by Julia Derek
Something about his placating tone made me restrain myself enough to hear him out further. I relaxed my fists that I had balled up at the sight of him.
“I saw you storming out of our building a few minutes later,” he continued. “You jogged right past me, looking like you wanted to kill someone. You didn’t see me, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” I muttered, confused now. What was going on?
“I decided to go after you,” Steve said, reading my mind. “It looked like you were up to something bad. I thought I should make sure you didn’t do something you regretted.” He let out a light, fake-sounding chuckle. “I just barely managed to catch the same train as you. You move so damn fast!”
A fresh wave of pain shot through my head then, and I was convinced he was just pulling my leg. Why had I let down my guard even for one second? This guy could not be trusted.
“How much is she paying you?” I hissed at him. I wasn’t about to fall for whatever he was trying to do, trying to make me think. Instead, I wanted him to confess what a snake he was.
He frowned deeply. “Who? Wait… You don’t think I’m working for your mother, do you?” He pressed a hand to his chest for emphasis.
“I know you’re working for my mother,” I retorted, balling my fists again, edging toward him. “Cut the crap, Steve. Is that even your real name? Huh?”
“How do you know I’m working for your mother, Shane? Please explain. Because I don’t work for your mom. Tell me, how do you know?” The words rushed out of his mouth and he looked more terrified than ever of me.
His question took me by surprise. I realized that I couldn’t answer it. I was just assuming he was because it made sense. Then I remembered Sophie’s recent phone call and how she had been kidnapped by Ariel’s men. Steve was the one who’d convinced me Sophie was just an illusion…
I glared at him. “Sophie called me from Philly. She told me about how she had been abducted and driven across the country. She needs my help. Why did you tell me she just existed in my mind? Huh?”
I raised an arm, ready to punch him. He took a couple of steps back, raising his hands to cover his face.
45
“She doesn’t exist, Shane. Check your phone for the number she called you from. If it’s not there, you’ll know I’m not lying to you. Please check your phone.” The words came out of Steve, faster than ever and his face had paled.
Holding his gaze, I reached for my phone that I kept in my jeans pocket. He was such a snake… I brought the phone to my eyes, swiped open the screen and quickly scrolled through the most recent call log. My eyes alternated between Steve and the phone. I spotted the number from Jersey then. There was one incoming and another outgoing call with that number. After that, the Philly number that Sophie had used should appear. But I couldn’t see it. Staring at my phone, I kept frenetically searching for it. Where the hell was it? Maybe she had called from somewhere else. Maybe I was remembering wrong. My head hurt and I felt increasingly confused. It was hard to focus. Steeling myself, I kept trying, though.
“It’s not there, is it?” Steve asked softly.
I didn’t answer, just kept searching. I had heard her so clearly… The number had to be here somewhere. But the only other number I could see was for Laslo’s. I had called the restaurant the night before to check on my schedule. That was it.
“You must have experienced another hallucination, Shane,” Steve continued. “You’re clearly already prone to them. Now that you got knocked out, it triggered another. Trust me, Sophie really, really doesn’t exist. I’m not lying to you. I swear. Please believe me.”
I stopped moving then and my eyes went back to my phone. But that man with the Jersey number had called. It was right there, in my call log. Twice. How could he have called and not Sophie? How would he know she was abducted?
I thought hard, my head screaming with pain. Why couldn’t I figure out what was going on? Wait… Maybe… Could this have to do with Mom? Yes, it could, couldn’t it? Mom knew Sophie wasn’t real. She had used that knowledge, goaded me to accuse her of having done something to Sophie. She had wanted me to lash out at her in front of Ariel. She had wanted to turn Ariel against me.
I closed my eyes, burying my face in my hands as this other explanation, one that was far more credible for all that was going on, grew inside me.
Oh God, Mom must have something to do with the man who’d called me. If there were mics in my apartment, she could easily have heard me talk to Sophie on the phone, using it against me, trying to turn me against Ariel by making me think he was a sex trafficker. Of course that’s what’s really happening… Oh God. Mom must have hoped I would jump Ariel when I saw him today, and she had been right. If Steve hadn’t shown up, I would have been all over Ariel the moment he got here.
I sank down to my haunches, cradling my skull with my hands. Oh God, that was what she was trying to do. Trying to make me attack Ariel, kill him out of fury…
I had been so close to doing it. So close…
“Shane,” Steve whispered. “Are you okay? We have company.”
Slowly, I removed my hands from my head and looked up. Next to Steve stood Ariel, gazing at me with an unreadable expression.
“What’s going on here?” the Israeli wondered, looking from me to Steve, and then back again.
“A lot of things,” Steve said to Ariel. “How about we go have some coffee somewhere and we’ll try to explain?”
We went to a small coffee shop a few blocks away from the warehouse. Ariel and Shane wanted me to go to the ER, but I told them there was no way I’d go there before I had gotten a chance to talk to Ariel first. Reveal to him the truth about the woman he was married to. With Steve’s help, a very normal-looking and acting dude, I felt confident I would be able to make him believe the outrageous story I was about to tell him.
I made sure he was seated before I started. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to digest what he was about to hear, never mind an old man with a potentially weak heart.
Much to my surprise, he didn’t protest or interrupt me even once as I told him. He just remained there, silently taking in everything.
“She also has this journal in which she writes down and rates all her murders,” I told Ariel when I was done.
“A journal?” he asked, gazing at me with sad eyes. “Is it blue and made of leather?”
Steve and I exchanged a look.
“Yes,” I answered. “It is. How did you know?”
Ariel leaned downward and reached for his briefcase that he had placed on the floor. He put it beside him on the padded bench he sat on and opened it. Sticking his hand deep into the briefcase, he pulled out an old, blue, leather-bound journal with a lock on it. Steve and I both stared at it. That had to be Mom’s journal.
But why did Ariel have it?
I asked him just that.
He sighed. “Our maid found it when she was cleaning Jen’s office yesterday. It was under one of the sofas there. She thought that maybe Jen had misplaced it, so she wanted to make sure I got it to guard for her. Jen was out shopping, so she gave it to me. I know I was not supposed to read anything inside it, but I needed to know. I had seen her write in it, and every time I asked her about it she had acted so secretive about it. I wanted to know if she was hiding something from me. She’s gone so much that I have begun to wonder if she’s seeing someone. So I opened the lock and read some of what was inside. I was very shocked. I didn’t know if it was true or not. Now I know.”
He put the journal on the table between our coffee cups, his entire being slouching like a wilted bush. Despite what Mom had done to me, I still couldn’t fathom what Ariel must be going through in that moment. I had never been in love with her. I didn’t share a child with her.
He inhaled and exhaled deeply. “We must go to the police. You can tell your story and I’ll give them the journal. She must be arrested. Outside of the house. I don’t want police in my house. Not in front of my daughter. She needs to be pr
otected as much as possible from all this.”
I nodded. “Yes. Who do you think called me?”
Ariel threw out his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe her lover? She has written about her lover, how they get together to have sex. I’m sure he would be happy to help her. So he could get his hands on all my money and Jen.”
“You’re probably right about that,” I said, wondering who Mom’s secret lover could be. I had a feeling I would soon find out.
46
Jennifer
I had been done with my mani-slash-pedi for a while now and was back home. Ariel never ended up calling me from the warehouse, which bothered me. By now, he and Shane had definitely seen each other. I had really expected him to call me, and for it to happen around the time I walked home from the salon. Jordan had texted me periodically, so I knew that everything had gone according to plan. At least that’s what Jordan had told me, but I doubted he would go against me in any way. He loved me too much to lie. He had driven Ariel to the warehouse, using one of our town cars instead of the limo, and gotten him the coffee spiked with the drug. He had watched Ariel drink several sips of the drink in the rearview mirror before they had taken off again. Enough to weaken his heart temporarily.
They had reached the warehouse a few minutes late, but that didn’t seem to have posed a problem; the drug’s effect would last for about an hour. When they had arrived, Jordan had let out Ariel in front of the entrance to the warehouse, then driven around the block to find somewhere to park. He was supposed to wait for Ariel in the car until the old man returned.
I had just received a text from him telling me that he was still waiting.
That meant Ariel had been in the studio with Shane for almost thirty minutes.
I texted Jordan, telling him he needed to go check what was going on. If we were lucky, he would stumble onto a dead Ariel on the ground in the empty studio. There would be no reason for Shane to have stayed. As mad as he was with Ariel, I didn’t think he would try to resuscitate him but that he instead would have gotten the hell out of there. Hope that no one had seen him go into the warehouse in the first place. Unfortunately for him, there were security cameras in the warehouse, so he was definitely toast. I could be wrong, though. The kid did the stupidest things sometimes. Maybe he had tried to save Ariel. Maybe he was still trying.
I would soon find out. Jordan had just texted me, telling me he was heading over to the warehouse to see what was going on.
I was hiding out in my office, pretending to be writing. Neera was home and demanding attention. She was not about to get any from me. Not today. Today I was so tense that it would be nearly impossible for me not to strangle the child. I would for sure slap her to make her shut up, and I could obviously not do that. Her nanny would have a fit.
Pacing the big space, I checked the phone in my hand over and over, willing it to sound with a text from Jordan telling me that he had found Ariel dead.
It took almost three minutes before the phone finally sounded with an incoming text.
Stopping dead in my tracks, I brought the phone to my eyes and saw that it was from Jordan:
There’s no one here. I looked everywhere.
No one there? I gritted my teeth. That did not sound good. Where the hell were they? Did they end up going somewhere else? But why would they do that? I didn’t think Ariel would suggest another place, nor that Shane would agree to go with him somewhere. Not before he had confronted the old man at least.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. Fuck. Where were they? I texted Jordan to keep looking for them. They had to be somewhere close.
He replied and said he would. I began pacing again, my heart beating faster than normal. I could feel cool pearls of sweat form along my hairline. I didn’t often get nervous, but I was right now. I really, really didn’t like this.
When two more minutes had passed and I had yet to hear from Jordan, I called him myself.
He picked up on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“Do you see them somewhere? What’s going on?”
“No. They aren’t anywhere. Not anywhere on this block. They must’ve gone somewhere else.”
“I don’t get it. If they left the warehouse, wouldn’t you have seen them leave?”
“No. Not from where I was parked. I couldn’t find a parking spot near the entrance.”
I closed my eyes, livid. Fucking moron. “You should’ve left the car and positioned yourself somewhere where you could see them, Jordan.” I didn’t gain anything from continuing to chide him, however, so I forced myself to calm down. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as I was assuming. The worst thing that could have happened was that Shane hadn’t confronted Ariel, at least not to the degree I had counted on, and that Ariel was still alive.
Maybe Shane had never made it to the warehouse. Yes, that seemed most likely. But why then hadn’t Ariel returned to the car?
“Did Ariel tell you that he had to do something else in Astoria?” I asked Jordan.
“No.”
“Well, that must be what’s going on. Shane never made it to the warehouse for some reason and Ariel decided to do something else. He used to live there many years ago. Maybe he felt like taking a walk. It’s nice outside.”
If he had felt like taking a walk, he wouldn’t have bothered to tell Jordan. He would have just done it.
“You know what,” I said. “Go back to the car and wait there. In the meantime, I’ll call Ariel. If he’s out doing something, he should pick up. I’ll figure out an excuse for my call.”
We disconnected and I dialed Ariel’s number. The rings went through until voicemail picked up. I left a message, asking Ariel to call me back as soon as he heard it.
I began to pace again, thinking about the different reasons that existed for Ariel not taking the call. Maybe he hadn’t heard the ringing. Maybe he was on the other line. Maybe he had simply picked up too late.
I spent another minute thinking of different reasons when my phone began to ring. I stared at the lit screen.
Ariel.
Clearing my throat, I pressed the Talk button:
“Hello?”
“Jen. I saw you called. I never listened to the message. What was it?”
“I just wanted to see where you would like to dine tonight. So I could call and make a reservation. I feel like going out tonight.”
“Oh. Pick whatever you like. I can eat anything. It’s most important that you’re happy, darling.”
I forced myself to smile. “That’s so sweet of you, honey. Okay, I’ll try Daniel’s then. How did things go with Shane?”
“They went well. He’s here with me. We’re still talking. He’s a good boy.”
I felt myself having gone stiff. They went well. He’s here with me. We’re still talking. He’s a good boy. How the hell had that happened? Well, it didn’t matter. There was nothing I could say or do about it but act happy for them.
“That’s great, honey! I told you he was a good boy deep inside. I’m so happy you guys are getting along. When will you be home?”
“I need to do a couple of errands on the way back. I think in two hours.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then. If you want, ask Shane if he wants to join us for dinner.”
“I don’t think it’s time for that yet.”
“Well, say hi from me at least. Tell him I love him.”
“Will do. Love you, Jen.”
“Love you more.”
We disconnected the call and I went over to one of the sofas in my office where I took a seat. I needed to process this new development. It sure wasn’t what I had expected, but I supposed it could have been worse. Shane could have managed to convince Ariel I had gotten him in jail. That I was the person who had killed the two people he had been convicted of killing.
I huffed. Not that my stupid son would ever be able to pull off something like that. It wasn’t like he had any proof. Ariel would never believe him. He loved me, worshipped the ground I walked on. Of cou
rse, it hadn’t sounded like Shane had even tried.
Muting my two phones, I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. I might as well take a nap until Ariel was back. I could use it after all the stress he and Shane had put me through today.
47
When I woke up again, the sun had disappeared from the sky, which was a potpourri of pinks, purples and orange.
I reached for my main phone that I had placed beside me on the soft carpet to check the time. That’s when I noticed that I had a few missed calls from Jordan on the burner phone I used for him. Frowning, I pressed the voicemail button to see if he had bothered to leave a message. He had. As I waited for the message to play, I noted that it was almost eight in the evening. Wow, I must have been really tired, sleeping for so long.
“Why aren’t you picking up?” Jordan’s recorded voice said. “Pick up the damn phone. Something’s wrong. I’m walking on the street and I can see them sitting in a café. Ariel, your son, and some other guy. Shane does not look pissed at all. Ariel and he are looking in this big blue book. Call me back as soon as you hear this.” The message was over.
I was suddenly wide awake. Big blue book… I jumped off the sofa and went on all fours, running my hand under the sofas. I had hidden the journal under one of them until I could think of another, better place to put it. It was nowhere to be found.
I went hot and cold at the same time. It could only mean one thing—Ariel had somehow gotten his hands on it. Had he been in my office, snooping around? No, he would never dare. Then who had been in here?
The maid… Oh God, the maid came to clean on Fridays, including my office. I had been out shopping all day yesterday. Well, part of the day I had spent in a hotel room with Jordan, pleasuring me. She must have found it and given it to Ariel, who must have opened it.
