by Sienna Blake
She said nothing. The thin press of her lips told me something was very wrong.
She slid the newspaper in front of me and backed away.
My vision bled in from the corners. Here it was, my worst fucking nightmare.
I slammed open the doors to the dining room. My eyes zeroed in on Noriko sitting at the end of table. She leapt to her feet, almost knocking back her chair.
“What’s wrong?” her voice sounded fuzzy over the throbbing of blood through my skull.
What’s wrong? What’s fucking wrong? Her face grew pale as I approached her, newspaper crushed inside my fist. “I’d like for you to tell me why the fuck I’m looking at this.” I slammed the paper down on the table. I didn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t need to see the photo of her betrayal again. It was burned into my retinas: Noriko standing in an intimate huddle with Jared fucking Wright at the London National Gallery, his lips near her face.
The headline, in large black font, screamed across the page the question that was on everybody’s wagging tongue right now, the question my office had already begun to field from a thousand sticky-beaked reporters:
Mrs. Blackwell’s Lover?
It has only been four months since the secret wedding of one of America’s most eligible bachelors, billionaire Drake Blackwell, to a mysterious beauty known only as Noriko. Our sources say that Mrs. Blackwell is already seeking comfort and companionship outside her suffocating marriage. Here she is, caught in a tender embrace with none other than Blackwell’s most fierce competitor, Jared Wright, billionaire and CEO of Wright and Sons. This reporter has to ask, is history repeating itself?
The whites appeared around Noriko’s irises, her mouth making an O as she lifted her face to me again. “Drake, it’s not what you—”
“Are you fucking him?”
She gasped so hard it sounded like she was choking. “How could you ask—?”
“Are you fucking him?”
“No. I didn’t even know he’d be there.”
Despite the chattering in my brain—whore, whore, slut, just like your mother—I believed her. Or maybe I just needed to believe her.
Noriko was too innocent, too naïve to have contrived a plan like this on purpose. How could she have even made contact with Jared to make plans to meet him; she had no phone.
She continued to ramble, “I tried to get away from him, I swear, Drake. He wouldn’t—”
“I told you it wasn’t safe,” I roared. This all could have been avoided if she had listened to me. “I told you to stay with Franco. But you deliberately went against my orders.” Frustration unleashed from me as I stomped towards her.
She backed away. “I didn’t know there’d be reporters—”
“It doesn’t have to be a fucking reporter. Anyone with a fucking camera phone can sell pictures of you. Anyone can twist anything you say into a story. I fucking told you they’re all vultures. Now they know. Now they have a juicy story to run with. Now they’ve got somewhere to dig. Oh yes, and dig, dig, dig they will, those little worms. They’ll dig and they’ll use whatever they find to try to tear me down.”
My private life was already fodder for the fucking papers, juicy morsels of my flesh to dress their bare-boned, pallid lives. Now her precious life had become carcass for those hyenas and I failed to protect her from it.
I could barely think as rage surrounded me. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed her dinner plate and hurled it, smashing against the far wall. Noriko cowered away from the noise and the explosion of china, a scream coming out of her.
“Master Blackwell?” One of the staff, a younger, dark-skinned girl named Celeste, pushed through the dining room door. “Is everything alright?”
“You.” I turned my focus on Celeste, anger making my periphery fuzzy and dark. “Leave us. Tell everyone else to leave us.”
She just stood there like a fucking mute, looking at me, then at the remnants of the plate, then at Noriko, a story building behind her eyes.
“Get. OUT!”
She yelped as if I’d hit her and disappeared out the door.
“As for you…” I swung my body to face Noriko again. The mere sight of her made the black and white newspaper image superimpose across her face, Jared leaning into her space, his eyes hungry, his hand possessively on her arm. The whole image flickered like a broken cinema screen.
Noriko shrank back against the wall as I approached, her fear turning up the flame under my boiling rage.
She was my wife. She was supposed to be the one fucking person who’d trust me. The one fucking person who would respect my decisions because she knew I was doing it for her. Not because she feared me.
Was this what it’d take to make her obey me? Did I have to make her fear me like my staff feared me? Like my employees feared me? Did she need to fear me to obey me?
I rushed towards her, power surging through my body as I crowded her into the wall. I grabbed her, wanting to shake some sense into her.
“Don’t!” she cried, her voice pleading, so full of raw fear, shredding at my insides, dislodging a memory of my mother’s voice.
“Don’t, Pierson! Please.”
I stared at my monstrous hand, somehow now gripping her slender wrist, veins surging with blood under my skin. It didn’t look like my hand.
It looked…like his hand. Like my father’s hand.
Only then did I feel how fragile her bones were. Only then did I realize how hard I was gripping her. I could have crushed her forearm like a little mouse in my claws. The blood drained from my body.
“Noriko,” slipped from my mouth. My fingers stretched open, stiff as an unoiled hinge. She curled away from me, cradling her arm with her hand.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Look at me.”
She wouldn’t.
My eyes kept drawing to the glimpse of my red finger marks between her pale fingers, a glowing accusation around her wrist.
This wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t. I had to make her understand. I was trying to protect her. I failed. That’s why I was angry.
I wrapped my arms around her, grabbing at her even as she slipped through my fingers like a wraith. “Noriko, please, I would never hurt you. I love you.” She had to believe me. Of course she believed me. “I’m not like my…” I caught sight of my reflection in one of the dining room mirrors. His face, Pierson Blackwell, flashed in front of mine, making me wince. I buried my face in her hair, smelling fresh like the sea and sweet like hibiscus. I tugged her wrist from her chest and pressed gentle kisses over the fading mark. See, all better. All better. “I’m not like that. You believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course I believe you,” she said, but her voice was quiet.
My hands traveled over her tiny body. So fragile. So breakable. If I could make love to her, she’d be close to me again. I needed to be close to her again.
My fingers slipped up under her skirt and I felt her flinch. It cut me right into my heart that she would react that way to my fingers.
“I need you.” I tilted her face to look at me and pleaded with her silently. Let me love you. Let me show your body all the sorry I couldn’t seem to make myself say.
She pressed her lips to mine in submission. Behind it I felt her flickering like a candle about to expire.
41
____________
Noriko
Drake was a lonely rock in his very own sea of pain. And I didn’t know how to reach him.
The mark on my arm had already faded by the time I got ready for bed that night. But I could still see his hand there. I traced my wrist with the fingertips of my other hand.
I remembered the fear that rushed through my body as his rage exploded around us like thunder and lightning, lush as a storm, his pain sourced from a well as deep as the ocean.
When his eyes glazed over and he lifted his hand to wrap around my wrist, I wondered who he was seeing in my face. His mother? His father? Or both?
He didn’t hurt me. Even th
rough his wild fury, his hand knew not to grip too tightly. I didn’t fear him, not truly. How could I when pity tore through my fear like water through paper? How could I when I understood why he was the way he was? My heart ached for the little boy inside of Drake that was still drowning in pain. I ached more because he wouldn’t deal with it. He wouldn’t even talk about it. Even though I kept trying.
Drake Blackwell was a broken man. I wanted to heal him. I didn’t know how.
“Papa?” I whispered into the phone.
“You sound sad, hime,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
I sighed and pulled my knees up to my chest. I was sitting in my locked bathroom in my huge bathtub, cradling the phone between my ear and my shoulder. I didn’t think I’d be calling my father again so soon after our conversation yesterday. I needed to hear his voice. It anchored me. I felt adrift, confused.
“Nothing,” I lied. “I just miss you.”
My father paused. “Your new husband…is he…a good man?”
“Yes, Papa. He’s has such a big heart. He appears gruff and jagged on the outside but he’s kind and thoughtful. He’s a scared little boy on the inside.”
“You care about him.”
“I do,” I admitted, my voice almost a whisper. “I didn’t mean to but I do.” Despite myself, I smiled as thoughts of Drake weaved through my mind. “Oh, Papa, you’d like him a lot. He’s incredibly smart, like you. Even though I’m stubborn—don’t pretend like you don’t think I’m stubborn—he manages to get under my skin, to make me soften.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
Trust my father to always know what was in my heart without me breathing a word of it. The smile on my face broke apart as guilt clawed at me. I was failing everyone. Ruining everything. “I’m sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to love him,” I said, ashamed that I could let another man take up so much space in my heart. “I still love you more, I swear!”
“Oh, my darling girl.” He let out a wistful sigh. “I cannot call you a girl anymore. You are a woman with her own family and her own life.”
“I’m coming back. I promised I would. You are my family.”
“Yes, Noriko, and we will always be your family. Part of our job as a family is to know when to let go of you so you can make your own.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hot liquid slipping out from the corners. “What are you saying?”
“You don’t have to come back after a year, Noriko. Or come back just to visit.”
“But—”
“You love your husband.”
“Yes.”
“Then make a life with him. Be there with him. Don’t tear yourself in half and be half here, half there and really be nowhere. This old man has had his life. You need to live yours.”
“Papa, don’t say that!”
“Don’t dismiss love, my child. Don’t waste time. Or you’ll find they are gone all too soon.” His voice grew quiet and I knew he was thinking about Mama. They loved each other with the strength of the seasons. He still loved her. “Promise me you’ll try with him.”
My heart swelled with love for my father. Even though he was sick, even though he knew he could demand all of me and I would give it, he was as selfless and wise as he’d ever been. He had released me from my promise to end my marriage. He had unwound the chains of guilt around my heart.
I could not love him more than in this moment.
“I promise, Papa,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
42
____________
Drake
Guilt was a permanent fixture in my chest. It had taken up root, piercing its blackened thorny branches into every inch of my soul. I clenched and unclenched my hand, the one I found wrapped around her wrist. How could I have done that to her?
How?
Because as hard as you try not to be, you are just like him.
It was late at night. I sat in an armchair in the den on the first floor, a masculine room of deep green and wood, and rubbed my face. It’d been a day since I attacked her in the dining room and I hadn’t seen Noriko. Truth was, I was hiding from her. I returned home long after she’d finished dinner and had slept in one of the guest rooms last night so I didn’t have to walk past her door.
I should go to her. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I was terrified of what I would find. That any affection for me was gone. That all that was left was the rubble of the happiness I destroyed.
My eyes came to rest upon the framed picture—my only framed picture—on the mantle. She was smiling, almost laughing. I had taken that picture in Giverny in Monet’s garden. She had been lost in her painting, her features relaxed, her wrist flicking, sometimes wildly, other times moving as gracefully as if she was dancing. I felt invisible and yet honored to witness such an intimate thing. She had been completely immersed—God, and so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself—she hadn’t noticed when I slid my camera out of the bag I brought and took a candid shot.
I’d brought my old camera with me that day, one I hadn’t used in years. I was surprised when it still worked. I used to carry it around with me like a breastplate when I was a teenager.
The world looked simple through the lens of a camera. If I could fit everything into an ordered rectangle, I could somehow make sense of it.
That day in Monet’s garden, the world made sense.
Now…
Someone knocked on my door. Noriko. She’d found me. Twin vines of hope and fear wound around my chest. Did she miss me? Did she crave me like I did her? Is she here to pull me into my bed and into her body? Had she forgiven me?
I cleared my throat and called out for her to come in.
It was Loretta instead. My shoulders deflated and I turned back to the picture of my beautiful wife, distant now, like a dream.
“You don’t look very happy,” Loretta said. It was such an obvious statement I would have laughed if I’d had the energy.
“Didn’t sleep well.” I was lying to no one. Both Loretta and I knew the real reason behind my morose mood. The walls of the dining room weren’t that thick. My staff here weren’t stupid.
“I’m afraid I only bring more…difficult news.”
My eyes snapped to hers. There was worry in her gray, wrinkled eyes. Worry and…pity. My stomach tightened. What now?
She reached into the front pocket of her apron. “I found the empty packet in her trash can when I was emptying it earlier today. She tried to hide it under used tissues…” Loretta gingerly placed an empty plastic strip on my desk. “I’m sorry, Drake.”
Birth control pills.
I was going to be sick.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked. Her voice had gone all fuzzy in my ears as my mind wrapped around this latest development.
The “unproductive wife” clause. The one my lawyer insisted we put into the marriage contract to protect me. How ironic. Noriko was using it to make sure she got out of our marriage scot-free at the end of the year.
She didn’t want to stay with me.
She was never going to stay with me. No matter what I did.
“Get out.”
Loretta’s eyes widened. “Drake, please, think about what you’re going to do before you do it.”
My eyes snapped up to hers, my vision bleeding red on the edges. If she didn’t get out right now… “Get. The fuck. Out.”
Loretta nodded and rushed out of the den.
I stood, my legs wobbling like I was drunk. I turned to the blank wall beside me, the empty wall mocking me, a mirror of my wretched heart.
I thought she…
I just wanted…
But we…
My fist slammed into the wall. I punched it again and again, warm blood coating my knuckles as the skin split, plaster cracking in a shower of dust. The pain in my knuckles was lost under the roaring pain of my rage.
Why was I cursed? Why was I still alone?
I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Business School. I had an M
BA from Yale. I turned my father’s million-dollar company into a billion dollar one. I was the third richest man in America, for fuck’s sake. I had enough power and reach to affect this country’s economy. To affect its policies. I was envied by millions. Millions more wanted to be me.
But it wasn’t enough for her.
I wasn’t enough.
Why was it never enough?
Why was I never enough?
A glaring ring cried out, cutting through my rage. I spun, glaring at the offending phone, blood dripping from my knuckles. It was my cell phone, not the office phone, vibrating across the side table. I frowned.
A private number.
It must be work. Work I could deal with. Work would be a temporary reprieve from my wreck of a marriage and my sham of a wife.
I wiped the back of my hand against my pants and snatched up the phone. “What?”
“Mr. Blackwell.” The unfamiliar accented voice made me frown. Was this another goddamn reporter? How did he get this number? I took pains to ensure only a select few had it.
“Who is this?”
“You asked me to call you if there was any news…from Japan.”
My skin prickled. This was the private investigator, local to Shibetsu, Noriko’s home town. “I did.”
“I’m afraid the news is not good…”
43
____________
Drake
The private investigator hung up and I dropped the cell phone on the table. It slid off to the carpet. I didn’t retrieve it. Anger bled out from me as I fell into my chair.
Fuck.
The surgery did not go well.
Noriko’s father was dying.
How would I tell Noriko? How do you break the news to your wife that the father she loved may not survive? She’d only agreed to our contract to pay for his cancer treatments. I wasn’t stupid. I’d done my own research.
A horrible thought cracked into my brain like a lightning strike. If he was dying…she’d want to go back to see him. If she returned to Japan…she would never come back. Fear’s hand tightened around my throat like a noose, trapping the air in my lungs.
