I saw Iron & Wine...
Even Taylor Swift was on there! I laughed at that. Had he been watching Teen Choice Awards or something? Selena Gomez wasn't on there, so, no, he hadn't just blindly bought anything from anyone who'd won a surfboard this year.
I also didn't own any Selena Gomez. But I owned Taylor Swift albums...
I looked for One Direction and Emblem3. Nothing. (I owned none of that shit.)
I looked for Justin Timberlake, found The 20/20 Experience. My breath caught. I pulled out my iPhone, looked at my albums. Yes, I'd bought that once, even though I didn't listen to it much. I'd even forgotten about it. Conall didn't seem like the Justin Timberlake kind either. Not at all. He had that Metallica, Alice in Chains feel to him... (Prior to meeting Conall, I had no clue who Alice in Chains was, but I came to know them after searching for "Similar to Soundgarden" and landing on a last.fm page with them on it. Their tunes seemed to me like the kind of stuff Conall's turbulent mind would be into.)
I switched from album mode to playlists mode, looked at his Top 25 Most Played. That didn't exist as a playlist. But he'd created another: Top 50 Most Played.
By now I was fully into what I was doing, a sleuth on a hot trail. The room around me had disappeared. I hadn't even noticed that Conall had been gone for any amount of time, or even if he'd returned. There was now only me, my index on the touch screen, clicking, looking, scrolling. I clicked the Top 50 Most Played list.
The first song was Never Think, by Rob Pattinson...
My finger froze. My eyes froze. My lips trembled. My eyes went warm with water.
I knew that song. Knew it well. Knew it to my core. I clicked it. The guitar came on. I fell to the bean bag behind me, my knees as high as my shoulders. The acoustic guitar continued. And then he sang, wailed, cried, and told Bella that she was better off without him, that she had it all without him, that she should leave before she was too far gone...
I cried. Just like that. No control. Sobbing.
I buried my head in my hands and the tears fountained out of me. Conall walked in. He probably said my name. If so, I didn't hear it. He yanked me off that bean bag, lifted me up like a rag-doll. And then I screamed at him. I hit him. I hit him on his chest with the bottoms of my fists. I hit him again. He inched back from the force. That monstrous, titanic, giant of a man moved back with the force that I had hit him with! But he still held onto me.
He said nothing. His arms were behind me, just holding me as I pummeled him. I heard the thumps on his chest. Thump, bang, thump! I fought him! Then I kicked him, kneed him.
"I hate you!" I screamed. My tears raged. My face was soaking. "I hate you," I yowled again. Not meaning it. Not meaning a word. Hate meaning love. Love meaning sadness and pain.
Conall stepped back, letting me go. He just stood there, taking it. I punched him some more. I let him have it with my knuckles until my right wrist bruised so badly that all I had now was my left and then I weakly hit him with that.
Conall stayed silent, occasionally made a grimace.
The last few punches weren't punches at all. They were feathers in a volcano, but I kept on going at him. In the end, I grabbed his shirt, yanked it from his belt. And I wept. I wept all I had. I wept for all the times I'd failed to weep in the three months before, and for all the times I had. His shirt, by his chest, looked like it had been dumped in a river.
Robert Pattinson stopped singing. And Conall's second-most-listened-to song only brought more tears to my eyes. Tears of death. Tears of losing. Tears of love that had been ripped away like life-preserving stitches from a bullet wound, leaving only black, bloodied needle holes...
Because the next song was our song. It would forever be our song: Christina Perri, A Thousand Years.
I wrapped my arms around him. And, faintly, weakly, sounding as convincing as a child lying to her mother about having taken a bath but being filled with mud on her shoes, I said, "I hate you. I. Fucking. Hate. You."
And then I held him, because I didn't hate him. I didn't hate him at all.
-4-
"I think no more Twilight soundtrack for you, eh?" he said, holding me.
"I'd punch you again," I said. "But I think I broke my wrists on your chest."
"Come here, let me look at them." Conall looked at my wrists and, yes, they were stinging. The sensation was not unfamiliar to me. Dad had taught me to box a long time ago, and hitting Conall straight-on with my knuckles, so that the hand pushed against all the little wrist-bones, had been a bad a idea.
"I'll survive," I said.
We stood there, awkwardly. "It's over, Leora. The nightmare is over."
"Only I don't understand the nightmare. I don't understand why you couldn't just tell me — "
"I'll tell you. I promise. But first I'll make a fire."
"And I'll drink some wine." I took the Sauvignon Blanc from his hand. He'd manage to keep it from breaking despite all my attacks on him. So much for Miss Macho Woman...
I tried to open it up with the corkscrew but failed miserably. So Conall opened it, and poured us a glass. I sat at the bar while he went into the next room — the one with the huge fireplace and red couches — and started a fire. Twenty minutes later he returned, bringing with him the smell of crackling pine cones.
I'd downed three glasses of wine by now.
"Started drinking, I see," he said.
"You don't know the half of it..."
"Actually..." He scratched by his nose. "I do. And, um, yes, I know you don't drink more than a glass or two, and that's when you do drink. Most of the time you don't."
"Would this be the same way you know that Kayla is here or that...?" I didn't want to finish that sentence. I didn't want to think or talk about Dorian. The thought of him repulsed me now. That had been a dark place, rock-bottom for me.
"Yes, that's how I know."
I thought of that Peeping Tom by the window... Had it been him? Was that Conall's P.I.? "Damn, Mister Williams, you have a lot of fucking explaining to do." I reached for the bottle but Conall snatched it away from me. "Hey!" I said, angry! No jovial, friendly, flirty "hey." I wanted to get fucking trashed on that stuff...
"That's enough. You're on mineral water now. You and I need to talk, and I need you to understand what is said."
I glared at him. "Fine." Then I added, "Creep! Were you really spying on me?"
"Spying? No, but when you came to England I had to keep my eye on you."
"So, what, you bugged my room? Hired more Private Investigators — ?"
"Yes."
My eyes widened. "You did?"
"Yes, I did. I mean, the latter. I never bugged your room. That would be 'creepy,' as you like to call it."
My hand went to the wine that wasn't there... "Can I get another drink?"
Conall went behind the bar and pulled out a bottle of Perrier. Man...did that bring back memories... He poured me a glass.
I drank a bit, then continued. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"The P.I., damn it! Why did you have me tailed? It is fucking creepy!"
Conall sighed forcefully, pulled up a bar stool and sat next to me. I still felt distant from him, and yet felt like I needed him. Oh, damn it, I had no fucking idea what I felt! Confused, that's it.
"Alex — "
"Conall, I know this is childish, but, just humor me and, well, I dunno... Could you call her Alexandra? It would just make the transition from 'old-flame is dead' to 'old-flame is alive and kicking and still looking fucking hot or at least fuckable' a whole lot easier."
"Sure, Alexandra was taken by...some, well, 'bad people' and stored at a house over in Budapest."
Stored?
"We were lucky, if you can call it that. People who are trafficked these days, well, they end up as prostitutes, or dead with their organs sold on the black market."
I stopped drinking.
"Some get used for slave labor over in China or India, Jamaica. It's a whole machine. Big trade. Thirty-two bi
llion pounds a year industry. You can Google that if you want...
"Well, when I found out Alexandra was alive — and, understand me, that was pure luck. That was... I had one of my guys digging dirt, following the trail, you know, my hobby."
Yeah, some hobby.
"So, of course, Alex had — sorry, Alexandra — had been the cause of that. She'd been the one who'd made me want to take all these fuckers down. Christ, the naïveté of youth... Anyway." He sighed, grabbed some wine and poured himself a glass.
"You know, you're also not allowed to drink if I'm not!"
"Ah, fuck it, here." He poured me another. "So, anyway, this guy I had — I have several of them — obviously had a photo of Alexandra. He knew the sensitivity of the issue, so he waited for me to return from New York. I'd barely touched ground when he was here — right in that room there with the fire, and showed me fresh photos...
"I was out of sorts for a while... I was... Well, it was too much to bear. Imagine, Leora, if you saw someone you knew, in tattered clothes, drugged, clearly being used for sex, lying in a back garden which is surrounded by barbed wire and armed men, beaten, bruised...
"This guy, this mogul in Budapest, had guards outside his house. Real mafioso shit. Fucking crazy. You'd think this stuff existed only in the blooming movies. Anyway, he was an 'ethical' slimeball. He only ever kept one girl at a time. Because he's catholic or orthodox or whatever the fuck. Oh, the irony. Anyway, in that sense, we were 'lucky.' Alexandra was his only slave, and so he was the only one who...you know...did things with her. Luckily the fucking slime-ball seems to have been disease-free...
"But she was a slave. Believe me. And she was an easy target. Because of all the drugs — "
"Wait, so she was on drugs before that?"
"Oh, yes, definitely."
"But, when she 'died,' wasn't there a funeral?"
Conall gave a wry smile, shook his head. "She was cremated. Well, no, she wasn't! Ha!" His humor was dark now...
"Lots of money, Leora. Lots of money. Money makes the world go round, doesn't it? The crematorium gets its cut, the shipping guy gets his cut, everybody gets their cut. A dog in a coffin gets cremated... Maybe just an empty box. Disgusting. The big cat at the top feeding it all the way down. Hell, why didn't the fucker just invest in some decent liposuction and a toupee to pick up girls the good old fashioned way? But, no, this Istvan Vajda — who fucking knows how it's pronounced... I mean, and Istvan of all names. That's like 'Joe' or 'Johnny' or something in English. Christ, can't the devil himself at least have a better fucking name!?"
He was rambling, I noticed, but I let him. He poured another glass.
"Anyway, this bugger had a fetish — one girl, one specific girl. That was it. Usually they'd take care of the drugging themselves, later, after the kidnapping, but they got a bonus with Alex... Sorry, Alexandra — "
"It's fine," I said, putting my hand on his knee. "Call her whatever you want. I shouldn't have..." I didn't finish.
"So, Mr. 'Joe' or 'Johnny' Istvan's fetish was girls who'd been wanted by rich men. Rich, young men. I mean, my mother is safe because my father's in his sixties, and so is she. But I was next in line in those days to inherit the family business — something I never had any interest in. So, technically, when she was taken, Istvan considered me a 'Rich Man.' My brother, well, you know my brother, he's so fucked and drugged himself that I don't think Mr. Istvan appreciated Francis's tastes. Francis probably fucked only whores while Alex and I were backpacking Europe...
"But here's the best part..." He shook his head heavily, rubbed his temples.
"Alex and I went through Hungary. I remember that house — palace is more like it. I remember it well. And I remember the guards looking at us as we'd walked past. Alex had the bright idea of trying to get inside. She ran off to them, backpack on her shoulders. The guards stopped us immediately. And then, well, Istvan Vajda was obviously spying through the cameras in his house. He let us in. 'For the good of the community' or some shit.
"He gave us a tour, showed us around. We had dinner. And, of course, us being young and fucking stupid, we told him about ourselves. Told him a lot. And he got to know who I was. And that I came from money. At one stage, Alex went to the bathroom, and he asked me, 'You like?' and then pointed at the door she'd just gone through.
"Of course, young and fucking idiotic as I was — hell, I probably even blushed — I said, 'Yes, very much.'
"Then the smelly fuck sat back, hands crossed by his protruding belly, and gave a grin. 'She is nice, yes...' he said.
"He'd shown a lot of interest in us. Fuck me, the congeniality was straight out of a Sandra Bullock movie...
"I don't know that he wasn't involved in getting her drugged over the next year or so — I mean, here, In England — before he finally took her. As if it had all been planned over time. I mean, I know my brother gave her the drugs at first, but what kept her on them? And was Francis maneuvered to being with her in the first place?
"Who knows? We'll never know.
"But this guy... He was like the fricking Joker or something. Mad, methodical, fucking insane. I think you have to be totally insane to be that high up on the criminal food chain. I think the lower guys are just, well, I don't know, morons, idiots. Like that Raphael prick — Oh, has he given your friend any more shit?"
I shook my head.
"Good." He tried to sip some wine, but his glass was empty. He looked at it, looked at the bottle. "Fuck it, I've had enough of this shit. I can't drink more than a glass or two before dehydrating completely." He put the glass down.
"Leora, you have to understand something: Alex will never be the same again. Years of abuse — both her own, you know, the drugs, and then from others. She... The first four months I had her staying here. I had experts over here getting her off the drugs, without using other drugs to do it! None of this 'swop one opiate for another' crap. I mean, real rehab.
"She woke up screaming most of the time. Leora, I did sleep in the same bed as her. Next to her, over the blankets, looking up at the ceiling, and thinking of you. Sometimes...she held me. I'm telling you this because you deserve to know it. And I won't defend my position on it. I would do it again, because she needed help. And I had caused it. My stupid mouth... But I was absolutely faithful to you, completely.
"I kept you away because I couldn't risk you being taken as well."
I made a confused frown, tried to piece the things together, then had the odd sensation of knowing something because Conall had spoken of this "Istvan" always in the past tense.
"C — Conall... Is, um, this...whatever his name is... Is he...dead?"
Conall's eyes looked at me but his face looked straight ahead. Then his eyes returned their gaze forward. He gave a nod so tight that I could hardly discern it. In the moment of realization that came afterwards, I suddenly felt a strong need for another glass of wine. I poured one. "I think I'll also take one," he said. I gave it to him.
"Conall, did you, um...?"
He put his hand up to stop me, shook his head. "Don't ask. I might've turned a blind eye to something...or not. It's taken care of, that's all you need to know. Your safety is all I care about, nothing else.
"Leora, some men don't deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Especially those who commit crimes against women that...that are unspeakable. Just...don't ask. I did what was right. And that's all I'm saying. And Alex is out of there. But, more importantly, Istvan 'Joe or Johnny' Vajda won't be interested in the girls I have a relationship with anymore. He won't be interested in you. Ever. Because he can't be. That was priority number one for me, Leora. Make you safe. No matter what it cost. No matter if... There was no fucking ways you would ever go through something like that. Not on my watch."
Mother...fuck!
"When...did he...die?" I still wasn't sure the guy was dead.
"A few days before I texted you asking if you'd come to London." OK, so dude was definitely dead.
"And why did
I have to come alone?"
"I have to confess, Leora, that...I could've waited longer. No, I should've. This slimeball out of the picture doesn't mean everything's taken care of. But I'm pretty certain it is. Maybe he had eyes on us. Maybe there's another sick fuck above him with the same goddamn fetishes. Who knows. Anyway, I couldn't be apart from you any longer. And when Istvan, well, 'tasted the river-floor' let us say...when that happened, I figured it was a good enough time. And if it isn't, well, I can protect you. Now I can. He was the worst. A sick, demented, lunatic. No one could be worse than him. But if there is another guy, watching me, watching us... I can protect you, that I can promise you. But if Kayla had come along... Two of you would be just too much to watch over. And you know I'd choose you if I had to, if I was put on the spot. And I'd hate for something to happen to your friend because of me.
"In all honesty, I wanted to wait a little longer. Maybe another three or four weeks. But then..." He looked away. "Well, I heard of you with that...guy, on that wall, by the ocean..."
"Oh, right..." I felt suddenly ashamed.
"No, it's fine. It's fine. That you didn't meet up with someone earlier — You didn't, did you?"
I shook my head. I saw him let out a breath he'd been holding briefly.
"I'm so sorry, Leora. I'm sorry for the shit I caused... I fucking hate money. I hate all of this shit." He pointed to his magnificent house. "It's not worth any of the trouble it's brought me. Not worth the risks it's imposed on those I...love. Actually, no, that's wrong. Only one of those people I've loved, the other I just cared for deeply."
Ahh, right, Alexandra. No, "Alex"...
I did love her. I loved her more than anyone could love another. That's what he'd said to me about her once...
He stood from his barstool, put an arm on either side of me, rested his hands on the counter behind me. I smelled the sweet scent of good wine on his breath. His stance was steady, his eyes locked.
"Leora," he said. And here, finally, after a day of unrest and mayhem and confusion about him, me, us, in my mind... Here, I felt my Conall again. My Conall. The one I'd fallen in love with, the one who got my blood hot, made my legs weak, and caused my skin to break out in so many sweats I had decided to start carrying mist with me in my purse...
East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) Page 8
