Laurence’s gaze flit toward the bedroom door, then he nodded in agreement and sat back in his seat.
Now was the time.
Frederick slid into Laurence’s mind and took over. He had studied the processes Laurence used to trigger his own visions and felt confident enough that he could reproduce them now without all the fuss of convincing Laurence to do it himself.
It was like fishing. One baited the hook, and then sat back with patience and waited for the right moment to reel in the catch. Frederick’s — and therefore Laurence’s — bait had proven ineffective last time, but Frederick had asked the wrong questions.
This time there would be no mistake, and he pushed Laurence’s thoughts in the direction he wished them to go in. It was pointless looking at Mother’s death.
But Icky had seen something, so that was where Frederick steered Laurence.
Why does Quentin believe his father was the killer?
Images flickered past Laurence, bobbing by as though borne on a stream. Roses. Bandages. Doctors.
Mother.
Laurence’s instinct pulled toward a vision, so together they dove into it head first.
26
FREDERICK
Quentin lay in a bed Laurence didn’t recognize, but Frederick did. The antique four-poster was over three hundred years old, and had resided within these chambers for its entire life. These were Icky’s rooms at home, and Quentin looked no older than eighteen. Stick-thin, white as a ghost, his blackened and swollen eyes drifted half-open then stuttered shut again as though he weren’t ready to wake just yet.
Bright yellow roses sat in a vase by his bedside. The vase was older than the bed.
His breathing was labored. Crackling.
Laurence rushed to his side. He cried out in pain, as though Quentin’s punctured lung were his own, but he couldn’t touch the figure in the bed.
Frederick looked toward the door as it opened. At first he presumed one of the staff had come to check on Icky, but instead it was Mother. Radiant, beautiful Mother, whose eyes were dark with exhaustion and her features set with forced composure.
“Oh, Tintin,” she breathed as she came closer. “My poor baby boy.” Mother sighed as she sat by the bed and folded her delicate little hand around Icky’s. “No more,” she breathed. “It’s over. I promise you, it’s over.”
Quentin’s eyelids flickered, but didn’t open.
She reached out and brushed ink-black hair from his forehead. Her eyes creased and she held back a soft sob, but then her will broke and the tears fell in earnest.
“This is all my fault,” she gasped. “I shouldn’t have ever agreed to the wedding. You should never have been born. I’m so sorry.”
The door swung open with a creak.
Father stepped into the room.
He gazed at his wife with disdain as he pushed the door closed. “Stop crying. It’s unbecoming of you.”
Mother patted the tears from her cheeks, but retained her hold on Icky’s hand. “What did you do to him?”
“What needed to be done.”
Mother shook her head numbly. “It was never this bad before. You broke three of his ribs, Hieronymus! The doctor says it will be weeks before he’s fully recovered! What do you intend to tell Morty and Archie?”
Father shrugged his broad shoulders. “Car accident. You know he won’t be laid up that long. He’s robust, he can take it.”
“But he’s eighteen now.” Mother finally extracted her hand from Quentin’s so that she could stand, and she drew her head up high. “It’s over. You’ve done what you needed to. You promised me this would stop when he turned eighteen. You promised!”
“It’s over,” the duke rumbled. He stepped toward the bed and eyed Quentin, then looked to his wife. “You knew the price of this match, Elizabeth.”
“No!” She rounded on him, fury lighting her eyes. “No! You said that he would be hurt. You said there would be blood. But you never said how much! And you never said you wouldn’t stop no matter how much I begged you to!”
“Do you think I wanted to continue?” Now Father’s features twisted in anger, mirroring Mother’s own. “Do you think I relished any of this? I did what had to be done for the future of our line.” He thrust a finger toward Mother. “And perhaps if your family had this level of fortitude you would not have been resigned to marry into mine.”
She stared at him in horror. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Father shook his head, and his anger faded as quickly as it had roused. “You married for power, Elizabeth. But like most who seek power, you did not like the price.”
The duchess blanched, then lashed out and slapped her husband across the cheek. The snap was so loud that it had to have stung them both, yet neither flinched.
“You married me for my power.” She gestured to Icky. “This won’t go on,” she hissed. “If you lay a finger on him again, I’ll ruin you.”
Hieronymus lifted an eyebrow and raised his chin.
“Elizabeth, dear, if you ever stand in my way, I’ll ensure that when they find your body, there won’t be a mark on it.”
Mother’s skin whitened. Genuine fear crossed her features. She took a step back, only to bump against the bed. “You wouldn’t dare,” she whispered.
Quentin’s eyes flickered open for a fleeting moment.
Father eyed his oldest son until Icky shut his eyes again, then looked to Mother. “Car accident,” he stated. “If anyone believes otherwise I shall hold you personally accountable.”
Hieronymus turned on his heel and left the room, and Elizabeth covered her mouth with her hand.
Frederick pulled Laurence back from the vision and scrubbed it from his mind immediately. There was no purpose in allowing him to remember it right now. Laurence had Wilson to deal with, and Frederick wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.
If he played his cards right, Laurence would look back on this of his own free will at some point. The vision was horrific, but the temptation to allow it to confirm his own worst suspicions was too great right now. He was too angry. He would have to wait until he had calmed himself to re-evaluate it.
But right this very moment it seemed as though Icky may well have been correct after all.
HE LEFT the apartment with the flimsiest of excuses for his half-finished tea and ensconced himself within the car. He needed something to distract himself with, and until Michael was a little more stable, that distraction had to come from elsewhere.
Frederick eyed his emails.
Wilson would do. The man was a murderer who would never be brought to justice by mundane means. He had led to Icky’s current state through his carelessness and showed no sign of slowing down. For all that his better judgement urged him to keep his distance, Frederick was itching for a fight, and Wilson was the only game in town.
It was time to kick the hornet’s nest.
He spent a few minutes searching for information online. There had to be an American version of the Land Registry, and he located it within moments, but it took him a while to work out how to derive the assessor’s parcel number from Wilson’s address and then input that into the county records search engine. The websites were so poorly designed that they made his head ache, but he finally dredged up scanned documents and downloaded them to his phone.
A flicker of satisfaction sparked within him.
The forms were completed in English, despite the Russian name and return address. He imagined that was most likely a legal requirement, but it certainly made his life far simpler. He Googled some more until he found a Russian phone directory service which accepted English input, then copied his newfound best friend into the relevant fields.
“Mm.” He copied and pasted the resulting number, added the correct country code, then dialed.
It took a while for his call to bounce through the intercontinental routing services, and when he heard the pulse of the ringing tone he closed his eyes so that he could focus better. Reaching out a
cross a phone line to read whomever was at the remote end was difficult, but it would prove necessary. Frederick very much doubted that a man who owned property worth several million dollars answered his own phone.
The line clicked, and Frederick reached out quickly as the voice at the far end began to speak.
Vasily Petrovich Sapozhnikov?
No. A switchboard operator.
He pushed her into routing his call through to the correct line, and this time the person who picked up was his target. Vasily’s words were sharp, and his thoughts translated roughly into what time do you think this is?
“Vasily Petrovich,” Frederick murmured. “I have a business proposition for you.”
It wasn’t a proposition, of course. And Frederick didn’t care whether Sapozhnikov wanted to hear it. He didn’t have a whole lot of time before stretching himself so far exhausted him completely, so he dug out some important details and scribbled them down as quickly as he could. He retrieved Sapozhnikov’s direct phone number, his personal email address, and his net worth.
“Who are you?” Sapozhnikov was gruff. He sounded older, but Frederick wasn’t interested in getting back into his head to find out how old.
“Someone who is going to help you take care of some vermin,” Frederick rasped. “I’ll send you an email.”
And you will agree to everything in it.
The push took almost every last ounce of strength he had left, and he withdrew from Sapozhnikov’s mind before he could slide into a migraine. Frederick hung up, dropped his phone to the seat, then ran his fingers into his hair to massage his scalp. It was as much as he could do to stay awake as the smooth, quiet car journey attempted to sway him to sleep.
He would buy Wilson’s home out from under him, whether Sapozhnikov wanted to sell it or not, and the moment it was in his hands he could use it to light a fire under Wilson’s arse.
This nonsense had dragged out quite long enough, and Frederick had bigger things to worry about than some small-time crook. Wilson was going to pay for all that he had done.
Frederick would make damn sure of it.
27
MIKEY
What he’d found online wasn’t a clinic. It was a straight-up laboratory. They took all their bookings and payment online, and all Mikey had to do was show up, piss into a sample bottle, let them take his blood, and walk away. They were even gonna email him the results in a few days. It cost close to four hundred bucks, but money bought the fastest, newest tests, apparently. They even had some fancy cutting-edge tech which could pick up on HIV way more accurately than checking for antibodies. It cost extra, but fuck it. The power of Frederick’s MasterCard was absolute.
Well, almost. Mikey couldn’t help but regret going for the tests once he was done. What if he came back positive for anything? Meds for the stuff that could be cleared up weren’t cheap, but if it turned out he’d picked up HIV from somewhere, that was a life-long financial commitment and he had no idea whether Frederick would be willing to make it for a guy he considered to be only one step above a Barbie doll.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
It was Laurence’s fault. That was pretty clear by now. Laurence started boning Frederick’s brother, Frederick came to San Diego to check it all out and make sure Laurence was on the level, then Frederick found out about Mikey and decided to kill some time while he was in town.
Were his bodyguards here to protect him, or to protect Frederick’s investment?
Mikey’s mood soured as the team drove him back to the hotel and escorted him up to the penthouse. It really was like being a prisoner. He figured they’d probably watch him take a leak if he had to, but thankfully they stopped at the suite’s door and didn’t follow him inside.
He shut the door after himself and leaned back against it with his eyes closed. For a while, everything was peaceful. He was alone, nobody was watching him, nobody wanted anything from him.
So when he opened his eyes again it took him a while to realize Frederick was there.
It wasn’t that Mikey wasn’t observant. But the curtains were drawn, the lights off, and Frederick was so still that Mikey had mistaken him for part of the furniture at first. Only once his vision adjusted from the bright summer sunshine to the gloom in here did he make out the pale shape in the armchair.
His heart picked up the pace at the surprise. “Frederick? That you?”
Frederick made some vague sound, and Mikey had no idea if it was supposed to mean anything.
He took cautious steps toward the armchair, half afraid that Frederick would turn his brain inside out or whatever it was the guy could do, but nothing happened.
“I went to the—”
“Sh.”
Mikey stopped by the chair and looked down. This close, he could see Frederick had his eyes screwed shut. The guy’s features were set in a faint grimace. He looked like he was in pain.
“Do you need—”
“No.” The word was clipped, and barely more than a whisper.
There wasn’t a whole lot he could do if Frederick wasn’t gonna tell him what was wrong, so Mikey backed off and grabbed the laptop, then took it upstairs to his room. Damned if he was just going to sit around in the dark while Frederick told him to shut up. He had more important shit to do than that.
MIKEY HID IN HIS ROOM, but he left the door open in case Frederick got up and started trashing the place or murdering small children or whatever else it was rich guys who took people for toys did when they were bored. Every now and then he snuck out of the bedroom and looked over the mezzanine banister down to the living room, but Frederick didn’t move for ages, so he slunk away again. If Frederick was dying, at least he was doing it quietly.
In the meantime, Mikey dug up whatever he could on the guy downstairs. He didn’t expect the internet to be full of horror stories about how Frederick d’Arcy controlled people’s minds, and after a couple of hours of searching he at least thought he could’ve found something juicy, but the internet seemed way more obsessed about the older twin.
He found stuff about how Frederick’s mom had died a few years back. That seemed pretty bad, but then people died all the time. Maybe rich kids thought they were above that kinda crap. They lived in a world where money solved everything, but people they loved still died and there was nothing they could do about it. Hell, it was probably why Frederick was so hot for the idea of controlling Mikey’s life. Maybe he just wanted something he could rely on.
Mikey curled his lip.
Stop feeling sorry for the guy! Have you seen how he fucking lives?
Yeah, that didn’t help either. Apparently the d’Arcy family house was some massive castle in the British countryside, and though it didn’t look like Mikey’s idea of a castle, it was still fancy enough to make him catch his breath. According to Wikipedia there were over 140 rooms in the house, and all the photos he Googled up looked like each one of those rooms could pay for a regular person’s entire life from cradle to grave. The place was stuffed to the gills with antiques, people paid fortunes to have their weddings there, and some of it was even open to the public. Like, people paid actual money to go look at Frederick’s house.
That was insane. There were people starving in the world, and tourists paid money to make rich people even richer.
He dug a little more, but everything about Frederick was super dry and boring. Stuff about him doing great for his fancy school’s rugby team back when he was a kid, which kinda looked like football but without any armor. Playing a dangerous sport didn’t seem to match Frederick’s obsession with taking care of his body, so that must’ve come later. Maybe after his mom died, or after his super mind powers developed. Mikey couldn’t know without asking.
He found more modern stuff, too, about Frederick coming top of his class at his stupid expensive university. The guy was training to be a lawyer, which made so much sense that Mikey almost laughed out loud. Frederick sure had the asshole attitude of a lawyer, as well as his better-t
han-you thing. Added to the mind-reading Mikey suspected he was on track to have a stellar career. The kind of life which turned lawyers into household names. Mikey couldn’t think of any superstar lawyers right that moment, but he was pretty sure they existed.
So why didn’t Mikey just leave?
He kept coming back to that question. Every chance he had, he stayed right here because it was better than every single day he’d lived up until he met Frederick. He could tell himself he should at least wait until he got his passport, or until his test results came in, or until he’d got some more new clothes, or until he just had another one of the hotel’s amazing burgers, but he knew damn well they were all just excuses.
No. Everything came back to the way Frederick had sat on his lap and looked down on him like he was the ruler of everything. ‘Cause a guy like that didn’t ever come on to people like Mikey, and he wasn’t gonna let this pass him by. Even if it left him broken and bleeding by the side of the road in some country he’d never been to before.
Mikey paused and cocked his head. Did he just hear something from outside his room? He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, so he closed the laptop and headed back out to the mezzanine.
The situation down on the lower floor seemed to have changed, and it took a second to figure out that Frederick had moved at last. He wasn’t in the same position any more. Instead he’d turned in the chair and looked like he might have fallen asleep in it.
Mikey frowned and made his way downstairs to check. He stopped by the armchair to listen, but only heard soft, faint breathing, so he leaned in.
“Frederick?” He whispered it, just in case.
Frederick’s lips parted, but he didn’t speak for a few seconds. “Michael,” he finally breathed.
Mikey crouched down and leaned his elbows on the armchair. “You okay?”
“Mm.” Frederick’s eyes stayed closed. His hand fell toward Mikey’s elbows and the back of it rested there against Mikey’s skin. “I’ll be fine.”
Reeve of Veils (Inheritance Book 4) Page 17
