Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy)

by M. J. Lawless

“Daniel,” she began to say, “I realise it must have been a bad meeting...”

  Without allowing her to finish, he reached forward and placed a hand firmly on her neck, gripping her so that she couldn’t move. His own mouth came down to hers, hard. She had been speaking and the sudden motion bashed her lip against her teeth, causing her to feel a second of pain as the flesh split. She struggled to push him away, but he dropped his glass to the floor and with his hand now free grabbed hold of her arms, pushing them down while his other, a vice around the back of her neck, held her in place.

  “Daniel, please...” She was genuinely struggling now. She could smell the whisky on his breath, such an alien smell from him, and his hands were groping her breasts through her dress, bruising her. Once he let go and began to fumble with his trousers.

  “Please, Daniel, stop.” She was being too feeble. “Daniel!” she shouted. “Stop it!”

  This seemed to arouse him even more, and his hand now clutched at the front of her dress, pulling it up. He had been rougher before, but this was different. Before had been about her pleasures—now she was to be punished for the thieves and whores.

  “Braganza!” she almost shouted in his ears.

  The effect was electric. It had been so long since she had used her safe word that she had worried whether he would even remember what it meant. Yet she could see that his eyes had cleared almost immediately. Before they had been lost in some internal hell, but now he saw her fully—and then he looked down at himself, his trousers half-undone, the broken glass on the floor. When he raised his eyes back up to her, they were starting to fill with tears.

  Kris’s own breath was rising and falling. She wanted to touch him, to reach out to him, to take him and hold him, but something inside him was punishing him now and it was a fortress against her. She slowly reached out at last and her fingers came into contact with his chest—and he flinched away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Zipping up his flies, he turned on his heel and began to walk towards the door, picking up his jacket as he left.

  “Daniel!” she cried out after him. “Where are you going? Daniel! Fucking hell! What are you doing?”

  “I have to go to New York,” he called back to her. “Stay here. Enjoy it.” His words were bitter as he slammed the door behind him.

  She was going to run after him, but a mixture of pride, anger and fear held her back. This was the second time he had walked out on her. She was sure he would be back—that in the end this was nothing to do with her, but at this moment she wondered whether it was all worth it. Around her the luxury of the diamond suite was as nothing to her, and the faux prestige of Monaco was hateful. She glared at the matter that filled the room and wanted to spit, to rage and destroy it all.

  Instead, she took out her phone and dialled a number.

  “Don’t speak except when I tell you to,” she said. “There’s only one thing I want to know from you at the moment. How soon can we meet, and where?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As she left the Gare de Lyon station, Kris looked up at the large, gothic clock tower. It was just after midday and the train had made good time. She held onto her bag with the few clothes that she could carry, but the rest she had left in the hotel in Monaco. There had been no call from Daniel, which made her feel nervous as she had taken the long train ride from Marseilles to Paris. For the moment, however, she had to assume that he was fine. Beneath that assumption, there was a deepening fear that perhaps he had, indeed, just walked out on her: it would not have been the first time after all, but could this be the last?

  One voice was telling her to forget it—to forget him. As soon as it spoke, however, with all its rational qualifications and observations, she knew that she could not listen to it. Nonetheless, she was not going to chase after Daniel, not yet at least. There was something else she wanted to discover before that.

  She shivered as she stood on the pavement outside Gare de Lyon. It was far too cold for her Prada jacket and jeans, though at least she’d had the sense to put on a light sweater beneath the coat. And at least it wasn’t raining. She had flicked through weather reports on her phone. London was dull and full of showers; Lisbon, although much cooler now, at least was as bright and crisp as Monte Carlo.

  Pulling together her thoughts, girding them about her like armour for what she had to do, she looked at her phone again. She had not been able to bring herself to notify Maria that she was in Paris, though she had told her the time of the train she intended to catch. Nonetheless, she had stored the address she required, an office in Montparnasse. That suited her fine: she could take the overnight Sud-Express to Lisbon afterwards.

  She was considering looking for a taxi when a black sedan drew up to the kerb alongside her. One of the darkened windows lowered and she saw a familiar curl of blonde hair and dark sunglasses. For a second, Kris’s heart rose up to her mouth but then she pressed her lips together and adopted a steely expression. There was work to do here.

  The driver, a handsome young man of trim build and exquisitely uniformed, got out of the car and opened the door for Kris. She paused for a moment, her hand on the metal and glass, then she slid herself alongside Maria in the back seat. The smell of her perfume, rich and exotic, was as overpowering as always.

  “Thank you for coming,” Maria said.

  “There was no need for you to meet me here,” Kris replied. “I could have taken a taxi.”

  “I know, but I thought we could go somewhere else other than my offices. There is a restaurant here, a very good one. We can eat while we talk.”

  “I don’t intend to be here very long.” Kris was curt with Maria, not looking at her but instead staring at the back of the driver’s head through the glass. “I can catch the overnight train to Lisbon.”

  Although she had no desire to look at Maria, she could feel the woman becoming tense beside her. “That doesn’t leave us much time...” she began to say.

  “As I say, I don’t intend to be here for very long.”

  “Then why come all this way, and why by train?”

  Now Kris did turn to face Maria. The other woman was facing her, her hair tied up as it always was, her Chanel dress elegant and the top open to her narrow bust, the large sunglasses hiding most of her face but not her lip which, Kris noted with a certain wry pleasure, she was chewing slightly, an unconscious sign of her own anxiety.

  “The train gave me more time to think, more time to prepare. As for coming here, I need to look in your eyes when you give me your answers. I need to see them and know whether you’re telling the truth or not, which I won’t be able to do very well if you keep wearing those stupid sunglasses.” With this last comment she turned her head away and continued to gaze at the driver.

  “Very well,” Maria said quietly, and Kris felt her arms move as she took off the glasses. “What is it you want?” She leaned forward and tapped on the glass. “Over here will do, wait for us.”

  The driver opened the door for Kris first and then went to the other side of the car to do the same for Maria. As she slid her graceful legs from the car, stockinged calves ending in Louis Vuitton shoes, Kris was slightly surprised to feel nothing inside her. She had, at least, expected disgust if not desire, but her heart was cold to this woman now. Envy had been replaced with indifference.

  “I had a special meal planned,” Maria told her with an apologetic smile. “But something tells me you are not planning on eating—at least not with me.”

  Kris shook her head, a tight, precise motion. The car had stopped before a small café, and Maria led the way to a table, ordering coffees and water from the waiter. As she waved her hand, Kris noticed her gold and ruby ring again. Though she did not have on the earrings, the ring was a constant reminder of times past. Kris wished that she had not sold the sapphire necklace that Daniel had bought for her: sometimes the gift of freedom it had purchased her was too intangible. What she really wanted now was a display of strength: sapphires versus rubies.
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  “So,” she repeated. “What is it you want to know?”

  “First, how many times has Daniel contacted you since you left Lisbon.”

  Maria hesitated. “Twice.” Her eyes flickered down slightly, and Kris wondered if she was lying, but when she raised her head again and stared back at Kris the younger woman noticed something she had never seen before in those deep, green eyes, something pained and troubled.

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “Business, both times. Daniel had been very charming, the last time he took me for a meal in Lisbon, but...” Maria looked away as the waiter returned with their drinks, and her chest rose and fell swiftly a couple of times.

  “It was business,” she said again when the waiter had left, looking back at Kris once more and her eyes closed this time. “Nothing more than that.”

  Kris nodded slowly. “When we last spoke, you said that neither of us were there to talk about finance or law.”

  Maria laughed a little at this. “I remember,” she said. “There were more... pressing concerns for both of us.”

  “Well, this time I do want to talk about finance at least. Daniel met with someone in Monaco, a financier he said. Whatever the meeting was, whoever it was with, it didn’t go well, not well at all. Do you know who that person would be?”

  Maria shrugged. “I don’t know anyone in Monaco. We went there once, but it was purely to visit the casino.”

  Kris could not resist a shudder at that. “You know he lost between one and two million Euros there the day before yesterday?”

  At this, Maria gave a little smile. “For him, it was just loose change, I’m sure. He lives in a very different world to you and me.”

  “You seemed to imply when we last met that you were part of that same, lofty sphere, you being such a hotshot lawyer and all that.”

  Now the smile became more bitter, and there was something shining in those green eyes of hers. “Oh, I am among the best that money can buy,” she remarked, caustically. “But that’s the point, isn’t it. I’m still for sale, still... an employee. Daniel liked to think that he was becoming one of the masters of the universe. You and I, we are just atoms in orbit around him.”

  There may have been some truth to this, but Kris had no interest in philosophising with this French lawyer. Nevertheless, Maria had clearly not finished.

  “I was twenty-five years old. Daniel was not much older than me, but there was already a world of difference between us... in some things. I used to like to think how sophisticated I was, how much a woman of the world already. But I knew nothing—nothing. So what if occasionally I let a guy take me back there, it was as nothing compared to the things I did with Daniel, to what he did with me, to me.”

  “So now I’m just meant to feel sorry for you as the woman wronged, is that it?”

  Maria glared at Kris, her eyes angry but also hurt. “While you might not believe me, I was an innocent once. No more, no. Two years later I was used up and incapable of going back to being the happy housewife of some bourgeois banker, giving dinner parties to all his dull guests and fumbling with him beneath the sheets once in a week in the hope it will give us another mediocre child.”

  “No, you can’t do that. You’re a pervert, and that’s why you did what you did to me.”

  “Oh,” Maria’s eyes glittered at this and the corner of her mouth raised in an ironic smile. “So, you do remember.”

  “Yes. Bits. I can remember if I want. But I choose not to.” Kris’s voice was cold, emotionless.

  “But you were so willing. That was what surprised me, that was what... excited me.” Those green eyes, shining. “So, perhaps I have dreamed of being with Daniel, but nothing will come of that. But since that night... perhaps something will come of you.” As she spoke, her eyes fixed on Kris, hypnotising her a little, so Maria’s hand extended slowly across the table towards the younger woman’s hand. Once it touched, however, it was as though an electric shock had passed between them and Kris retracted her own hand immediately.

  “I’m not interested in that—not at all.” She was in a ruthless mood now and ignored the pained expression again on Maria’s face, assuming any of it was not faked. “I just want to ask you one question.”

  “Ask,” Maria said, her own tone of voice dulled now, hurt at the rejection of her own confession.

  “What state is Daniel’s business in?”

  This made Maria smirk, a sly smile replacing her hurt feelings. “Now we come to the truth, do we? Perhaps you’re not so very different from the rest of us after all. Worried your gold mine is starting to run dry?”

  “I don’t care about the money.”

  This made Maria scoff openly. “That’s what they all say. You wouldn’t look twice at Daniel if he wasn’t so rich.

  Kris thought of Comrie, of Daniel Logan scruffy, bearded, alone. That, however, was not for discussion with Maria—nor for anyone. “Just answer the question.”

  Maria sat back and placed her fingertips together beneath her chin. Her red lips were curled in a cruel smile and before answering she was scrutinising Kris, weighing her up with a legalistic mind.

  “He’s not going to run dry soon,” she said at last. “But Daniel swims with sharks—he is a shark. And do you know the secret about sharks?” As she asked this, she leaned forward, her voice dropping.

  Kris shook her head.

  “They have to always keep swimming, always feeding. If they stop, even for a moment—boom!” Maria had pushed herself backwards and slapped her hands together for dramatic effect. “The others close in for the kill.”

  Kris sat there, silently. “You’d like to see them close in, wouldn’t you?” she asked at last, slow realisation dawning now. “This isn’t about me, is it? None of this. It’s still all about him, and your revenge.”

  Maria frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but Kris was already standing, pulling her bag up and starting to walk towards the door. “Don’t get up,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’ve heard all I need to know.”

  She did not look back as she walked out into the street, but before the door slammed behind her she heard Maria shouting after her: “You’ll need to know more. You’ll need me—at the end!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The canvas was blank. It had been blank all morning and was unlikely to change soon.

  On the table, among the palettes, paints and oils was her phone. That was also, in its own way, as blank as the canvas. She had sent a message to Daniel, tried to call, but there was no reply. At least Maria now was leaving her alone. There had been messages on the train from Paris to Lisbon, but after the last she had finally blocked her. You’re just his whore. There have been plenty before, and there will be plenty after. Daniel Stone always takes what he wants.

  “And what do you want, Daniel?” she asked. The final day she had seen him she had been genuinely frightened of him—of him. That was something very different. It had happened once before, but since that day he had always been a rock to her: she was the one who faltered, who shimmered like sunlight on water when the clouds are passing overhead.

  It was the booze of course. But that, while explaining everything, explained nothing. She had never seen him drink—never. She understood why, of course: the driver who had killed his wife in a car crash had been over the limit, and from that day forth, so Daniel had told her, he avoided all alcohol. The death of Karen had been a trauma, certainly, the immediate cause of his decision, but Kris suspected there was more to it than that: Daniel Stone never wished to lose control.

  Other words of Maria’s came back to her, and she smiled wryly as she stared at the white fabric before her, brush resting in her hand. He’s a shark. And do you know the secret about sharks? They have to always keep swimming, always feeding. If they stop, even for a moment, the others close in for the kill.

  She could feel them circling him, closing in. But who were they? She suspected Felix, but there were doubtless many others, leviath
ans of whom she knew nothing. Not Maria. That made Kris smirk. Maria was a minnow, just like her.

  But perhaps that was the problem. She had led Daniel to some calmer place, to somewhere that tempted him to rest, to stop swimming. He may have been a rock to her, but she was a weakness to him.

  Was this it? She wondered. Had he realised his weakness? Was it really over now? Questions circled through her mind, distracting her, preventing her from concentrating. She imagined his hand on her shoulders, not harsh and cruel like the last time he had touched her, but warm, firm—disciplined, both for him and her.

  He had gone before, but she had soon learned that the departure was a test—as much one for him as it had been for her. Daniel Stone had constructed defences around him as worthy as his name, a fortress that no man—nor, more importantly, any woman—could penetrate. But she had not met him as Daniel Stone. There was always part of him that would be Daniel Logan to her, just as, she realised with some sadness, there was always part of her that was Karen to him.

  She was lost in her reveries, both phone and canvas resolutely blank, when there was a knock at the door to her apartment. Going to answer it, she was astonished to see Jorge standing there.

  “Jorge!” she exclaimed, not entirely sure how she felt about him being here in Alfama. His easygoing nature had reminded her in part of her father, but at the same time the fact that Maria had taken him into her confidence meant she was not sure whether to treat him as an ally or an enemy.

  “Senhora Avelar,” he said in Portuguese, not smiling but watching her with eyes that were not unkind. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but Senhor Stone sent me.”

  “Is there anything wrong? Has something happened?” A panic began to rise inside her. That was why he had not contacted her for so long.

  Jorge, however, shook his head. “No, Senhora. It’s just that he wishes you to come with me.”

  “Yes, of course! Let’s go.”

  “You should bring your passport, and some clothes—something warm.”