The Count

by corwin, monica

  I paid little attention to the surroundings, until a red brick started to appear more frequently. Then I realized where he’d taken me. How the fuck did he find out? The book, and that bastard Danglers, must have recorded what I explicitly told him not to.

  We stopped at the curb and I got out on my own. Anger blazing brighter than the guild and shame and hurt right now. “What are you thinking bringing me here? You fucking bastard. You have no right to bring me here.”

  He sauntered up, hands in his pockets, enjoying the torment on my face no doubt. “Oh, I have every right. You belong to me until I let you go.”

  I grabbed his arm and whispered. “Then kill me. Be done with it. Shoot me and then move on with your life.”

  He shrugged me off hard and I let him. When he started walking, I had no choice but to follow and try to mitigate the damage.

  “Welcome to Arthur Hall. The University thanks all our wonderful donors for their help tonight.” A young man announced from the stage.

  I sighed in relief. Not him. Thank God.

  Then a group of men got on the stage and my world melted around me into a pinpoint of a puddle. He stood up there looking so tall and big and beautiful. I couldn’t keep the tears back now. I stepped against the wall and used it to support myself.

  Someone approached. “Ma’am are you alright.”

  I couldn’t draw attention to myself. He couldn’t see me. Especially not like this. Eddy stepped up and took my arm over his elbow. “She’s fine. My wife just needs some air.”

  He dragged me into the hallway and I pressed my burning forehead against the cold dry wall.

  “What the fuck was that?” He demanded in a harsh whisper.

  Id lost. He’d won. The boy looked exactly like Eddy. He always had and I didn’t know how I hadn’t put together Will and Eddy sooner. “His name is Albert Dantes. He’s your son.”

  Nineteen

  Mercy

  People passed, oblivious to the pent-up fury we both held back. He leaned over me, his arm braced above my head. Kids were starting to slip out and make a break for better things to do on a Friday night. We needed to get out of here so we could talk openly. Yell at each other, openly.

  “Let’s go back to the car,” I urged.

  He stared back at the stage and the group of young men laughing and rough housing in the corner. I pulled his arm. “I’ll explain in the car and we can figure this out.”

  Shame, guilt, anger, betrayal. Everything had created a soupy mess in my stomach. Not to mention the growing human throwing in her mix of hormones to the pot.

  He allowed me to pull him to the car, but his eyes kept straying out the window toward the college building. “Tell me. Now.” Quiet fury lined each utterance and I sat back in the seat preparing to tell him everything.

  “When I say this is the entire story I mean it. I told you the truth earlier, but I left this part off. The reason you wanted to shake out me, was this. Albert. After eighteen years of being abused in every way fathomably by my family, I knew I couldn’t let my child grow up like that.”

  He shifted in the seat and I flinched involuntarily. A flash of hurt hit his features and then cleared away. Damn it, I couldn’t do anything right these days.

  “Continue,” he said.

  I looked back toward the building. This was the first time I’d seen him in person in a very long time. I knew if I let myself get near him, I’d want to talk to him, and then it would spiral out of my control from there. “I didn’t put him up for adoption. I found a wealthy family to take him in and raise him as their own. I paid them every year since then, and I paid for his college. Danglars always handled the payments out of my trust, never knowing what he paid into.”

  I checked his profile for any signs of what to expect. Eddy, my Eddy. I finally got him back and everything is all wrapped up in betrayal and lies. Could we ever clear away enough to have a new start?

  He sat very still and stared out the front window. His silence hurt. My entire body ached, for secrets yet revealed, and all I wanted to do was tell him about it. Explain more, explain better. Enough so he would understand.

  After what felt like eternity, he turned to look at me. No softness in his eyes now. Nothing but hard steel and ice. The same man I met when he swept into my office the first day we met. God that hurt worse. Watching the man he’d become over the last month strip away.

  “I understand,” he said.

  I reached out but he pulled away.

  “I understand. But I hate it. Everything about this situation disgusts me.”

  For the first time since we started fighting I raised my voice. “How the hell was I supposed to know you were alive. Eddy?” I demanded. “You didn’t exactly write to me from prison. And you didn’t tell me the truth until I forced you into it.” Did he see how hypocritical he sounded punishing me for this when he sat on the same side of the criminal fence?

  I pressed my hand flat to my stomach and shook my head. “And guess what, this disgusting situation is about to grow by one. So deal with that.”

  Leaving him with that information, I got out of the car and walked to the curb where some taxis lined up. I directed one to take me to my office. Taylor might there. At the very least I’d be able to pay the taxi driver. In the back window, I watched him scramble out of his own car and rush after the taxi. Too late now. I turned and faced the front.

  Guilt still wracked me, but all my secrets were out now. Eddy was alive. There was nothing left for me anywhere. My business dead, my home stolen, the man I love…a sob threatened to squeak out and I stifled it back with my hand against my lips.

  I loved him. I’d love Eddy forever. And now, as a man, I loved him even more. He’d become beautiful, strong, empathetic. He’d grown despite his adversity, and I got to see proof of that first hand. I couldn’t regret it.

  He could hate me forever. But I knew I’d always love him.

  The car stopped by my building and Taylor’s brooding head poked out the door. “Boss,” he called. A smile on his face until he took a look at me. He paid the drive and carried me into the office.

  Once I sat on the chair he knelt beside me and looked me over. “Are you alright? Did he hurt you. I’ll kill him myself. I don’t care what he threatened.”

  I waved him back. “I need a drink.”

  He brought one back immediately and I stared at it, longing for the burn which would help ease some of this mess in my brain, but then I remembered…I shook my head and handed it to him.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. I just forgot I can’t drink.”

  He stared at me, no doubt puzzled, “what?”

  I pointed to my leg. “Pain killers. Bad idea.”

  I wished I’d had the foresight to bring those bad boys with me right about now. Taylor wandered back to his surveillance. I called out again. “If you see Will. Don’t let him in.”

  A feral smile replaced the quizzical brow dominating his forehead. “My pleasure, Boss.”

  I leaned into the chair. No doubt, I was happy to home. But the hole in my chest told me I’d left something behind.

  Twenty

  Mercy

  I stared at the report on my desk. It screamed at me to take action, do something, anything. But, how could I? After everything I’d done to him. I had no right asking to be apart of his life. He’d left his apartment, sold it, and so far, I hadn’t found a trace of him.

  “Oh my fucking fuck, you’re disgusting,” a voice, said from the doorway.

  I looked up at Taylor standing just inside looking at me like I’d grown a second head. “Excuse me?”

  “Look at you. You’re 40 years old and pining. You are pining over that asshole. Why?”

  The word hadn’t spread about who Will—Eddy—really was. And I wasn’t out there trying to circulate my part of the truth. He’d disappeared as quickly as he showed up and the streets were back to normal. But normal grated on my skin now.

  “It�
�s not something I can explain, Taylor.”

  He threw himself into the chair in front of my desk eyeing me through the dim desk lamp light. “I’m not an idiot. I can take whatever you need to say. And you of all people know I can keep a secret.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you…”

  “But…. you aren’t telling me because you don’t trust me.”

  I sighed, I’d forgotten how difficult Taylor could be when he wanted. Yet another reason why we would have never worked out. I decided not to answer him. I crossed my hands over my belly and leaned back on the chair.

  He wasn’t taking no for an answer. “What if I said I knew where to find your asshole Count? Would you tell me then?”

  The paper on my desk basically told me where he was staying. Taylor always had better and more accurate details. Not that I planned to go see him, anyway.

  Unfortunately, he also knew me too well for my own good—and sanity. “Tell me what you know.”

  He shook his head. “No. You tell me what you know first.”

  I stared at some point over his shoulder so I wouldn’t have to see my face as I said it. Despite my reluctance to tell him about everything. It was more out of personal preservation than lack of trust. “When I was 18 I fell in love, got pregnant, and decided to take care of my baby above everything else. I sent everyone I love to prison and gave the baby up for adoption.”

  Too afraid to meet his eyes I slid my gaze further to the right. “Things out of my control happened next and the only man I ever loved ended up being stuck in prison for twenty years.”

  He interrupted. “You don’t seem the type.”

  I forced my gaze to his. Nothing there but Taylor’s usual hostility. “The type for what? To be a mother?”

  Something in his face softened. “No. To fall in love.”

  A hot tear slid down my face and I jerked my chin away hiding the right side of my face no so he wouldn’t see. Never display weakness. A tenant I lived and died by. Eddy had stripped away the best of my armor with his kisses, his soft words, his touch. Damn him.

  “Anyway,” I said, and wiped the errant tear away. “It wasn’t good for him and then he gets out and decides to seek revenge on all of us who wronged him.”

  “Mother fucker!” Taylor shouted and surged to his feet.

  I rolled my eyes. “Sit down. You aren’t going to touch him.”

  He didn’t do it immediately. “You are in love with the man who got out of prison, held you captive, forced you to do his dirty work, gets you shot at, and then throws you out once he learns you had his child. A real winner there.”

  It was my turn for an outburst, but my voice was even and cold when I could think around the rage choking me. “Sit the fuck down and shut up. You know nothing about what it was like between us, then or what it was like now. So don’t stand there high and mighty like you are innocent of criminal activity. No one here is innocent.”

  We sat in heavy silence and then he leaned in the chair and fished a piece of paper from his pocket. I didn’t move when he slapped it on the desk and walked out of the room.

  It wasn’t until the sound of the outer door slamming wafted into my office did I snag the paper and uncrumple it. The paper held Taylor’s chicken scratch writing in blue ink. An address a few blocks away from my office building.

  Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. Nothing would be able to keep me away, even my own guilt.

  I gathered my jacket, slipped my shoes on, and grabbed my bag from my desk. The outer offices were all empty, as was the street. After the takeover, and then reversion, no one really had the heart for turf politics. Things just drifted back to the status quo where it could. But I didn’t want it anymore.

  I walked to the address and stood outside. It was another high rise and I’d bet good money his home sat right at the top. He did love a good view, always had. I opened the door and a beefy doorman narrowed his eyes as I came closer.

  “I’m here to see a friend.”

  He didn’t ask who, or my name, nothing. Simply said, “top floor, Ms. Mondego. Go on up.”

  In another life, this might have been a trap. In another life, maybe it was.

  I entered the elevator and squared my shoulders like it could give my heart room to rattle itself out of energy inside my rib cage. The floors dinged like death nells, until the last one. Then the doors slid open and I stood there, willing myself to take the step forward across the threshold.

  The door started to close, making the decision for me. I threw myself into his foyer. The place looked very similar to the previous apartment. All dark, broody, begging a visitor to brighten up the place. I wasn’t a good candidate. My home was decorated in similar tones and styles.

  I peeked around a bookcase, waiting for him to pop out at any moment. He didn’t. She found in sprawled over a couch in jeans and a long sleeve cashmere sweater with a book in his hand. The vision shook me. Who the hell was this man now?

  He glanced over his shoulder as I entered. “I wondered when you’d be by to see me.”

  “You were expecting me?”

  He slipped a piece of paper from the back of the book into his place and closed it. “I have to admit I didn’t expect you so soon.”

  Anger pierced through the nerves and other emotions, I wasn’t yet ready to analyze, to boost my confidence. “You found out everything and then you treated me like shit. Like you’d finished playing with your dolls and now they could go back into the house until you were ready to drag them back out again.”

  “Tone down the drama. We talked about this.”

  My anger reached a pitch and I stepped forward and slapped him. Hard. His head snapped to the side and my palm singed in pain. Fucking worth it. “Don’t speak to me like that. I am not your captive. I’m not your whore. I’m not your fucking wife.”

  He narrowed his eyes, his cheek blooming pink from my hand. “According to our agreement, you still belong to me.”

  He crowded closer and I held my ground. “No. I reserved the right to renegotiate this arrangement when it began and I’m calling in that clause.”

  The fucking bastard snorted and flopped back on the couch. He waved his hand at me. “Then negotiate, Mercy. What do you want?”

  Right now, I didn’t want anything from his damn smug face. Earlier, I didn’t know what I wanted either. Some of the anger wore off on the edge of the memories. I plopped next to him, with enough distance in case I needed to slap him again.

  “I don’t know. But it’s not this. Whatever this is festering between us right now. I don’t hate you. I never hated you. Even when you took everything.” I bowed over and placed my head in my hands.

  His tentative fingers dug into my hair at the name of my neck and I froze scared to think scared to breathe, scared to break the moment.

  “I don’t hate you. I didn’t hate you either. No matter what I told myself. Everything I planned, all the revenge, it was a way to keep myself alive. Something to latch on to. A life raft in the storm of prison.”

  I swallowed and sat back, thankful he didn’t stop touching me. “How could you not hate me? After what I did to you, to us?”

  A tear threatened to fall and I let it. I let him see into me. The broken places and the raw ones he’d rubbed the dead skin off in the last month.

  “People do terrible things to each other all the time. Even to those they love. This won’t be the last time we hurt each other.”

  “Last time?” I asked tentatively.

  He dragged my heavily into his lap, having to lift me the last few inches as my coat bunched on his denim. “You want to negotiate. How about a partnership. Equal between you and me. Together we will rule the city side by side.”

  “You want a partnership?”

  “I want a queen.”

  “I want a husband.”

  He sucked in a breath. Whatever he was expecting it wasn’t that word. I pressed him. “What will I have to sacrifice for a ring?”

  He cupped my
cheeks between his hands and pulled me to his lips. “Everything. Give me everything.”

  I twisted on his lap and let him ruck up my skirt while I grappled with his belt buckle. He entered me expertly, one smooth thrust into my heat like he waited to come home all this time.

  It took mere minutes for us to both reach our end panting in each other’s arms. A sheen of sweat beaded at his brow and I watched the light dance on the droplets trying to remember this moment. Lock it in my mind.

  Still inside me, he kissed my mouth, my chin, my neck, my decollate. Once he finished he started over until I stopped him. “Nothing gets in the way this time. Nothing.”

  He nodded, still keeping his vigil, mouth on my skin.

  I dragged him back up by the hair. “And we will never, not ever, contact Albert. He has a good life and I will not see it tainted by…” I wanted to say us. But I also didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “I get it. And I understand. You stopped a cycle far too long left alone. You saved him. You saved my son, and for that—” He wrapped his hands around the back of my neck into my hair, and cupped my face close to his. Each exhale heated my mouth. “I’ll always love you.”

  My mouth flopped open like a fish of its own accord. It took some time but I found the words. “I love you too. I loved you then. I loved you when I thought you were dead. I even loved you when you were being a dick to me.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll remember that for the next time.”

  I wriggled in his arms. His cock already swelling within me. “What do we do now?”

  He licked his lips and twisted me around to lay flat on the couch underneath him. “There are a lot of things we can do now. But I think you mean for the future.”

  I nodded as he resituated himself inside me again. The pleasure spiked through me and I knew I wouldn’t be up for conversation soon.