“Not good?” she tried to ask as innocuously as possible.
For a second as he looked at her, his eyes blazed with anger, but almost immediately they calmed and he lifted a hand to his brow, his exhaustion and frustration evident.
“I’m sorry,” he said, moving to the table and flinging him onto a seat. “Well, they could have been better. Back home I’m used to being able to lord it over most people, but here I’m small fry.”
She came and placed herself on the sofa next to him, her fingers somewhat tentative as they moved across his chest. Sometimes in such a mood, Daniel required space to deal with his anger. Today, however, her need was greater than his own: she wanted to be touched by him. She needed to be touched.
Fortunately, his arm came up instinctively around her shoulder and he hugged her into him, kissing her on the top of her head. She could feel that he was not completely present, that his mind was still infuriated by other aspects of the day’s business, but the warm animal of his body needed to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched.
Not that she was allowed to enjoy it for very long. While he was holding her, his phone sounded again.
“Daniel, please,” she began to say. Leave it! she wanted to cry out, but he was already taking out his phone and, jumping up to move away from her, he was speaking into it immediately.
“I’ve been trying to see your father all day... Damn it! As soon as I knew he was in San Francisco... Okay, okay, maybe not as soon as I heard he was here, but I’ve been busy—even I’ve got to take some time off occasionally... Wait! I need to see him... What do you mean?” As he spoke, Kris could see his temper rising and flashes of anger burning his face. “Very well... Yes, yes. I’ll meet you... When... Now? Are you serious? I mean... What? You’re already here, in the hotel?... Okay, if you insist, but why not tomorrow?... I understand.”
He sounded flustered, caught off guard, his mouth twisted as he concluded the conversation. At last, placing the phone down, he stared at Kris in confusion, his eyes looking more like those of a boy who was lost than she had ever seen before.
“That was Francis Roth,” he told her at last. “He wants to see me. I’m sorry, but I’ve been trying to see his father all day.”
“What’s he doing here in San Francisco?” Kris asked, her own confusion mounting.
Daniel’s face flushed and he looked away from her. Again he apologised, but now he did not catch her eyes. “I... I guessed Max would be here. He owns a house in San Francisco, and he spends part of the Summer here. Some of his biggest investments are in Silicon Valley...” His voice trailed away as he realised that there was no way he could justify this omission: for once, remaining silent had clearly been an act of deception.
Not that Kris was allowed to luxuriate in a sense of moral righteousness. Less than a minute later there came a knock on the door leading to their suite. When Daniel opened the door, Kris could see Francis Roth standing on the other side with another man.
Like Francis, his companion was in his mid-twenties, a few years younger than Kris, with dark hair and average height. She barely noted him, however. Instead, with a feeling of revulsion she concentrated on Francis.
He was somewhat taller than the other man, a good few inches above Kris in height but nowhere near as tall as Daniel. His face would have been conventionally handsome, with sandy, almost blond hair and blue eyes, but there was something immediately untrustworthy about his face. Those eyes flickered between Daniel and Kris and, when he looked at her, the smirk on his lips made him appear incredibly ugly.
Daniel either did not notice or feigned not to pay attention. Kris could see, however, that his whole frame was stiff as he forced himself to stand aside, wait politely for Francis and his associate to enter the room.
“So, this is how you’re enjoying San Francisco,” Francis remarked, looking around the room. “Not bad, not bad—but then you always did have good taste.” With this final comment, the faintest hint of a leer crossed his face as he glanced across at Kris. “Mind you,” he continued, “you should have come and stayed with Pop. He would have been more than willing to put you up.” Was it Kris’s mistake, or was this latter said with a faint hint of bitterness in his tone.
“Thank you,” Daniel replied coolly. “That’s very kind, but we’re fine here.”
“Are you here on business or pleasure?” The other man spoke, not bothering to take his eyes off Kris. Those eyes were dark and there was something about his expression that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“Haven’t you heard?” it was Francis who answered. “Daniel Stone has only gone and got himself married again.” Kris looked away from the dark haired man to Francis, noticed a sudden tic appear in his cheek. “Never entirely understood it, myself,” Francis concluded, holding her gaze steadily for a moment.
“Why are you here, Francis? And who is this?” Something about Daniel’s tone made Francis flinch ever so slightly, but he maintained his own composure as he turned his attention away from Kris.
“This is Matthew Doherty, a business associate of mine. Pop thought that he might be helpful.”
For a second, Kris thought that Daniel would explode. His jaw moved from side to side and his teeth ground together. “I need to see the organ grinder and they send me the fucking monkey,” he growled at last, his eyes turning away from Francis in disgust.
“Now, now, Daniel, that wasn’t very nice.” Francis had laid an obsequious arm across Matthew’s chest as his associate made a threatening move forward. “You’re not being very hospitable. A drink would have been nice.”
Daniel’s eyes had been lowered in an attempt to mask his fury, but now he raised them and glanced at Kris, flicking his head almost imperceptibly towards the drinks cabinet. Kris felt immediate indignation, but as he controlled his temper so she fought hers down. Even she could see that it would not do for him to appear subservient to this whelp of a boy who was not fit to tie his shoes.
“What would you like?” she asked, attempting to maintain a polite tone in her voice.
“Whisky will be fine for me.” Francis smiled at her, a little too fully, his teeth white and sharp. “Matthew?”
The other man shook his head, but she noticed that he looked constantly at her, never at Daniel.
As she crossed to the cabinet and took out a bottle of whisky, she heard Daniel speaking behind her once more. “You still didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?”
The answer was snide and jubilant: “You’re not his special boy anymore, Daniel. You fucked up good and proper on that front. But I’m here with a message. You’re to be at the house tomorrow, at ten. He’ll see you then.”
She could almost hear Daniel’s gasp of surprise. “What... what made him change his mind?”
Kris poured out the golden liquid slowly, listening attentively. “Senility, perhaps. I can’t say I’ve trusted all his judgements, especially not where you’re concerned. Anyway, he’ll see you tomorrow—if you decide to go. It means nothing to me.”
Holding the glass in her hand, she saw that the two men were already beginning to move to the door. Confused, she asked a question, a platitude that covered her desire to see them go: “Don’t you want your drink?”
Francis paused, and his eyes gleamed strangely as he looked at her. “Oh no,” he replied after considering his response. His eyes flickered once more to Daniel and then back to her, and he gave another of his annoying smiles. “I just wanted to see if you do as you’re told.”
Chapter Ten
It was half ten the next morning when there was a knock at the door. Daniel had left an hour earlier to make his way to Maximilian Roth’s and Kris had decided to work up some of the sketches she had made the previous day: Daniel had been uncertain as to what time he would return, and so Kris had decided to wait for him before exploring more of San Francisco on her own.
The meeting the previous day with Roth’s son and his sullen, silent friend had irritated Kris, but in ma
ny respects the deeper underlying anxiety she had been feeling recently was already beginning to dissipate. The knowledge that she was pregnant (correction: that she was probably pregnant—she would defer complete acceptance until after she had seen a doctor, just in case) had already changed some things in her mind.
Her marriage to Daniel itself was enough to transform her world, to fix that which had appeared too fluid and mutable into a more fixed state. While drawing, she smiled to herself: the young woman who had been lost and in a state of almost nihilistic despair was now more secure in herself, more self-assured than she had been for a long time—perhaps ever.
And yet not everything was perfect. She was fully aware, had been aware for a long time, that Daniel himself seemed to be undergoing some kind of crisis. He had tried to hide it from her, and she understood why and even appreciated his sentiment, even though his actions indicated a certain patronising attitude that would have annoyed her if she allowed it to. He treated her as a naïf, but she was much more worldly wise than he realised.
Never mind: when the time was right, when he was less agitated, she would not hide this news from her husband. Husband. How she enjoyed rolling that word around her mouth, saying it silently as she worked on her drawings, filling in tones and shades of the people and buildings that she had observed on Fisherman’s Wharf. Daniel was experiencing his own sense of failure at the moment, but he would always have her alongside him—and soon, perhaps, someone else to love as well. Sitting there in a loose fitting, light dress, she decided to make herself feel as comfortable as possible until he returned.
These thoughts, however, were disturbed by the knocking at the door. The sound was loud and persistent, annoying Kris as she stood to go and answer it. Perhaps it was Daniel, having left something behind, but there was no need for him to have demanded her attention so noisily.
She was surprised, then, to open the door and come face to face with Francis Roth and his taciturn companion, Matthew Doherty standing close to his shoulder. Without her heels on, Francis stood a few inches taller than her, Doherty also rising up before her. Both of them were as smartly dressed as they had been the day before, but that did little to placate Kris’s sudden sense of revulsion as she saw the smug face of the one, the slightly threatening expression of the other.
“I’m sorry...” she began to apologise immediately, not quite knowing what she was apologising for.
“That’s quite alright, Mrs Stone,” Francis replied smoothly, placing one hand on the door. “Can we come in?”
“I’m afraid that Daniel isn’t here at the moment,” she told him politely. Which you know very well, she thought to herself, suddenly perturbed as to why they were here.
“That’s okay. We could wait for him here, if you don’t mind.”
“Actually, I do mind,” she said, starting to push the door shut. To her surprise, the door stopped suddenly and, as she looked down she saw one of Francis’s feet in the doorway. Taking advantage of her uncertainty, he pushed the door open with a determined motion and strode forward straight at her. Without thinking, Kris took a few steps backwards and immediately both men were inside the room.
“Wait,” she began to say, cursing the slight tremulousness in her voice. “What are you doing?”
“There’s no need for you to worry about that,” Matthew told her as Francis made his way to the centre of the room. The flicker in his eyes filled her with a strange foreboding.
“You should leave,” she told both of them. “Daniel will be back here soon.”
Looking through the windows at the view, Francis made a tsk sound. “You know that isn’t true, Kris. May I call you Kris?” He turned his head around to look at her over his shoulder. She didn’t respond and he shrugged slightly. “Anyway, Daniel will be waiting for a meeting with my father all morning. Given the choice between an audience with Pop and returning to you, I’m afraid you lose, hands down.”
Matthew laughed at this, a somewhat nasty sound, and Kris realised that he had taken a few paces closer to her, making her draw away from him in slight panic.
This caused Francis to smirk, and he and the other man stared at each other for a few moments, communicating wordlessly. Then, suddenly, Francis forced a large, artificially bright smile. “I tell you what,” he said to Kris, full of fake bonhomie, “I wouldn’t mind that whisky, now.”
The behaviour of the two men was starting to frighten Kris a little, but more than that it was irritating her immensely. “Well, I would mind,” she snapped. “Please, go now. Just leave. I’ll tell Daniel that you were here.”
Ignoring her, Francis moved towards the cabinet and began to pour himself a whisky. Outraged, Kris wondered whether it would be a good idea to stride across the room and snatch the glass from his hand. Because of this, it took her a few seconds to realise that Matthew had left his position behind her and was now walking towards the door.
As he locked it, her apprehension turned to an unspoken dread. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Please, I won’t ask again. Leave and I won’t say a word of this to Daniel.”
Sipping the whisky, Francis raised one eyebrow and smirked at her. “I’m sure you won’t, not that it would matter if you did. Pop has your precious Daniel by the balls, and your husband won’t dare to do anything that offends him. I think that leaves us more than enough time to see what lessons Daniel Stone has been teaching you.”
Kris wanted to snarl, but at the same time she could feel the blood draining away from her face. Her nostrils twitching with a mixture of anger and fear, she began to walk towards the door. When Matthew grabbed her wrist, her indignation knew no bounds.
“Let me go!” she hissed, wriggling her arm and trying to pull free of his grip. He laughed at this, as did Francis, so Kris stamped as hard as she could on the inside of his heel. The action surprised him rather than caused any pain as she herself was barefoot, but he let go and laughed hard as Francis came towards her, waving his finger.
“Naughty, naughty,” he said, standing a couple of feet before her now. “Mind you, Matt and I like a girl with spirit, don’t we?”
“Sure do.”
“But too much spirit... that’s not really on now, is it?”
Kris refused to reply but stood between the two men, rubbing her wrist as she glanced sideways towards the door.
“So, let me explain to you how it’s going to be,” Francis continued. “Pop is one of the richest men in the country—which also makes him one of the richest men in the world. Much richer than your precious husband. As such, that means that when I decide I want something, I take it. Do you understand?”
Kris was not really listening, but instead glancing towards the door. If she could just get to it, she would be able to attract attention: in her mind, she had already assessed the little man in front of her and she knew he would not stop her if there was any hint of real trouble. He was a coward—she could see that immediately.
Francis, however, was frowning as he looked at her. “Are you listening?” he asked tetchily. When she refused to reply, he reached out with one hand, still holding the glass in the other, and gripped her cheek, pulling her face towards him.
“I said, are you listening!” His own cheeks were starting to flush with anger.
“Fuck you,” Kris sneered, and with a feeling of utter contempt for him spat in his face. This stunned him enough for his fingers to twitch apart and she turned and ran towards the door...
...only to be caught by the other man. He was considerably stronger than Francis, and lifted her easily off her feet. As his arms had formed a prison over hers, she lashed out and kicked with her legs, trying to hurt him as Francis looked on and laughed.
“As I said, naughty naughty. A bit of spirit’s nice to break, but too much...” As he came nearer, she glared at him.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “Let me fucking go! I’ll call the police. When Daniel finds out about this—”
“He’ll do nothing. He wouldn’t dare.” F
rancis’s face was insufferable to look on, and Kris lashed out a couple of times but he remained out of reach of her legs. In any case, she was still trying to break free from Matthew’s grip.
“Let me tell you a few secrets about the world—and a few secrets about your husband, too.” Francis’s eyes were fixed upon her now. “People like me, we get what we want, when we want it. You, you’re one of the little people. Your opinion doesn’t count for shit, do you understand?”
Kris refused to indulge him. Her heart was beating more rapidly than ever before now, a mixture of fear and anger, but she struggled a little less, hoping that the other man would loosen his grip and allow her to escape.
“Daniel, Daniel Stone... I used to fucking hero-worship him, you know. When I was at college, Pop thought he was the best thing ever, treated him more like a son than he did me.” For a second, a trace of bitterness crossed Francis’s eyes and Kris understood entirely what this was about. “Well, I soon set out to show both of them: anything Daniel Stone could do, I could do better.”
Kris’s nostrils flared slightly at this. You’re nothing, she wanted to scream at him, but still she bided her time.
“I could never get it, how women seemed to want him, even though he treated them like shit. I mean, your husband is no fucking oil painting now, is he? Even you’ve got to admit that. But then I realised the truth. It was precisely because he did treat them like shit that he could get all the cunt he wanted. When I understood that, there was no looking back for me.”
“And you think Daniel treats everyone like shit, do you?” Kris’s words were measured, her anger held in check.
“Well, doesn’t he? I’ve heard stories, how he likes to push beautiful women around, how they let him do anything he wants. Well, you’re not exactly the youngest woman any more, and I’ve had... well, frankly, I’ve had more beautiful ones than you, but you should realise that I’m going to show you that how Daniel treats you is nothing compared to what I can do.”
Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire Page 9
