“ ‘She’s dead, and you killed her – you killed your father, and that killed her when she found out. If she remembered you at all, she didn’t think you were worth sticking around for, and I don’t blame her – what kind of ungodly monster kills his own parents, anyway?
“He saw fit to answer his own question by lifting me up again with his left fist, pinning me hard against the door, and then hammering his right fist into my ribs, again and again, punching and splintering bone until I couldn’t so much as remember what it felt like to breathe.
“It was like … Ashley, I must confess, my memory of that day starts to fade a bit at that point, because in between punches, he bounced my head off the door so many times, I started to see the strangest halos and flickering lights everywhere I looked, and the rest … well, I’m not entirely sure what the rest of it was like. I can only remember spots here and there.
“There was more screaming, I guess that came from me … I remember he clamped his fingers around my throat somewhere in there, then dropped me to the floor and laughed as I lay shuddering at his feet. I watched him stagger back toward his desk, and I thought in some vague way that maybe it was all over, that now I could die and be safe – I heard footsteps again, maybe in the hall, but it was like listening to a news report from some forgotten corner of the world that didn’t really exist … and things turned grey for a while.”
How long had I been crying? I didn’t know, but tears streamed down my face, soaking into Devon’s shirt as I clung to his side.
“Baby, please, you don’t have to remember. Let’s just forget about this, you don’t have to tell me anything more, just stop and we’ll –”
He ignored me and rambled on.
“There’s a not a great deal more that I do remember about that night. About the only thing I recall with any clarity was that after I spent some foggy amount of time on the floor, my uncle reappeared.
“I saw his legs looming over me. Then he grabbed my shirt with his left fist and lifted me up against the door once again, until he was staring at me eye to eye as I hung pinned against the mahogany panels of the door like a rag doll dangling from a hook. His right hand was concealed behind his back, but that seemed like a trivial detail.
“Voices came to me from some foreign part of reality – they seemed close, but the only voice that truly registered was my uncle’s.
“His face filled the world. Our noses touched, he was so close, and when his voice rumbled like the first faint tremors of an earthquake, I felt the spray of his spit on my skin.
“ ‘Your father is gone. Your simpering slut of a mother is gone. I’m here now. And do you know who I am?’
“I barely knew who I was at that point. My throat was swollen and raw from screaming and being choked, a hollow roaring pounded through my ears, and my vision was blurring, doubling and tripling my uncle’s image. I could just make out his bringing his hidden right arm out from behind his back, and he was holding … something in his right hand.
“It was the nameplate from his desk. I couldn’t see very well just then, but I knew it from previous visits to his home; I knew it was perhaps eighteen inches long and made of veined Italian marble, with a gleaming gold plate inscribed with his name, ‘Kennan Alistair Killane,’ bolted to the front. Velvet lined the base so it wouldn’t scratch his desk. Between the marble and the gold, it was very heavy.
“ ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?’
“His voice exploded in my face, loud as a freight train, and he shook me like a rat.
“Then he dove back into a whisper, and the change was so confusing and I was so close to losing everything that I didn’t think much at all about how he bent his right elbow and raised the nameplate like a club.
“ ‘I’ll tell you who I am.’
“He told me. He told me, and his voice leapt up and down, high and low, soft and so staggeringly loud at the last that his fellow demons must have heard him in Hell.
“ ‘I am the ONLY one in this family with the BALLS to do WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE!’
“The first blow shattered my nose, the second broke my cheekbone in three places, and the third was meant to kill me. I watched that nameplate with one wavering eye, as he raised it over his head for the third time, as he held me pinned against the door with his left fist, as I felt pounding against my back, vibrations from the other side of the door, or perhaps from another world … and I watched as he brought it down like a hammer swung by an angry god, and I was … relieved. It was about to be over, all over, and I wouldn’t have to hurt or cry or be afraid or confused or useless any more. It would all go away, and I would be safe.
“I would be free.
“With my next breath I felt three things, and I felt them all at once. I felt bone crunch and start to give way as the marble nameplate connected with my skull, I felt something so far beyond pain it was like another sensation entirely, and I felt … it was the strangest thing, but somehow I felt myself fall through the door, impossible as that sounds.
“I fell away from the impact of my uncle’s intended murder weapon, I fell away from the thing that wasn’t pain, and I fell through the door into the light of another world.
“I don’t remember landing anywhere. The fall never seemed to stop.”
Devon turned to look at me. Then he shifted on his chair, took me fully into his arms, and held me as tight as if he could protect me from whatever was going to happen. I felt the muscles in his arms trembling, his long legs quivered as they folded around mine, and his voice wavered as he spoke into my hair.
“I am still falling, Ashley. It is my destiny to fall, remember that – it will be hard for you, but when the time comes, remember that I cannot turn aside from my fate any more than a meteor can refuse to plunge burning to the earth.
“I was born to fall.”
39. The Truth in Hiding
I had to get out of there. After a story like that, somehow I just needed to be out from under that roof for a while and take some slow, deep breaths under the Montana sky. We both did.
So we cleaned up the leavings of our night-time breakfast, and we spent at least an hour on the porch. We bundled up against the winter night, we pulled our rocking chairs close together, and we talked. We talked, we watched the dim shapes of clouds gathering to block the stars, and I thought about that falling boy, who fell so long ago and claimed to still be falling.
Could I break his fall? Or was it my destiny to watch while his fall broke him?
“Devon?”
“Yes, Ashley?” He rolled his head toward me, one eyebrow raised, calm and attentive and relaxed. Moody Cryptic Devon had packed his bags and left for parts unknown, leaving behind Mellow Devon to answer any further inquiries that might be voiced by a certain persistent round girlfriend.
I thought about asking him just how many personalities he had on file inside his head, but decided to stick with my original question instead.
“How did they get away with it, Devon? I’m assuming I would have heard about it if your uncle had done prison time for attempted murder, so how did he get out of that? I mean, that much damage had to have sent you to the hospital, right?”
“Indeed. I was in a coma for three days.”
“And doctors are legally required to report suspected child abuse, so why didn’t the first doctor to get a look at that dent in your skull sic the cops on the Killanes? I mean, I can see your relatives buying judges here and there, but were they really up to paying off the doctors and the cops and the entire legal system?”
“Oh, I am told that the first doctors to examine me did call in the forces of justice, and bravely attempted to restrict the Killane family’s access to me, once I was awake – but Aunt Emily ignored the hospital staff like the unstoppable force she was, and justice is forced to be blind when everyone involved insists no crime took place.”
“Everyone as in you too? Why? And who was this Aunt Emily bitch?”
He answered me with a question, because that was one
of his favorite conversational torture techniques.
“Do you realize what truly happened when it seemed to me that I was falling through the door of my uncle’s office?”
I considered that for a second, and it didn’t seem too hard to figure out. “I’m guessing that housekeeper who dropped you off in hell and ran away had a change of heart, came back, and opened the door right as Uncle Asshole tried to bash your skull in?”
Devon shook his head. “My howls of pain echoing through the halls stiffened her spine and inspired her to take action, yes – but as you will remember, the door was locked. So the housekeeper went to retrieve the only person in all the world that Kennan Killane trusted with a key to his office: his wife, Emily Sandown Killane. I’m told that Aunt Emily arrived, shouted at her husband through the door, and then unlocked it in time for me to fall bleeding to the carpet at her feet.”
“Well, thank goodness for her, I guess – and how did a would-be child murderer luck into marrying a more or less decent human being, anyway?”
“I would not rush to thank Aunt Emily or call her decent. When I awoke in the hospital, some hours passed before … before I truly came back to myself. Once I did, Aunt Emily sniffed out my wakefulness and materialized at my bedside like a black-winged angel.
“I turned my head – with a great deal of pain, even through the medications – and there she was, favoring me with a small, tight, business-like smile.
“ ‘Devon, I’m so glad to see you’re awake. As I told Kennan after I saved your life a few days ago, a dead boy is quite difficult to explain away; a broken live boy, on the other hand, is a much simpler matter. Now, several people from the police and other agencies will be coming to talk to you soon. Before they arrive, it’s important that we’re all clear about exactly what happened.’ ”
“No, she did not try to get you to play along with some bullshit ‘he fell down the stairs’ scenario … did she?”
“Your psychic powers never cease to amaze me – my tumbling down the stairs, while wandering half-asleep through an unfamiliar house and crying over the death of my beloved father, was exactly the explanation Aunt Emily devised. She informed me with cool precision that my nose and cheek and ribs were broken during the fall, and the dent in my skull was inflicted when I slammed headfirst into the oak newel post at the bottom of the staircase.
“ ‘Don’t worry, Devon, it will be easy – just tell them about the stairs, sniffle and cry a bit, and don’t add too many details. That’s the beauty of it: no one will expect you to remember much because of your head injury, and so you don’t have to say very much at all. Keep it short, keep it simple, and we’ll all be fine – remember, fewer details means fewer opportunities for our stories to conflict, and fewer chinks in our armor that the authorities can pry at in their misguided search for the truth. Truth is an overrated business anyway, trust me. Now, do you understand what you need to do?’
“I stared at her shark’s smile. It was difficult to put words together, my head hurt so dreadfully – but it was all clear enough. Clear and simple and inescapable, like the bars on a prison cell.
“ ‘You need me to lie so that the police don’t take Uncle Kennan away and put him in jail. If I lie, you won’t hurt me any more, at least not right away. If I don’t lie, you’ll hurt me enough to make me wish I was dead. That’s right, isn’t it?’
“ ‘My, you are a smart live boy, aren’t you? Yes, Devon, that’s exactly right.’
“It was so hard to think through the pain. I knew she was right, and I knew she was quite shatteringly wrong as well. I suppose a truly smart boy would have just agreed to her plan and then shut up, so she’d go away – but I’ve never been good at shutting up.
“ ‘You don’t want me, but you need to keep me around so you can get at my father’s money someday. I don’t want you, but I’m too young to live on my own and too small to keep you from hurting me. That’s right too, isn’t it?’
“She smiled at me like a lioness smiling at a wounded zebra. ‘Yes, it is. Honestly, are you quite sure you’re Kevin’s son? You seem far too smart to be related to any of the Killanes – but in any case, we are indeed stuck with each other. We need you in order to eventually gain access to your father’s money; you need us because you have nowhere else to go and we are your only hope for a future.
“ ‘Now, since you’re so wonderfully smart and understand just what you need to do, I’ll be on my way – what with all the fuss over this matter and how incompetent Kennan is to deal with anything of real importance, there are a number of other situations that need my personal attention. You rest, Devon, and think hard about your future. It can be a long and rosy future or a short and painful one, depending on just how sensible you choose to be about all this.’
“She rose to her feet, still wearing that deadly smile, and turned to leave. She was reaching for the door handle when something in me, something mulish and mad and hopeless, insisted on saying one thing more.
“ ‘Aunt Emily?’
“She looked back over her shoulder, without even bothering to turn around. ‘Yes, Devon?’
“ ‘I won’t always be ten years old, and someday I’ll be too big for you to hurt me. What will you do then?’
“She stared over her shoulder at me. She didn’t say a word. Then she snapped her eyes away from mine and swept out into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind her – almost closed.
“It didn’t quite latch all the way shut, and I wonder – was that an accident, or did she mean for me to hear what she said to Uncle Kennan, who’d been fretting and fussing out there, waiting for her to finish with me?
“There was no mistaking his voice, though now it was sober and anxious and pleading, and not the screaming, drunken bellow I’d last heard.
“ ‘Is it all fixed, Em? Did he listen, did you get him straight on what he needs to say? He could screw us all, Em, he could screw me right into prison if he –’
“Her voice was rather harsher than when she’d spoken to me. ‘Stop whining, you pathetic, sniveling baby – of course I fixed it, just like I fix all of your nasty little messes. Just remember one blessed thing, Kennan, the next time you’re tempted to smash his brains to pulp – that boy is much smarter than you give him credit for. He’s smarter than you, he’s smarter than any of us – and while his intelligence will likely prove troublesome in the long run, for now it helps us.
“ ‘He’ll do the smart thing, I guarantee it – all you need to do is remember that if you try to kill him again without talking to me first, so help me, I will let you go to prison with a smile. I’ll let them lock you up, and while you’re busy being rape bait for the other convicts, I’ll be busy finding myself a man who’s smarter, richer, and much better in bed. Is that quite clear, Kennan?’
“ ‘Yes, Em. What would I do without you, Emmy?’
“ ‘I have no idea, now let’s get out of here. God, why did I ever let my father marry me into this useless family of drunken morons?’ ”
“Holy Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, Devon – is this bitch still alive? And how could someone that cold-blooded ever live in the first place?”
“Oh, Aunt Emily is still very much alive – the last I heard, she was doing her game best to perform damage control on the family’s behalf, after my destruction of Killane Industries. It’s a hopeless endeavor, of course, but I imagine she feels she has too many years invested in the Killanes to walk away from them just yet.”
“She was right about those smart brains of yours being troublesome down the line, huh?”
“Just so. Though she is cold, calculating, and entirely without pity, she’s also rather intelligent herself – not to mention being a fair judge of character, despite not having any of her own. I daresay that if she had gotten the notion to kill me all those years ago, it would have been a murder that was quick, clean, passionless, and quite untraceable to her.”
“But didn’t you ever think about changing your story? Once the whole thi
ng had blown over a bit and the Killanes let you out of their sight for two seconds, you could have gone to the cops or the district attorney or whoever, told them what really happened, and … well, I’m not a family law expert or anything, but I have to think you would have stood a pretty decent chance of being placed with a foster family, or maybe even Uncle Sheridan – and then you could have grown up without getting the shit kicked out of you every time the nearest Killane felt like getting all drunk and asshole-ish, right?”
“I had my own reasons for hiding the truth.”
“Care to share those reasons with me?”
“It would be heartless and irresponsible of me to burden you with that knowledge.”
“I don’t see how, and besides, I’m your girlfriend – it’s my job to help you carry your burdens, right?”
He shivered, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t from the cold. “Not this burden, Ashley. Not now. In time, you will understand.”
“Why can’t I understand now?”
“Because for once, I must do the decent thing. I must make everything right, for everyone. Once that is done, you will understand.”
“Big guy, you’re scaring me.”
“I am so sorry, sweet Ashley – I would tell you if I could, I would soothe your fears if there was a way to do so, but there is not. We are all locked into what must happen, but I can truly say that it will all turn right in the end, and before much longer. I can also say that it’s growing rather cold out here – would you care to come inside with me, and we can be warm together?”
He leaned over to me and his mouth melded to mine, his lips warm and his tongue probing. I wanted to be strong, I wanted to stand up to his tender assault and make him talk instead, make him tell me what this ‘decent thing’ was that he meant to do – but I wanted comfort even more, and I melted beneath him. I grabbed at his shoulders and pulled him close, I kissed him as fiercely as a scared girl possibly could, and I let him turn me aside from finding out what was going on.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 46
