Lies Are The Coward's Coin: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 2

by Nancy Adams

  I managed a smile and kissed the freckled hand that clutched my chest.

  Having sat for some time in each other’s arms, I left the room and Sarah got ready and packed. Then we ate a little breakfast downstairs in the hotel restaurant, some fruit, no more, neither of us feeling up to anything heavy. Breakfast finished, we were picked up by the car and driven back to my father’s superyacht. Once onboard, we weren’t up to anything other than lying sideways together on the couch and watching movies, until we fell asleep clustered together in one another’s arms, our two fetal bodies fitting neatly together, her within me.

  It was as we slept that my phone went off and I awoke. The interrupting sound stirred Sarah too, but, as I knew it was my own, I told her to go back to sleep as I did my best to disentangle myself from her without the slightest intrusion on her rest. When I stood, I reached into my pocket and took the phone. It was Dad. My sun was suddenly eclipsed.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said into it when I’d answered, leaving the room and moving out into the corridor.

  “Hey, kid,” my father replied, his voice holding within it a happy tone. “How were the festivities?”

  “They were great. We’re on our way back now.”

  “Yeah, Captain John already let me know.”

  “I’m sure,” I mused out loud.

  “How did Sarah find it?” he then wanted to know.

  “She had a great time. Loved every second.”

  “Did you take her to La Paz?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good boy. Good boy.”

  There was a moment of silence, and I wondered the purpose of my father’s call.

  “You know,” he began after a few seconds, his jovial tone now diminishing into one with the faint echo of sadness dwelling within it, “I remember taking your mother there several times.”

  He sighed a little here, and it surprised me. My father rarely talked about my mother. In fact, I can count on a single hand the number of times he’s even mentioned her in these last twenty-two years since her death.

  “It always made her so happy to dance,” he continued. “So happy to watch other dancers too, see the smiling faces, know that everyone was happy. She loved festivals. I didn’t, but she did. I simply loved to watch her—the enjoyment on her face, the way she’d wriggle her hips, all the other men ogling her, but knowing that, deep down, she was mine…”

  Here his voice broke off, and I had a feeling that he was crying. Surely not. I’d always assumed that my father’s tear ducts were the driest part of his body.

  “That she was mine,” he repeated, and I wondered if he was actually addressing me, or merely thinking it to himself. “Anyway,” he added, his voice lighting up once again, the tears cast back, “I was wondering if Sarah and you had time to have dinner with me tonight, back at the apartment? I’m off to Beijing tomorrow and won’t be back for a week, and hoped that you’d both join me. I’ll get Chef to cook up a nice Caribbean-style dinner to celebrate your cheerful vacation.”

  Still affected by his earlier sadness, and with the recollection of my mother, I couldn’t refuse the man. So I agreed on Sarah’s behalf, even though I knew how much her family were expecting her back by early evening.

  “Good,” he said brightly at my acceptance. “Then it’s set. I guess you’ll be back around seven?”

  “Should be. We’re due in harbor by six thirty.”

  “Then see you at seven.”

  “See you then, Dad.”

  With that, the call ended. There was no “love you,” not from either of us. There never had been, and there never would be. But I still felt better than I usually did after a call with my father. The fact that he’d talked of my mother had endeared him to me, and I actually looked forward to the meal with him. When I stepped back into the room and woke Sarah to inform her of our altered plans, she’d simply replied, “That’s cool, I told Dad anytime between seven and ten anyway. I wasn’t sure when we’d arrive.” More sunshine.

  Now that the evening was planned, all that was needed was for me to take my former position behind her on the couch and for our bodies to nestle into one another again. Once this was achieved, we both fell into dreamy sleep, the smell of her shining, russet locks filling my nostrils as I floated off, our bodies entwined as though they’d always been intended that way, like one of those Chinese models that’s made of two pieces that interlock into one whole.

  JOSH

  After sleeping the majority of the trip back, we arrived at my home feeling refreshed. Having parked the Jag, we took the elevator and were met upstairs by Holmes’s bland, hammy face.

  “Master Kelly is already in the dining room,” Holmes emitted like a radio, “and is awaiting sir’s and miss’s presence.

  “Food already done, B?” I put to him as Sarah and I removed ourselves from the lift.

  “Dinner will be served promptly” was his swift answer.

  He turned mechanically and led the way to the dining room, which annoyed me. I obviously knew where it was and found his pedantic attitude to protocol comically obscene. Upon reaching said dining room, I found Dad sitting at the far end of the table and two places set for myself and Sarah either side of him. Wine had already been served, and it appeared that my father had already sunk about half a bottle, the glass at his lips when we entered the room.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed as he took the glass away. “The beautiful couple have returned.”

  He placed his glass down and got up from his chair, embracing both myself and Sarah, a little kiss to her cheek. He then offered us our seats, retaking his own, and we all sat down. Nothing in my father could have warned me of what would follow.

  The instant we were seated at the table, Holman entered the room, shutting the doors behind him. I smiled at him as he came in, but he appeared not to see me, because he failed to acknowledge my greeting in any way.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a place set for you, old man,” I remarked to Holman as he walked past the back of Sarah on his way to the head of the table.

  Again I was ignored. Oddly he came and stood behind my father, his legs spread, arms behind his back, blank eyes staring ahead. A funny feeling began to trickle down me, like rain upon a windowpane. My father appeared to ignore Holman’s presence even more than Holman ignored mine, and he continued with his jovial talk.

  “So, Sarah,” he went, “what did you think of Havana and its wonderful street carnival?”

  “I thought it was wonderful,” she commented back with a highness of spirit, Holman’s presence clearly not as unsettling to her as it was to me.

  “Good,” my father let out slowly, placing specific emphasis on the word, as though he were attempting to give the impression that he couldn’t care less.

  My funny feeling rained a little harder. Dad then gave me a sideways look before placing his hawk eyes back on Sarah.

  “So, did this one”—another sideways glance at me—“give you any hassle while you were there?”

  “No,” Sarah said, glancing across at me with a gentle smile. “He was very well behaved.”

  “That’s brilliant. Just brilliant. A few drinks, a couple of dances, and nothing untoward, eh?”

  “Exactly so, Andrew.”

  “And you,” he said, turning sharply to me, “did you enjoy your time away?”

  “Yes, I did, Dad,” I replied, piercing my eyes a little and giving him a look that did its best to suggest to him that I was aware something was up and wished him to get to the point.

  My immediate suspicions fell on my drug use. I thought that maybe he’d had one of the security guys follow me. But then this seemed ridiculous; how could someone follow us for the whole day of a busy carnival? Was I bugged somehow? I certainly wouldn't put it past him. But still, this could never prove I’d been doing cocaine. Or maybe one of those Ivy League pricks happened to know someone connected to my father—their own old man perhaps—and let it slip. But then the improbable circumstances concerning this possibi
lity weren’t even worth considering, so I quickly surmised it couldn’t have been that. Fuck it! I said to myself. Maybe I was just paranoid from the coke. Maybe nothing was up and I should just relax. But then I glanced at Holman’s cold figure and didn’t feel so sure.

  “So what’s with Holman’s Darth Vader impression?” I asked my dad.

  Sharply planting his eyes on my face, Dad merely gazed straight through me and uttered not one word in answer, his face blank.

  “Sarah,” he said, turning back to her with a smile, “you must enjoy the wine. It’s from my own cellar, a fine year.”

  He picked the bottle up and began looking at the label, his countenance dissolving into a slightly sad look.

  “I bought it just over fifteen years ago in France, in the region of Bordeaux. Do you know Bordeaux?”

  “Of course,” Sarah replied. “It’s a beautiful place.”

  “So you’ve been there?”

  “When I was a child,” Sarah felt brave enough to reply.

  “I used to go there all the time,” Dad said, his eyes still searching the picture on the bottle. “But not anymore. The day I bought this wine was the last time I went to Bordeaux. I do all my French business either in Paris, Monte Carlo, or Cannes nowadays. Never Bordeaux. Did you ever go anywhere near the St. Lucia’s vineyard?”

  “I can’t remember,” Sarah answered. “It was when I was little, and I only remember the beautiful little towns and rolling hills. Not much more than that, I’m afraid.”

  My father closed his eyes and placed the bottle back upon the table without going any further with his offer of wine.

  “It is magnificent,” he remarked, as though he saw the vineyard behind his eyelids. “Especially in late spring when all the honey blossom comes out and covers the hills in the snow of flowers.”

  He appeared to savor this moment for a while, and Sarah looked upon him with the delicate flower of a smile held upon her lips, gleefully watching my father reminisce. I, on the other hand, watched him with suspicion, my eyes wandering between him and Darth Holman.

  “Anyway,” he went on, opening his eyes sharply and fixing them on Sarah, a fresh bitterness added to his tone, “the last time was fifteen years ago with an old friend. He and I bought ourselves a couple of cases each and toasted our friendship. And where is he now, huh? Where’s the friendship now? Where’s my old friend?”

  At this moment, something transpired around the table, something unspoken, unheard, but understood. Sarah’s face dropped, as did mine. My father must have been talking about Roy Dillinger. His mood, Holman, the silly story, asking Sarah if she’d been to Bordeaux, all of it stank of the same thing. I now wished it had have been the cocaine.

  I felt the need to make an announcement.

  “Okay, I think it’s time we cut to the chase. What are you babbling on about?”

  The talons of his eyes struck back to me, and he gave a crooked smile, his eyes softening a little once they’d settled upon mine.

  “I don’t hold anything against you,” he said, before turning back to Sarah and addressing her. “I don't blame you either.” Then addressing both of us, he said, “You were very young back then, how could you know now about any of it? You met one another many years later and that’s that. Circumstance.”

  He was silent and I decided now was my time to say something.

  “So I take it we have your blessing?” I asked, his conciliatory tone giving me hope.

  “Far from it,” he announced, immediately bashing my delicate hope against a rock, the bitterness once more invading his tone.

  “Then what do we have?”

  My father swiveled his neck and addressed Sarah, whose face was growing more somber by the second, a dark, thunderous cloud descending over the table.

  “Sarah, I like you,” he stated to her. “But there was always someone or something you reminded me of. Some spark of recall in your face stirring up the embers of a distant memory. I suspected something of you that first time, although what it was I couldn’t tell yet. As I said, it was only a stirring. Then when Holman, under his weakness for my son—something I don't hold against him—gave me that report about some Sarah Kline, I still wasn’t cured of my feelings regarding you. Almost forty years surviving at the very top surrounded by rats doesn’t happen unless you can smell one. And you stank of them. You don’t lie much, do you?”

  “No,” she said, not taking her eyes from the table.

  “Don’t start, you may get a taste for them, or even worse, you may get good.”

  “How did you find out?” I wanted to know, as well as wanting to gain his attention and his devilish eyes away from Sarah.

  I didn’t like the way he looked down at her, nor the way she wilted like a flower under the immense heat of his glare.

  Without removing his eyes from her, he answered, “Find out what?”

  “You know what.”

  Still not turning, he said, “That her real name is Sarah Dillinger. Eldest daughter of Roy Dillinger, one-time friend, long-time snake.”

  “Dad,” I put to him as calmly as I could, an anger rising up in me in defense of Sarah, “you shouldn’t insult her father.”

  Still with beady eyes pierced on my love, he retorted, “You wait long enough, son, and you might hear things that’ll make you call him worse.” Then addressing Sarah: “Like I say, I suspected you. So while you were on my yacht, I had the cabin crew go through your belongings. Unfortunately all they found was all the fake ID in the name of Sarah Kline that my son had obtained for you. However, all was not lost, because they did manage to pick up a fingerprint from one of the ID cards.”

  “Unscrupulous bastard,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head.

  “From that we figured you, because as a lawyer with access to the city courts, you’d have to had your fingerprints registered. It’s standard practice in the state. Of course, as a powerful man with many contacts, I had it run, and bingo! Sarah Dillinger. Then my head of security, Mr. Holman here, admitted to who you were when I confronted him. But, like I say, he was protecting the boy, and that’s something I’ve employed him to do since Josh was born. So I don't blame him. And, of course, I don't blame you two either. Coincidence.”

  He paused for a moment so that he could take another sip of his wine.

  When he’d finished, he screwed his eyes up and gently exclaimed, “Sure is good wine. Your father always did have impeccable taste. He still drink good wine?” Then without letting her answer, he added, “No, I suppose not. Well, not on what he earns from defending drug addicts and single moms. Anyway, Sarah, I’ll get to the meat of the matter. Like I’ve made clear, I hold nothing against you, but you have a choice to make. Do you love my son?”

  “Yes,” she muttered.

  A surge of light broke through the thickening clouds of the room, and I felt momentarily at peace. Her affirmation of our love filled my heart with tender joy, elevating me for a single moment, until the scene grabbed ahold of my feet and dragged me back down.

  “Would you ever see him hurt?” was my father’s next pressing question.

  “Of course not,” she almost cried out.

  “Then leave now and never make contact with him again.”

  With this latest denouement, Sarah’s face drained of every pigment of color, and her eyes widened, their emeralds splashed with bewildering fear that something was happening, something unfair and cruel.

  “What right have you to ask her that?” I bellowed at him from across the table, rising slightly in my chair and banging my fists down.

  For the first time, Holman’s eyes found their way to me.

  “Calm down, kid,” the henchman growled, my father not paying the slightest attention to my act of petulance.

  “You see, Sarah,” Dad went on calmly, “I’m giving my son two choices: me or you. Simple. He either gets to stay my son or gets to stay your boyfriend. But not both. Only one. However, because you’re a wise girl—I can see it in your eyes—I�
�m giving the choice to you. If it were up to him, he’d simply follow his anger and defy me. But you’ll think much more clearly for him. Because if he chooses you, he’ll walk away from here this second with nothing. And that will kill him. He won’t be able to handle being poor.”

  Sarah’s eyes went misty, and she appeared to be contemplating myself upon the streets, among the Roxys and the other destitute that she’d known much of her life.

  “Yes, I can see in your eyes,” my father carried on, looking closer at her shimmering emeralds, tears dropping from them. “I can see that you’re imagining him out there in the real world. Can you imagine what he’ll look like after ten years of poverty? He’ll look at least twenty years older. And what about his happy-go-lucky attitude in those ten years, what will become of that? That will be the worst effect of that decade of desolate living. Think how angry he’ll become, how bitter, how envious of the life he has now. I checked you out—you work in your father’s shitty law outfit. You must’ve seen much of their bitterness, the poor.”

  “And I’ve seen their hope too,” she retorted, raising her eyes to him.

  “But they’ve lived it their whole lives. All they have is that glimmer of hope. They clutch on to it like a drowning man to a piece of straw. No, if you walk away from here now and never talk to Josh again, you’ll never have to watch my son drown.”

  Sarah sat, her chest rapidly folding in and out. Then something appeared to bite, and she stubbornly looked him square in the face. I saw that wrinkled nose.

  “Okay,” she said firmly, “you’ve asked enough questions, talked enough. Let me talk a little, and let me ask a question myself.”

  “Fire away. But I think I know what it’ll be.”

  “Why do you hate my father so much that you would destroy Josh’s and my relationship?”

  JOSH

  My father looked at her silently for a second or two, studying her look of determination.

  “I knew you’d ask,” he said after a while. “The first thing I’ll say is that you don’t want me to answer that. Before, I mentioned hope and I think that it’s good to cling on to yours. You think your father is a good, honest man, so keep it that way. Just walk away from this, is all I’m asking. I don’t want to ruin the image of your father for you.”