I struggled to focus.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this.” His voice stayed low as if afraid monsters would hear. “You need to believe this is real...just like you believed the breakup at school was real.”
I laughed coldly. “That was real. You broke up with me and never spoke to me again.”
He shook his head, his hair a wild, untamed mop. “I meant to apologise that night and fix us. But you never went home, and then...I couldn’t.” He cleared his throat. “But this is different. I won’t keep you in the dark like I did that day. I need you to know, so I have the strength to finish this.”
“If the breakup wasn’t real...but it ended up being true...why do you think this will be any different? You think by telling me you have a plan, it will stop me from getting killed?” My thoughts scrambled again, unable to stay cohesive. I swam in question-filled quicksand. “Wait...why did you break up with me if it wasn’t real? I don’t understand.”
His jaw worked. “It was for her. I thought she’d back off if she saw I was no longer into you.”
“Yet it only left you wide open to be pulled into her bed.”
He winced. “She knew I loved you regardless that I broke your heart. It was because I loved you that she managed to keep me on a leash.”
My eyes unfocused again. “That sounds like you’re blaming me.”
“Fuck no.” His hands shook, still holding up the black dot. “I know I’m to blame. For all of this. I know I’ve broken everything between us. I know you’ll never love me after—”
“I’ll be dead. How can I love you?” My tongue tried to slur, battling whatever thickness swam in my blood.
“You won’t be. I won’t let you die.” He once again shoved the dot into my vision. “This must stay secret. You can’t let him know this is on you. Act as terrified and as enraged as you were before.”
I couldn’t keep up with his tricks. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m going to paint you, deliver you, sacrifice you, but it was never my intention to abandon you. Not again. Never again.” He nudged my chin up with his knuckles. “I’ll be with you every step, O. I’m not leaving you.
“What do you mean?”
Bending, he very gently pulled the waistband of my lacy knickers until a small gap formed between lingerie and skin. Placing the black dot against my hip, he let the tightness hug it close.
It burned my flesh with iciness.
“That’s a GPS tracker. It’s synced to my phone.” His voice cracked again, a fresh tear trickled over thick eyelashes. “I love you, O. With all my goddamn heart. I can’t bear to risk you, but I also can’t leave Olive in his control. This is my last chance.” He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “He’s asked me to drop you off...painted in camouflage. I’ll do what he’s requested. He thinks that by taking you—by taking the only other person I love—it will make me far more obedient than I have been. But...what he doesn’t get is, this has pushed me to my limit.” His fists curled. “He can’t have you both. He can’t keep hurting those I love. This ends...tonight.”
The warehouse no longer acted like steel and concrete but liquid and air, loose and floating. My mind was drunk on fatigue. My tongue twisted into knots, making conversation harder. “Wha-What are you going to do?”
He tucked a curtain of hair behind my ear. I didn’t have the energy to swat him away. His lips caressed my cheek. “I’m going to kill him.”
My heart picked up a panicked beat, shooing away the sleepiness. “How?”
Gil let me go, turning to his paints and brushes. Placing more on the stage around me, his mouth remained grim and resolute. “I’ll follow where he takes you. He’ll take you to Olive. Once I know where she is, I’ll kill him.”
My mouth turned dry. There were so many holes in that plan. So many things that could go wrong. “What if...he doesn’t...” I blinked, fighting harder against the urge to snooze. “...take me to Olive?”
He dropped a glass jar holding sponges. It clanged on the stage, making both of us flinch. “He will.” His teeth sank into his bottom lip. “He has to.”
“What if he kills me first?”
“He won’t.”
“What if he kills us all?”
Gil unwound the hose for his airgun. “I won’t let that happen.”
My head was too heavy to hold up. I sagged forward, my spine rolling. “You might not have a choice.”
His warmth settled into me as he sat beside me on the stage. His arm wrapped around me in both comfort and threats. “Sleep now, O. It’s better that way.”
Dreams dragged me down. Dreams of darkness and torment.
A single green olive in a martini glass appeared in the blackness, crystal liquid sloshing with rainbows. A cocktail stick speared the olive.
It screamed.
“Wait...” My fingers grew claws as I fought back to the surface. “I need to know something.” A question danced out of reach, frolicking with sheep, begging to be counted. There was something about Olive that was important. Something about Olive that I didn’t understand.
Olive...
“Hush.” His lips pressed against my temple. “Don’t worry. Everything will be over soon.”
Tallup...
A blackboard with chalk.
A teacher with evil eyes.
Olive and Tallup.
A little girl in front of class.
A child who looked like our teacher.
His daughter!
“No!” I shot upright, blinking slow, my mind a black cloak of exhaustion. “Olive...she-she’s your daughter.”
Gil went statue stiff beside me, understanding the rabbit I chased. “O...don’t. Please don’t ask things I can’t answer.”
“Tallup raped you.”
He trembled. “Go to sleep now, I beg you.”
“Please tell me...” I forced my bowling ball of a head up, searching for his eyes. I met them. I held them. I knew. “Olive—”
“Don’t.” Gil’s entire face cracked and crumpled. The lines around his eyes deepened. The crags in his forehead shadowed. He looked as if I’d killed him just by guessing the biggest secret he’d been hiding. The only secret that mattered. “Don’t.”
Our gazes tangled.
His denial blazed against my unspoken conclusion but the truth burned brighter.
Sleep tried to claim me again. “Olive...she’s hers.”
Gil shuddered as if he begged for any other solution than my life as currency. Any way to stop me from figuring out what he’d kept hidden. His head hung. His breath caught. He was trapped. “Olive is hers. But she’s mine too. I named her...for you.”
Tears beyond my control rained heavy and hard down my cheeks. I was allowed to hate him. I was meant to curse his very existence. I had no trust where he was concerned. No obligation in any form.
Yet, I cried for him and for me.
I cried for both of us because it wasn’t fake breakups, molesting teachers, or blackmailing murderers who’d broken us.
It’d been the lies.
The tricks.
The shadows that’d always surrounded Gilbert Clark and the ones he retreated to rather than staying in the light with me.
No matter what happened.
No matter if I died tonight, he died, we all died, this had died.
Us.
There is no more us.
His arms wrapped me in a cage, his love imprisoning me.
I tried to stop crying. To put aside my grief and wake up.
But slowly, stealthily, finality crept over me.
My eyelids no longer opened.
My brain no longer operated.
My head lay on Gil’s shoulder, needing support.
He clutched me closer as the final dregs of energy siphoned out of me. He stroked my hair and kissed my ear as I gave in to the cloud of unconsciousness. “Hopefully, by the time you wake up...this will all be over. You’ll be free. You’ll never have to see me aga
in.” He angled my chin, his lips claiming mine.
I tried to pull back, to stop the kiss, to study his godforsaken eyes, but he caged me closer. He pulled heat and hunger from deep within, sending me into lullabies with his taste on my lips and his grief on my tongue. “I’m so sorry, O. So sorry for ever thinking I could make you happy. You deserve so much more. I love you. I love you with every fucking part of me, but I can’t stop this. At least sleep is a gift I can give you. The only thing I can give you.”
Voices were far away and not of my dream world as he lowered me down until I lay on the stage. My eyelids fluttered as he turned on the air compressor and the first lick of unwanted paint landed upon my skin.
But I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t fight.
Gil was an artist.
Art was his drug.
The creation of beauty helped him cope in the depths of his despair. He needed art to function, to survive.
And with his talent, he stole my function.
Brush by brush, he destroyed me.
Colour by colour, he sentenced me to die.
He snuffed out my survival.
He’d poisoned me so I’d sleep.
So I wouldn’t be awake when my purpose as his masterpiece was over.
Chapter Three
______________________________
Gil
-The Past-
“SO....”
I looked up from my untouched beer. My eyes met Justin Miller’s curious ones, and I wondered all over again what the fuck I was doing in a bar with him two weeks after the worst thing in my life had happened.
Olive had been taken from me.
Taken by someone I trusted.
I’d paid the first ransom.
The second had arrived this morning.
I’d been in my head, plotting and scheming, doing my best to figure out how to snatch Olive back when I’d bumped into my past on the street.
“So...” I gritted my teeth, tipping the pint to my lips and sipping wet froth.
Gross.
“This is random, huh?” Justin chuckled, glancing around the darkened pub that’d survived the days of witch trials, Saxon sieges, and sooty open fireplaces. The low ceilings made the dingy booths and low beams cocoon us like a cavern, while the stained glass windows refused to let twilight perk up the place.
The entire establishment matched my mood. My heart. My aching, useless soul.
I sipped again—despite my hatred of liquor—struggling to hold small talk when all I could think about was my daughter in the hands of my goddamn uncle. Why did I not see it coming? Why didn’t I do something before it was too fucking late?
Goddammit, Olive.
My chest spasmed as if a grenade had exploded and shrapnel dug into my insides, poisoning me, killing me.
How could I let this happen?
Sweet little Olive who’d I’d named after Olin. Adorable little Olive who’d named herself thanks to a children’s book I’d found on the bus in the first few weeks of parenthood. A dog-eared, well-loved edition of Popeye The Sailor Man.
I’d flicked through the pages, my heart aching at the images of Popeye in love with a feisty, perfect woman named Olive Oyl.
All he cared about was making her his.
Just like I’d done with O.
I’d read the tattered book to my nameless daughter as she’d cooed on my lap. She’d wriggled and blown bubbles each time I said Olive Oyl.
By the time the story was over, I knew what her name was.
Justin cleared his throat, dragging me back to the present. “So...are you a house painter or an artist...or something else?”
I scowled at my colour-stained hands. The clues of my trade. The signs of my failure. “Uh-huh.”
“What do you paint? Houses? Canvases?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I shrugged, my eyes trailing to the door and the street beyond. I had twenty-four hours to come up with the second payment. I had the cash. I had more than enough. Ever since I hit success with body painting, I’d squirrelled away every penny to pave a golden path for whatever Olive wanted to do when she was older.
Those funds had been for her college, travel, or passion dreams. Not to pay a fucking bastard not to kill her.
My mind once again lashed tight to my daughter. I couldn’t do much else these days apart from think about her, worry about her, stare at my goddamn ceiling at night and hate myself for failing her.
“Not very talkative, are you?” Justin chuckled, taking another sip. “How about we start with easy questions?”
I resented him for dragging me back. I hated this. I refused to live in this world where Olive wasn’t with me. I’d rather live in my memories where she was safe and happy.
My memories also held moments of another girl I’d loved.
O.
I growled under my breath.
Two loves of my life.
Both stolen.
“What did you get up to after school?” Justin asked, successfully breaking me from my past.
I forced myself to sit there, to give a generic answer of ex-schoolmates. “Nothing of interest.”
How could I tell him that I’d run from school and never graduated? That the weeks following my disappearance with a baby hadn’t been easy. That I’d managed to find a small studio apartment by paying cash and three months’ rent in advance—almost all my father’s ill-gotten money gone, just like that.
I spent the next week educating myself on how to feed, burb, clean, and soothe a newborn.
I kept her alive by some crazy miracle.
“Well, I went on to get my master’s in accounting. Loved math enough to make it my career.”
I grimaced. “Good for you.” I didn’t bother pretending to be interested in my beer. Alcohol repulsed me. The taste and smell were utterly repugnant after the beatings Dad gave me thanks to the violence found in a bottle.
“So...I’m going to say you’re an artist not a decorator. That fair to assume?”
“Assume away.”
“Okay then...how did you start making money with your art?”
I doubted the truth would be a good answer. To admit that while Olive slept, I painted. That I created a few original pieces, while others I copied previous masters, doing my best to have something worthwhile to sell on street corners for coins. Olive had rested in the satchel I’d stolen, and I’d swallowed my morals as I used her as a tool to open the wallets of dog walkers and women with their own children.
That was how I began.
But not how I became rich.
“Lucky break.”
“Yeah, I’d say.” Justin grinned. “You’re living the dream that most never get to achieve.”
I coughed on a morbid laugh. I stifled the urge to fucking cry. “Yep, living the dream. That’s me.”
The worst kind of nightmare.
Olive...I’ll figure this out.
Somehow.
My daughter had eclipsed everything in my life.
If something ever happened to her...
I’d die.
Plain and simple.
Her place in my life was absolute. She’d been the only reason I’d survived after walking away from O. If I didn’t have her, I would’ve slipped so deep and dark into the shadows, I wouldn’t have cared about anything.
She was the reason I was still functional as a human being.
Take her away for much longer and...I don’t know what I’ll become.
“When you left school suddenly, I figured you’d been given an opportunity you couldn’t refuse.” Justin clinked his beer glass to mine on the bar. “Scored a deal before even graduating, huh?”
My hands clung to my pint glass, squeezing to the point of pain.
Fuck, what am I doing?
I shouldn’t be here.
I should be at my warehouse painting another commission to keep idle hands busy and broken minds out of trouble.
Then why did you say yes to a beer?
I stiffened.
O.
O and Justin.
I need to know.
A crest of history and heartbreak crashed over me, and honesty that I could no longer hide spilled out in a snarl. “How’s Olin, Miller?”
His eyes widened, eyebrows shot up as he shifted uncomfortably on the barstool. I held his stare, not giving him any reprieve.
That was the reason I’d said yes to catching up for old time’s sake.
She was the reason.
The only fucking reason.
I’d lost Olive just like I’d lost O.
The pain of that was brutal...two bleeding wounds in one.
Turned out, I enjoyed torturing myself with unfixable things.
“Olin and I...” It was his turn to swill a mouthful of beer. He was older with weathered lines and age that no longer graced us with teenage youth, but his voice stayed genuine and truthful. “We broke up pretty much the week you vanished from school.”
I froze.
Questions roared for answers. I had no right to ask. She wasn’t mine. But all this time, I’d soothed my agony by convincing myself O was with a guy who would protect and love her—even if it wasn’t me. All the days and nights that I gave my all being a father to a kid who would never have the upbringing I did, I promised myself that Olin was better off without me.
That she was happy...with Justin.
“What happened?” I swallowed hard, fighting to get my voice into some semblance of calm.
Justin rounded his shoulders. “Well, eh, I knew she still had feelings for you. I mean...that was what drew me to her. To help her get over you.”
“Gee, you’re a real saint, Miller. A goddamn hero.”
He held up a hand. “Look, you knew what O was like. She was so sweet to everyone. So kind and helpful. She helped me once when I locked my keys, wallet, phone—all my shit basically—in my car. Everyone else had gone home, and I was stuck like an idiot. She called a locksmith and waited with me until he’d popped the lock. I offered to drive her home but she said you’d be waiting for her. That you’d make sure she was safe.” He whistled under his breath. “Even then, I knew she was head over heels for you. And she deserved to be happy. Not that I understood it. The sweetest girl in school with the meanest boy?” He drank again, rolling his eyes. “Didn’t get that at all. But we were friends, and I was there for her when you made her cry.” His gaze flashed bright blue. “I hated you for that by the way. Thought you were a right git.”
The Finished Masterpiece (Master of Trickery Book 3) Page 45
