Absorbing White

by Charlotte E Hart

  Alex reels back from the statement, and I watch his feet flounder beneath him as he keeps walking backwards. He looks over at Aiden’s body and shakes his head, tilting it as if he can’t work out what’s going on. His brother? He just killed his brother? Oh god, what must he be thinking? I go to move to him, but Pascal drags me back and pins me against him.

  “Leave this for him, my dear,” he says into my ear as he tightens his hold.

  “But he needs-”

  “To find his own peace, his way,” he cuts in firmly. So I just watch Alex as he continues backwards, his feet tripping over themselves as they go, stones tumbling and crashing around him as he bumps into them, until he eventually turns, and runs. The dust kicks off his feet, and all I can see is the outline of his form against the light coming from the exit, just his blackened frame powering away from yet another dark nightmare so he can escape it. Oh god. He just killed his brother.

  My eyes swing to Aiden’s body, and I have no idea what to do with it. I also have no idea what to do with the bastard now chuckling on the other side of the tunnel, but I can feel that fucking rage welling up inside me so quickly I can hardly control it. I wrench myself from Pascal and don’t even try to contain myself appropriately.

  “Is something funny?” I ask, arms waving and body ready to pounce again at any fucking minute.

  “No, my son is dead and the other has just run away from me. You’ll forgive me for not knowing the correct response, you fucking whore,” he replies, his tone suddenly full of menace and irritation, enough so that I actually stop my waving arms a little and gape. Who the hell does he think he is, calling me a whore, again?

  “Well, you just did that, didn’t you, you fucking arsehole? What did you expect? I can’t believe someone as disgusting as you even exists.” Oh, yes. Here it comes. It’s going to flow from the depths of me. Arsehole. “I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done. Should we kill him, Pascal? What a thought, ridding the planet of such a despicable human being. Or would it be better to just let you live with the fact that you are so despised that your own son runs from you rather than tainting his hands with your blood?”

  “I suggest you tone that-”

  “You suggest?” I’m actually getting closer to him in my fury, stalking him down, readying myself for the kill as my feet pull me towards him. “You are hardly in any position to suggest anything, are you? You have nothing here, nothing. He’s mine now, and if and when I choose to let you explain any further, I’ll let him come for you. He’s mine. Do you understand that, you waste of a fucking human?”

  “He needs to be with his father. He is my son,” he shouts as he moves towards me. I hear the foot falls of Pascal getting closer to me, ready to protect me at any given moment, so I continue into him and decide to have another go.

  “Oh my god, you are mad, aren’t you?” My arms are going again. “Of course you would have to be to have caused such pain to a child, but you really are insane. Do you think you have some rights over him? Some sort of power? You don’t. You are worthless to him, and I will spend the rest of my life ensuring he never thinks of you for a second longer than he needs to. He is mine. He is with me. Mine. Just turn around, walk back into that cave, fuck off, and then die somewhere before I let Pascal kill you.”

  That’s it. There is nothing more I have to say to the man. I land my hands on my hips and spit at him in disgust. It lands on his shirt, so I continue to stare him down and prove my utter superiority in all of this, regardless of his increasingly growing stature. He may be evil, dangerous and completely mad, but I have a gun pointed at his head, and a man who’s ready to use it. I also need to find the love of my life.

  He sneers at me and flicks his eyes over my shoulder. Pascal growls.

  “This isn’t the last he’ll hear from me. There are things he needs to understand,” he says as he turns from us, and heads back into the darkness. Yeah, I’m sure it’s not, but with any luck, we’ve just scared him enough to make him piss of for at least a while. “He is his father’s son, Elizabeth Scott. You’d do well to remember that,” he calls with a chuckle. I scowl at his back and snort in revulsion at his laughter. He is nothing like his father, and he will never hear any words of wisdom that infer anything of the sort. I just continue to snarl at him with my hands on my hips until my fury is enough that I pick up a stone and hurl it at his head to make him move quicker. It more than likely went nowhere near him, but that’s not the point. It’s the thought that counts. Arsehole.

  “My love, you are quite venomous,” Pascal says over my shoulder as I follow the retreating figure with my annoyed glare firmly in place. Something crashes into the wall, and I jump in response and turn to search for the threat, my arms out, ready to attack. The gun bounces to the floor near a pile of rocks.

  “We might still need that,” I snap at Pascal in irritation, still feeling feisty Beth ready to kick some Mafia butt. What’s he doing throwing it away?

  “Indeed. Regrettably, it is empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yes, thoroughly used, useless, quite ineffective. Thankfully, he was not aware of this fact,” he replies as he grabs my hand and walks us towards the light rather quickly.

  “Oh my god, did you just let me say all that when we had no protection?” He looks down at my feet and then at himself. That bastard could have killed us. He could have had a concealed weapon, or a knife, or he could have just beaten us to death.

  “What did I tell you about your shoes? Have you not learnt to run in them yet?”

  “I’m sorry. I was in the middle of trying to kill that bastard.”

  “Look at my suit. It is distressed, as am I. I may need a drink,” he says, brushing at it and reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a hipflask and I just stare at it in response as he offers it to me. “Drink, my love. I should carry you, yes?”

  Apparently, I don’t get a choice in that matter, because the moment I take the flask from him, he scoops me up and begins striding off again. I swig at the liquor inside, not giving a damn what it is, and offer it up to his lips as we move. He drinks liberally and then nods back at me again until we eventually reach the light. Is it daytime? I don’t even know what day it is. I have no clue how long we were in there.

  “What day is it?” I ask as we reach a black car.

  “New Year’s Day,” he says as he puts me down beside it and checks his watch. “4.30pm to be exact. We should get back. He will be in need of us when he returns.”

  “He’s been shot, Pascal. He has a bullet in his shoulder. What he needs is a hospital and medical care. I know he needed to get away, but you’d think he’d have some sense about his own wellbeing.”

  Shot. Michael was shot. Oh god, Michael is dead.

  “We have to find Michael. His body, I mean. We have to-”

  “We have already dealt with that,” he says as he waves a hand at the array of other cars near us. All of them have had their boots prised open.

  “Was he…?”

  “I am afraid so,” he says as he looks across the top of the car at me.

  I duck my head down with a sigh and slide into the front seat. It seems we haven’t all made it out of this alive. A good man died, for me. I look down at the blood-soaked tatters of my dress and try to imagine his face, his smiling face, and then his children’s faces assault me, looking at me and condemning me for putting him in any position where that might happen.

  “Do you have a jacket or something?” I mumble out. He pulls a long black coat from the back seat and drapes in across me, then starts the engine and reverses out at speed.

  “Sleep, my dear. You will need your rest,” he says as we drive across some kind of bridge.

  I stare out of the window at the quarry we appear to be in and watch the lack of any movement. It’s New Year’s Day. Happy New Year. What a sodding welcome to it.

  Where Alex is, I don’t know, and as we pull out onto the road, I wonder how he’s feeling, if he’s okay. I wish he’d st
ayed with me, just stayed and held onto me instead of running and letting himself fall into his father’s words. I could have helped him, wrapped my arms around him and let him cry, or let him shout at me, or even let him use me if he needed to. I don’t know; anything he needed really.

  “Are you not tired?” Pascal asks.

  “Tired? I’m exhausted. I’m also covered in blood, Michael’s dead, I’m thirsty, and concerned about Alex. The last thing I’m going to be able to do is sleep.”

  “Should I tell you a bedtime story while we drive?”

  “I’m hardly a little girl anymore, Pascal. Certainly not now,” I snort out in reply as I tuck my legs up beneath the coat and try to cover the sodden dress beneath it. The sight makes me feel sick, so much so that I suddenly throw the coat off and start ripping the fucking thing from my body. Every shred of it is torn and yanked until it’s just fragments in my hand. I throw them into the back and pull the coat back over me to cover me up again, although why I care about Pascal seeing me is beyond me. I twist around in the seat to look at him and collapse the side of my face into the headrest. “Do I remember you telling me you loved me?” He raises a brow and keeps his eyes forward.

  “Mmhmm, it was a moment of disadvantage. You were distressed,” he says, pulling at his bow tie until he can flick the button on his shirt open.

  “You mean you don’t?”

  “Let me tell my dastardly fairytale. My feelings are perhaps better understood that way. You will comprehend my adaptation of love more successfully after it. It is somewhat like your vision of Dracula.”

  I smile weakly at him as he pulls out a bottle of water from somewhere and hands it to me. I sip at it as he begins talking of Counts and castles, and of fathers and young girls. I listen as he tells me of mothers and their limitless power over men of moral obligation, and I nearly weep as he talks of the repercussions of his actions, and the guilt that, even now, continues to wear him down. Only a little, of course.

  It’s the first time he’s ever been so open, so brutally clear about who he is and where he comes from, and I can’t help but lap up every word like a puppy learning how to live, how to survive and conquer the world he lives in – that they both appear to live in. His every word is truthful, regardless of whether he believes I want to hear it or not, and he delivers his story with the oratory of a master wordsmith. I cry, I laugh, I swoon and I gasp at his story as he takes me away from Alex for a while and lets me find some sense in his story instead of my own. He just wraps me up in his European accent and allows me a brief respite from everything that’s happened so I can breathe and relax. And I couldn’t thank him more for it, or his transparency.

  We eventually pull to a stop somewhere and I snatch a look out of the window to see the door of Eden looking back at me.

  “Why are we here?”

  “He will come here,” he says in reply as he gazes at me with a small smile. “So, you have my beginning to my present day. There is only one other that knows the entirety, and he made me tell him the moment he collared me.”

  “Lucinda doesn’t know?”

  “She knows some, but not all. She is manipulative with her information.”

  “And Alex isn’t?” He chuckles and stares at me as he reaches out a hand for my cheek, then brushes his finger over my lips.

  “You are quite extraordinary, Elizabeth. Thank you for allowing this.”

  “Allowing what?”

  “The kiss yesterday. It was unnerving for both of you.” I search his eyes for anything to condemn him, or show me a lie or some kind of naughtiness that shouldn’t be here in the midst of this honesty, but there’s nothing. There’s only real love shining back at me from him that I normally see so little of, and for the first time, I think I feel completely comfortable in his presence, as if I could ask him anything and he’d tell me the truth.

  “There is nothing unnerving about being in love, Pascal. It is what it is, and will be what it is meant to be. We will find our own comfort in the how’s and why’s, I’m sure. But I doubt, in all reality, I allowed anything. You know he does what he wants.”

  “He would not have done this without your permission, Elizabeth. You still do not see that which is obvious, do you?”

  “Not really, no. Sometimes I think I do, and maybe one day I will, but I’m still confused most of the time. There’s a lot to understand about him, this world and you.”

  “Hmm,” he replies as he stares again and shows me those brightening green eyes with a genuine smile. He eventually opens the door and steps outside, and I watch him stretch his frame out. “Come, my dear,” he snaps, in his most Pascal voice, suddenly full of that normal devilish aggression that I adore so much. I giggle at his transformation and shrug myself into the coat to cover my near naked body. It appears his weakened state has disappeared again, and the man I know a little better is back, although, after that story, he’ll never be that version again to me. He can’t be. I know who he really is now, and I’ll never let that image go because that’s the only one I want.

  He’s precious to me.

  And it’s the one we’ll all need to make this work.

  Chapter 30

  Alexander

  F ucking noises. Noises, sounds and voices screamed at him, constantly rattling around and taunting him with their rallying cries of anger, of hate.

  Quiet. He needed to find the quiet. Eden.

  Just get to Eden.

  Traffic blocked him and taunted him all the way there. Children hung out of windows, laughing and joking with each other as they celebrated New Year’s Day. His own birthday. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, all on their special walks to bring in the new year, to make the day unique. He sneered at every single one of them and downed another scotch as the car slowly turned around the corner. He’d made it unique. He’d killed his own flesh and blood.

  He still couldn’t come to terms with that. His brother. It was always possible his dad had had affairs, but Aiden Phillips? They looked nothing like each other. It must be a lie, yet another thing to confuse him, or make the bastard feel like he was in control. What the fuck was Jacobs doing in that room? He was probably still in there, bleeding to death along with the other fucking idiots that tried to hurt his angel, tried to take her from him. He snarled at the thought and brought the bottle up to his lips again. Everything had been a lie. Henry, Jacobs, Aiden. And now Michael was dead, the one man he knew who was a decent father figure. Dead. Gone. Because of him.

  Guilt consumed him at the image of the man as he’d hauled him out of the boot and placed him carefully in the car of one of Pascal’s colleagues. He’d damn near ripped Pascal’s head off when he tried to touch him. He was probably just offering comfort, but it hadn’t been what was needed at the time, nor was it now. Not that kind of comfort anyway. That was reserved for his angel, for the woman who held all of him in the palm of her hand. Never had anyone protected him as she did. Never had he witnessed such a blind, vicious attack to protect something that was loved. It was akin to a wolf protecting its cubs, or a lioness her pride. Vicious, hateful, wild and uncontrolled. Beautiful and all-consuming.

  He’d been so engrossed in her assault for a few seconds that he’d forgotten where he was. He’d just watched her and relished the moment she dug her nails into his father’s eyes to cause as much damage as she possibly could. For him. She could have been killed, gang raped, sliced, and yet all she had been bothered about was saving him from another beating, or that fucking tie. He snarled at the image of the bastard touching her, thinking he had some sort of right to ever go near something as precious as her. She was a goddess compared to likes of him, a beacon of heaven shining over the darkness that lived in him, constantly trying to show him the light and prove his worthiness. Even when his father had delivered the information about Aiden, she had still been there, floating around in his head, stopping him from doing the one thing he so desperately needed to do. She probably thought he was scared, confused, bu
t the reality was he needed to kill the man.

  That’s why he’d run.

  He needed to rip the limbs from his body and then slam his head into the wall repeatedly until his skull crushed in on itself, until the madness in the bastard’s mind was nothing more than a slurry of liquid in his hand. He‘d run to be decent, to try and give her the emotion she required from him, to prove how much he loved her. He’d run before he killed out of sheer frustration.

  He pulled the car up opposite the black door and gazed at it while circling his shoulder around. He could feel the pain twisting inside his flesh, grating and reminding him he wasn’t as invincible as he’d previously thought. It was only a flesh wound, painful, but it wouldn’t do any real damage. He’d been stabbed more effectively than this, but it still fucking irritated him. Thankfully, the idiot that shot him was probably thinking far worse by now as he was pinned to the floor by a chair leg through his chest. He was another one of Jacob’s henchmen, another one that would die for their stupidity, slowly.

  The door of the building opened and a couple walked out. She was dressed in a long coat, probably covering what was beneath it, or possibly what wasn’t, and the man held her by the back of the neck, gently, protectively. It occurred to him how much decency there was in this lifestyle as he tilted his head at the couple. It would be an odd concept to many, he was sure, but it did have its rules and its obligations. It was essentially built on trust. Yes, there may be a few who walked outside the boundaries, himself included sometimes, Pascal always so, but the indecent mostly sought each other out for their needs. Most managed to find a pairing that was suitable. It was more realistic than the real world that he was currently sitting in, in reality. More fair, less judgemental. It was a family of sorts, a place to express oneself honestly, openly. That’s what Pascal had been teaching him all this time, to let himself go, to be anything he needed to be inside those walls, to give everything he had at those who would accept it, relish it, and worship him for it.