Beating Ruby

by Camilla Monk

  The boy took the bills with a firm nod. “Chicken and salads for four. Blueberry muffin for the miss, you got it!”

  “And get something for yourself as well,” March said as we stepped into the elevator and watched Delroy race out of the building.

  March punched a seven-digit code on a small screen near the elevator buttons, and the doors closed. I studied him while the car took us to the fourteenth and penultimate floor. “He seems to really like you.”

  “I suppose so. He needed a little help with finding a job for his probation. I pushed his résumé here.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Probation?”

  “Well, Delroy used to sell . . . medical marijuana in Central Park.” March cleared his throat. “There might’ve also been a few misunderstandings involving cars and personal items.”

  I blinked. Alex’s lips pressed together in a visible effort not to laugh.

  “He’s a good kid,” March added, as if in afterthought, when the elevator doors opened.

  A sad tenderness warmed my chest upon hearing this. Back in Tokyo, Dries had told me a little about March’s past. His mother had died when he was still young, and he had been “raised” by his father, a small-time British drug dealer operating his business in Cape Town’s slums. Growing up neglected and left to cope alone with his anxiety issues and obsessive-compulsive disorder, March had soon dropped out of school and resorted to the same survival tactics Delroy had, turning into a violent thug breaking into villas for cash and jewelry. By the time he was seventeen, he had earned himself an eight-month ticket to one of South Africa’s worst juvenile prisons. He had met Dries after that, who had given him his “chance”—a mold to be shaped into, a way out of this hopeless life, a fraternity to welcome him, where he’d finally become someone. But at the price of his very soul.

  I gathered March saw himself in Delroy and wanted to help him find his way out of the street, hopefully with a regular job rather than by becoming a hit man. Those were the thoughts I entertained when the elevator doors parted, revealing a long hallway whose cream walls were covered halfway up with wooden panels. My eyes darted left and right; there were two double doors on the opposite wall, both closed. A hint of oil soap lingered in the air; the whole place was perfectly clean and silent.

  “Does anyone else work here?” I asked, as March led us down the hallway.

  “No. I purchased the top two floors, and for now it’s only Phyllis and me.”

  I gawked. “That’s a lot of space for two.”

  March shrugged. “Phyllis believed I was saving too much and needed to diversify my assets. New York real estate seemed like a stable investment, and the previous owner was in a hurry to sell. I think we made a satisfying deal.”

  I looked around. “So you’re planning on renting part of it?”

  His lips twisted sideways. “Hmm, I’m not certain. This is admittedly too much space, but I don’t like the idea of sharing my premises with strangers.”

  “Then let’s rent to people we already know instead.”

  My gaze shifted from March’s peaceful smile to the door that had just opened in front of us. Leaning against its wooden frame was a woman in her early forties. A pink silk blouse and black cigarette pants clung to her lean, athletic figure. Long red curls fell over her shoulders, which she pushed back as she showed us into a large office with a breathtaking view of Central Park. Once I stood next to her, I realized that her stilettos made her almost as tall as March. And by the way, I was grinning so madly she probably thought I was going to propose.

  “You’re Phyllis!” I squeaked, overexcited to meet March’s top-notch assistant at long last. There was a face to go with that sultry voice now!

  She wiggled her hips and struck a little pose. “The one and only.”

  Alex, who had been silently scanning the nearly empty office until now, stepped forward and extended his hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, I’m Agent—”

  “Alexander Morgan,” she finished for him, plum lips curving in a mysterious smile.

  “You can call me Alex.”

  “Sounds good,” she said, walking around a smoked glass desk and over to a long gray sideboard. There, next to a minimalist paper lamp, sat a midnight-blue lacquered box. She opened it. “So, Island, Alex, Skittles? We also have coffee and tea, if you’d like.”

  The two of us stared down at the box’s contents. Someone—couldn’t imagine who—had sorted the candy by color, in perfectly straight lines. Also, that someone apparently only ate the strawberry one. I picked a grape Skittle carefully, feeling March’s anxious stare digging holes in my back. Alex seemed to hesitate and, after two seconds or so during which his hand hovered over the candy, chose a lemon one. Now, I’m sure it was an accident when his fingers trembled. He didn’t mean to mess up the lemon and green apple lines.

  March was at our side in an instant, slamming the box shut with a sharp intake of air. “Delroy is going to bring us dinner; that’s enough Skittles for you two.”

  I winced. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right; I’ll reorganize them later.” He shot Alex a withering glare. “You’re not responsible.”

  The culprit rolled his eyes at March’s antics, and I couldn’t restrain a chuckle. Then the laugh died in my throat, because on the desk I saw something. Phyllis, Alex, and March seem to notice the shift in my expression, the three of them sobering as I approached the sleek surface hesitantly.

  The coupons were stacked next to a pile of various documents all labeled with colored Post-its depending on their category. Orange was apparently for bills, turquoise for tax-deductible receipts, and so forth. I took the incomplete coupon book and examined the pink logo featuring a little maid silhouette.

  It was stupid, in a way. I mean, I had suspected he was behind it, and I had been through so much already—the car chase, the shootings, the explosions, the baby octopus. And then there had been those few minutes with Alex. “Not on the same page” didn’t even begin to describe our current situation. So you’d think I could hold my ground in the face of a free cleaning hours program. But that’s what did it for me. After this exhausting day, seeing the coupons, feeling them in my hand, crumpling them with a trembling fist . . . It was a tangible reminder of just how close and yet so far March had been for all those months—a ghost hovering above me, tinkering with my life, when I missed him so much I sometimes couldn’t sleep. And he was still here, standing a few feet away from me. Frustratingly out of reach.

  I knew his attitude owed a lot to Alex’s presence, but it was only part of the issue. No, the root of the problem was March’s—or was it Hedwardh’s?—need for control. Control of the Skittles, of my apartment, of my feelings . . . of his. Control of fricking everything and everyone, at any cost.

  I massaged the dull ache I could feel rising in my temples. “March, can we go somewhere to talk?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Phyllis cringe.

  “Yes, let’s go into my office,” he said, gesturing to a closed door behind Phyllis’s desk. His eyes slanted in Alex’s direction. “Alone.”

  Alex sustained March’s glare with one of his own. “She doesn’t leave my sight.”

  My last nerve snapped at this unbidden display of male territoriality. I straightened my shoulders and attempted to outglare them both, like I had once seen March’s flamboyant ex do. “I’m not a package! You”—I pointed a finger at Alex—“will let me fucking breathe for once! If I want to talk to March, I will! And you”—I turned to face March—“need to stop playing with me! I. Am. Not. A. Fucking. Sim!”

  “I know that. I know it all too well!”

  Shivers cascaded down my spine at the barely repressed fury in his voice. Hot, cold, like thousands of needles in my shoulders, then my neck, my head.

  “I-I—” As I tried to form a coherent sentence through all that confusion and anger, the buzzing in my temples turned into a pounding that seemed to resonate inside my skull in painful waves. I buried my
face in my hands; I could no longer stand the blinding white of the room’s lighting, and around me the walls were spinning. I remember the way my knees shook, while a little voice in my head noted that it was a miracle my brain had waited so long to take revenge for all the stress it had been subjected to over the past twenty-four hours.

  I didn’t fall. I saw Alex lunge forward to catch me, but March was quicker, and in a split second I was nestled in his arms, my fingers gripping his jacket. And my eyeballs hurt so much I wanted to scream. A big thank-you to Dries’s goon—not only had that asswipe killed my mother, but the resulting car accident had left me with “minor cerebrovascular sequels,” as in a two-week coma and occasional but debilitating migraines for the rest of my life.

  I vaguely heard March say something to Alex and Phyllis before my feet left the ground. I know he carried me up a flight of stairs, but I had resorted to covering my throbbing forehead with my forearm, so the whole trip felt like riding on a boat swaying in the dark.

  There were more stairs, and I was laid on a bed on a darkened mezzanine, registered the weight of a comforter covering me. On the pillow lingered a fragrance I knew: a combination of laundry, some kind of lemony soap, and the indefinable musk of another human being. March’s scent.

  He left for a while and came back with some kind of meds. Halfway passed out in the haze of my pain, buried under the covers, I registered his fingers threading in my hair as he held a glass of water to my lips. I swallowed the caplet and sipped the cool liquid with difficulty, a trickle running down my chin—which he wiped diligently.

  My eyes had already closed when I felt him readjust the comforter. A long sigh breezed against my cheek, followed by a soft contact. March had pressed a kiss to my temple.

  At last, I welcomed the viscous night engulfing me.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Tea

  “He will destroy me like he destroyed all the other girls who ended up in his playroom. Yet I know I’ll sign his contract. Because it’s the only way this gorgeous, dark billionaire will be mine. I look him in the eyes, my jaw set. “‘We need to clarify a few terms.’”

  “He crosses his arms over his $50,000 silk suit.

  “I point at the first page. ‘What do you mean by teabagging?’”

  —P. G. Edwards, Roped and Broken

  I’m not proud of myself—when I finally cracked an eye open to stare at the ceiling, it was past noon. Way to go when the clock was ticking and we couldn’t afford to waste any time. I did feel better, and I hadn’t thrown up in spite of the nausea that often came as a bonus with my migraines. So, apart from the burning shame of waking up in March’s bed at lunchtime, things were great. I pushed aside his plain white comforter to sit up, and I looked around the sparsely furnished mezzanine overlooking the living room. I gathered that this was the fifteenth floor’s penthouse, right above his office. On the wall across from the mezzanine were the same type of windows I had seen downstairs, bathing the place in a dull light and showcasing the silhouettes of Central Park’s trees.

  I carefully slid out of the bed. My feet grazed something soft on the wooden floor. There was a pair of white terry hotel slippers waiting for me next to my ballet flats, which he had removed—and cleaned, it seemed. I fought a smile. Housekeeping level: over 9000.

  After some lengthy stretching, I padded down the stairs. Under the mezzanine was one of those sleek gray modern kitchens that look like it’s forbidden to eat in them. No sign of life on the stone counters; a long teak table; one chair—this particular detail tugged at my heart a little.

  Across the room, and forming what I understood to be the bulk of March’s furniture, were a dark upholstered leather couch facing away from the kitchen and a couple of wooden shelves where he seemed to store books and an intriguing collection of colorful African tin cars. Other than that, I was more or less standing in the middle of two thousand square feet of nothing. Plain walls, no rugs, no photos, no paintings, not even a TV.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  I jumped at the sound of March’s voice behind me. I turned to find him standing in the penthouse’s doorway—which meant he had somehow known I was awake. I shuddered at the idea that the place might be riddled with cameras and he had seen me scratch my butt when getting up.

  I gave him a thumbs-up and yawned. “Peachy.”

  He held a paper bag in his hands. “You missed dinner, but I kept your blueberry muffin.”

  Guarded, secretive, but ever thoughtful—March in a nutshell. My eyes performed a quick scan of his body. Clean jeans and a white shirt had replaced the clothes he had ruined during his fall from the tram. He had rolled his sleeves on his forearms with great care to form flat and even folds. No wrinkles anywhere, of course. Dammit, how did he even do that? I could still see faint bruises on the bridge of his nose and on his brow, but overall he seemed fine.

  “Thank you for last night. I’m sorry I lost my temper like that. It’s been a difficult day,” I mumbled.

  A gentle smile creased his dimples. “Don’t apologize. Would you like something to drink?”

  I scratched my head. “Why not.”

  “Tea?”

  “Tea sounds good.”

  Now that I was more or less focused, I noticed a patch of green near one of the windows. I sauntered across the room. “Is this Gerald?”

  March nodded while filling a kettle with water.

  Gerald. The legendary roommate. Also an orange tree.

  Back during our date in Tokyo, March had opened up to me about their twisted relationship and his constant horticultural efforts to perhaps, someday, get decent oranges, instead of the botanical insult I was currently beholding. Gracing the branches was a grand total of three greenish lumps whose shape suggested Gerald had been recently raped by a gingerroot. They were hardly bigger than tangerines, and one of them threatened to fall off any moment. I scanned the tree’s surroundings: from the soft carpet on which its pot rested, to the water spray bottles and Superthrive plant vitamins, March had tried everything to please his bitter friend, including the purchase of a small UV lamp, and music, if that mini speaker was any indication.

  Maybe Gerald didn’t like Conway Twitty.

  Behind me, I heard the faint clatter of cups being set on the kitchen’s island. I watched him pour boiling water into each of them with practiced gestures, and a wooden, smoky aroma soon filled the air.

  “Lapsang souchong,” I said, joining him.

  “Would you prefer something lighter?”

  “No.” I leaned against the island and took one of the cups, holding it in my hands and breathing in the peculiar blend of smoked tea. “March. Are we gonna talk?”

  He took a long sip of his tea, dark blue eyes never leaving me. After he was done, he deliberately placed his cup back on the counter. “How did you hear about I2000009?”

  Oh.

  The way I had envisioned it, I’d be the one asking the questions and grilling him until he fell to his knees and told me all the things I wanted to hear. Except now it was my heart racing, and I knew my ears were turning a guilty shade of burgundy, while I was almost certain color had otherwise drained from the rest of my face.

  I had been just as unworthy of March’s trust as he had been of mine. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told him back in Paris. Perhaps because it had made no sense at the time. We had been looking for Mr. Étienne, my mother’s “notary”—not really a licensed professional, but close enough, I guess—and found him in a strip club. Then guys had started shooting at us, so it wasn’t the best time to tell March. Then . . . then it had just become my secret, something warm that I cherished and kept jealously because it was all I had left from my mother.

  My two fathers had wiped almost every single trace of her, but I had this—the secret my mother’s notary had whispered in my ear before being shot.

  I2000009. I two million nine.

  And I had no idea what it meant or what to do with it. Innumerable Internet searches and hours spe
nt torturing my brain had brought no results—and here I was, in front of a cup of tea, hearing March basically admit that he knew about it already.

  “How . . . How did you learn about that? I never discussed it with you.”

  On the counter, March’s fist clenched. “Indeed. If you intended to keep this secret, you should have perhaps better protected your online activity. A shame for an engineer of your caliber, I must say.”

  My first instinct was to ask him if he read my Facebook posts as well, or what he thought of my new shower gel—I knew he liked strawberries. Exploding and yelling that he was an overcontrolling douche doubled with a goddamn stalker wouldn’t help me out of that particular pinch, though. I took a deep breath and sustained his hard gaze. “I think my mom was trying to tell me something. She’s the one who gave that code to Étienne, and he whispered it to me at the Rose Paradise.”

  “I suspected so.”

  I went on excitedly. “She said in her letter that she’d made a huge mistake, but that Dries would never betray his brothers for her. So maybe this was her way of—”

  “Hold on a second. Her letter? I thought Dries’s men had stolen it in Paris. How have you read it?”

  Oh. Yeah . . . That’s the detail I forgot to mention. Against the rules of every single rom-com ever written, it wasn’t March who had caught me on my way to Narita Airport to patch things up after our adventures in Tokyo and his dumping me. It was Dries.

  There’s this old cliché dictating that whatever criminals do, they never do so for personal reasons, that they have this uncanny ability to compartmentalize all aspects of their lives. Richard Kuklinski posing with his kids in family pictures at the same time that he killed two hundred guys for the Mafia is a good example of that, and Dries undoubtedly fit the profile as well. Never mind that he had kidnapped me and tried to beat March to death fifteen hours prior. The incident being over and the battle lost—his own words—he saw no wrong in spending some time with his daughter.

  It went sort of okay, and for all his parental shortcomings, Dries gave me two things that day that I would treasure for the rest of my life: a hug, and my mother’s last letter, which she had written before her death. The hug was everything you’d expect from a man more used to crushing people’s vertebrae than dispensing comfort to newly found family members. Awkward, a little emotional. Weird, I guess. The letter . . . honestly, I didn’t expect he’d hand it back to me. It was my mother’s good-bye, a short and pragmatic confession lifting a tiny bit of the veil under which her many secrets rested. A tale of love and regrets.