referring to the death of her beloved mother? It wasn’t a label she welcomed being put upon herself.
“I have to save my father,” Emma said. “Whatever the cost.”
The car ceased moving as Daniel parked at the gates that led up to Emma’s house.
“Just let me get the gates,” she said, placing her hand on the door handle.
“Don’t bother,” Daniel told her coldly. “I’ll just turn around here.”
“You’re not coming up?” She’d hoped their argument would have concluded by the time they arrived back at her house so that she could lead him up to her bedroom to conduct their own private celebration.
“I’m leaving,” Daniel replied, his voice devoid of emotion.
“But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Emma asked hopefully. “I mean, we’ve got that meeting to go over the business plan and finalize numbers.”
“I won’t be there.”
“What! Why?”
“Because I’m leaving.”
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Emma caught a sob in her throat and hiccupped awkwardly.
“I’m not going to stay here and be humiliated while you throw your life away for no reason. If you want to marry that guy, fine, but don’t expect me to stand by you.”
“So you’re leaving? What does that mean for us?” Tears were streaming down Emma’s cheeks. She kept telling herself that this couldn’t be happening, that she was merely misunderstanding what Daniel meant.
“How can you even ask me that?” Daniel demanded. “You’re planning on marrying another guy. That pretty much tells me all I need to know about where I stand with you.”
“But I’ve explained,” Emma said. “I have to marry him or else they’ll kill my father.”
“I’ve got money, Ems. I’d happily repay any debt he owed. But rather than come to me, you sell yourself instead. It sickens me.” His nostrils flared like a bull being shown a red flag. She could practically feel the heat of his anger radiating off him.
“They don’t want money, they want my name.” Emma was sobbing. “Please don’t do this, Daniel. Please don’t leave me.”
She hated to beg, driven to such a weak point, but she loved Daniel dearly. She couldn’t let him go. But she also couldn’t let her father die. Whichever decision she made, it was going to cost her someone she loved. She saw that now.
“Goodbye, Emma.” Daniel didn’t look at her as he put the car into reverse, preparing to leave.
“Daniel, no.” Emma wept. “Please...”
“I’m leaving, Emma,” Daniel stated again. “I’m leaving you. I’m leaving the company. I’m washing my hands of all of it. If you want to continue with this farce of marrying some stranger, then you’re doing it alone.”
“How can you do this?” Emma trembled as she spoke.
“Get out of the car,” Daniel ordered. His knuckles remained white as he gripped the steering wheel with fierce intensity.
“Danny—”
“Out!”
Emma saw the distant look in his eyes, the tight line of his jaw.
Emma couldn’t bear the pain. Just when she’d thought her day couldn’t get much worse, she was losing Daniel too. Why couldn’t he just understand that if she married Nick, it didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She just wanted so desperately to save her father.
“It won’t bring her back,” Daniel stated, his voice softening.
“What won’t?” Emma queried.
“Saving him from himself.”
Reluctantly, Emma got out of the car. With those parting words, Daniel gunned the engine and began to back down the driveway.
Standing on the gravel, she watched his sleek car maneuver back onto the road as she shivered in the cool night air. She kept hoping he’d look up at her, that she’d catch his eye and see in his gaze that he still loved her, that he was just hurting, but he didn’t look up once. His car pulled off into the night, and Emma looked on until his taillights turned a corner and were swallowed by the darkness.
Turning, Emma began to part the heavy, rusted gates leading to her crumbling home. She struggled beneath their weight but eventually opened them. There was a time when a press of the button would have swiftly made them swing apart. But that, like everything else, had broken and never been repaired.
Walking up the long driveway to her home, Emma wondered if she had become like the mansion, just a crumbling façade of something that could have once been great. She had let her father drag her down to his depths of self-destruction, despite her best efforts to avoid such a fate. If only her mother was still there to save them both. But she wasn’t. Emma had to fix it now.
Delacourt.
The name she’d hoped to pin her company to, but it had proved to be the name that would rob her of her freedom. How could her father be so foolish to accept money from the mob? Why had his pride always prevented him from approaching her wealthy friends for help?
Despite everything, her father was still a Delacourt. He didn’t want the wider world to know just how far he’d fallen.
“Oh, Mom, I need you,” Emma called into the unfeeling night, letting her plea be carried on the wind. She wished she could shake off the ghosts of her past and embrace her future, but she felt fated to forever be haunted by both her name and all that she had already lost.
EMMA REPEATEDLY TRIED to call Daniel, but all her calls kept being sent to voicemail.
“Daniel,” she pleaded to the electronic beep at the other end of the line, “Daniel, please pick up. Please talk to me.”
After her tenth failed attempt to talk to him, Emma threw her phone across her room in despair and buried her face in her pillows. She wept until they were soaked through. She’d thought that Daniel would understand her decision, support it even. How could she have been so foolish? What an idiot I am, she thought. Of course he wouldn’t stand by and watch her marry someone else. He loved her. How would she feel if their roles were reversed? Would she happily support him marrying another woman?
Emma wept. Her anguished sobs carried along the vast empty hallways of what had once been a happy home.
SEBASTIAN DELACOURT shuffled uneasily
down the corridor, unable to walk properly due to his wounds. He paused outside his daughter’s bedroom and heard the unmistakable sobs emanating from within. Sighing, he leaned against the wall. He wished he could walk in and comfort her. He wished he were the kind of father who’d know just what to say to take the pain away.
But Sebastian knew that he was the source of her pain. His own mistakes had made her weep so grievously. If only he was a better man. But he wasn’t. He listened to her sobbing and winced.
For a moment, he considered entering her bedroom. Maybe she wouldn’t welcome him being there, but at least she wouldn’t be alone. No one should cry alone; he knew that all too well. But if he went in, she’d smell the liquor on his breath, and she’d look up at him with those big disappointed eyes. It was those eyes that he had tried to drown out with Jack and gin. But nothing worked. No matter how numb he became, the pain was still there. The pain of disappointment, the pain of loneliness. His body was racked with pain long before the thugs who’d visited him that morning had laid a hand upon him.
A braver man, a bolder man, would accept the consequences of his actions, would welcome death at the hands of these thugs over giving them his daughter. Emma was all Sebastian had left, and he’d sold her like a slave at auction. The winning bid had been his own life.
“Dammit,” Sebastian muttered bitterly into the emptiness. He knew that if his beloved Miranda could see him now, she’d be destroyed. He’d let both her and Emma down, he knew that.
A lifetime of luxury had robbed Sebastian Delacourt of the skills he needed to see him through when times were tough. Everything had been so effortless for him growing up that when bad things happened, he didn’t know how to respond. He expected everyone else to fix his problems; he didn’t know how to own up to them himself. His father had not been the sort of man to apologize. Instead, he’d blamed other people for his own mistakes.
Emma continued to weep in her room, crying loudly. Sebastian recalled how his late wife, Miranda, couldn’t bear to hear their daughter cry. If Emma had been banished to her room for bad behavior, all she’d need to do was cry, and Miranda would eventually go in, box of tissues and apology in hand, eager to mend the bridges between them and return to the status quo.
Designing Emma (Volume 2) Page 3
