Descent

by Natasha Knight

  “Care about. Big words.”

  We study each other for a long minute. A waitress arrives with an espresso for Dominic.

  “Would you like something?” he asks.

  “No, thank you.” I stand and my phone alerts me to a voicemail. I take it out of my pocket and see it’s the guard watching Persephone and her sister.

  I give Dominic a nod and walk toward the exit as I open the text. But the pinned location on the map doesn’t make any sense. I dial him. “You’re sure this is the address?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s been inside for a few minutes. Knew the doorman from what I could see.”

  “Any chance she knew she was being followed?”

  “No.”

  “All right. I’m on my way. If she leaves, let me know right away.”

  “I will.”

  I disconnect the call and a sick feeling takes hold of me as I walk back out of the restaurant and climb into the back of my car.

  “Take me to my stepbrother’s house.”

  33

  Persephone

  I don’t realize I’m almost running until I get out of the building and half-way down the street. I stop in the cold, sunny day to catch my breath, wanting to scrub my skin.

  “Are you all right?” someone asks me.

  I look up, meet the eyes of an old woman. I suck in a gulp of icy morning air and nod. “I’m fine. Just…it was too warm inside.”

  “Well, it’s not too warm out here, is it? Take care of yourself, dear.”

  I turn to watch her go as she heads in the direction of Jonas’ building. That’s when I see him. The sun shines in through the windshield of the car and our eyes meet.

  Hayden.

  Watching me.

  Shit.

  The driver pulls out onto the street heading toward me. They stop. The cars behind them honk their horns as the driver gets out and wordlessly opens the back door for me.

  I stand there for a minute looking at it, unable to see Hayden sitting on the far end.

  Someone lays on their horn.

  “Get in,” Hayden says from inside.

  I turn to the driver. “I have a car—”

  Hayden opens his door and steps out, his expression hard, like he’s not pleased. Not at all.

  More cars honk, someone yells a curse. I don’t think he cares, not even a little bit.

  “I said get in.”

  Without a word, I get in. He climbs in on his side and both doors close simultaneously. Strangely, even in a time like this, my first thought is how good he smells. The aftershave he wears the same one he’s always worn. His own scent just beneath it. One I’m attuned to no matter how subtle.

  “I can explain,” I start.

  He holds up his hand.

  “Club, sir?” the driver asks.

  “No. Take us to the Abbot house.”

  “I took Celia’s car. She needs it back.”

  He studies me. I guess he’s trying to make sense of why I’m here. We drive in heavy silence to the house. Only then does he finally speak.

  “Give me the keys to Celia’s car,” he says.

  I reach into my purse and take them out, dropping them into his gloved hand.

  “Make and model.”

  I tell him.

  “Where is it?”

  “Down the street from where you were parked.”

  He nods.

  “My sister—”

  “She’ll be brought back to the club when she’s ready to leave.”

  “I was just…”

  I trail off when he turns to the driver, handing him the keys and telling him to get someone to drive Celia’s car to the hospital. He then gestures for me to go ahead of him up the stairs to the front door. He reaches around me to unlock the door and allows me to enter first when he opens it.

  We hang our coats by the door and he walks ahead of me toward my father’s study. I slip my hand into my coat pocket and take the photo. I tuck it into my purse.

  When he reaches the study, he opens the door and looks toward me.

  I walk to the study and enter, feeling like a prisoner entering an interrogation room. I notice how Anna has cleaned up my plate from last night. The bottle of vodka and the glass are gone too.

  I also notice the book on its velvet wrapping left open to the page where Nora had tucked the photograph.

  Hayden looks at it, turns it over to read the title, touches the damaged corner.

  Blood. Does he realize it’s blood?

  Did my father take it from the chapel and hide it before anyone else found her? Is that how he got hold of it? Is that why there’s blood on the corner?

  I remember the words written on the back of the photo in her perfect, pretty script. When she took the time, she had the prettiest handwriting.

  I can’t.

  And I understand something. Understand this last piece of the puzzle. And I want to cry because I realize how alone she must have felt. How damaged she was. My best friend was hurting and I didn’t have the first clue.

  Hayden leans against the desk and folds his arms across his chest. He looks down at me sitting there and I can feel the raw emotion radiating from him. The barely contained rage. Because what could he have thought to see me coming out of Jonas’ apartment building? About the fact that I snuck away to see his stepbrother, a man I was once engaged to. A man he despises.

  “Talk,” he finally says.

  I swallow, feel suddenly chilled. I can’t hold his gaze.

  “You don’t want me to.”

  He reaches down suddenly, gripping the collar of my shirt and hauling me to my feet so quickly that I’m too shocked to react.

  “You don’t know what I want,” he says, the words seething, the rage behind them bubbling. If he knows…if I tell him, he will kill Jonas. I know it. I need to give Jonas time to get out. If he will get out. Not to protect Jonas but to save Hayden from doing something he can’t undo.

  It takes Hayden a full minute to loosen his hold on me, another minute before he releases me, and I see the effort it takes.

  I take a step away, then another.

  He grips the desk, his knuckles turning white. “Are you fucking him?”

  The question catches me by such surprise. “What?”

  “Are you fucking Jonas?” he repeats more slowly.

  “No. God, no.” I shake my head, look away. “It would be easier if I were.”

  And that is the wrong thing to say because he loses the battle against that rage he’s barely been containing. His eyes go black and he stalks toward me and before I can turn to run, before I can take a single step, he’s got my back pressed against the wall.

  “Don’t. Ever. Say. That.” It’s a roar, not a low, quiet threat, nothing remotely civilized about it. “Don’t ever fucking say that again. Do you hear me?”

  I nod. “I didn’t mean—”

  He cups my face with both hands, the pads of his fingers rough.

  “You’re mine. Not his. Not anyone’s. And fuck any contracts. Mine. Only mine.”

  I nod again, and I touch his cheek, brush back his hair and I think he knows that something’s about to change. That the thing he so desperately wants to know, I think he knows it’ll kill him. And there’s no way around it.

  “I think there was a note,” I say.

  34

  Persephone

  Hayden leans his forehead against mine as a tear slides down my cheek.

  I touch him, just his shirt, my fingers are light as feathers, and I swallow as my breathing levels out. I’m caged in this corner, his big body trapping me, but I’m the one who will hurt him when I tell him.

  He draws back, looks at me and I think he knows. He must. He’s guessed it, hasn’t he?

  In his eyes, I see what I saw when I first met him out there on the street when I was a little girl and he was my Hades. My dark hero. I see that sadness that was there then, too. Something broken inside him. Broken long before Nora killed herself.

&n
bsp; I remember the bruise on his face, and I reach up to touch the spot now and I feel my eyes fill with tears again.

  “I think she did leave a note,” I say.

  He doesn’t speak, just watches me, waits.

  “I think my dad took it when he found her.” He was the first one at the chapel. I remember when he’d walked out there that icy morning, the frozen dew evaporating into mist in the sun creating a thick fog. How opposite the morning to the night before. It had rained for days that Halloween. Like something knew what she’d do. What she’d planned.

  “I think I’ve had it all along,” I finish.

  When I move to slip away, he lets me, still silent. A silent beast.

  I pick up my purse which is on the floor. I don’t know when I dropped it. I open it, see that photo I wish I’d never seen.

  Without a word, I set it on the table, face down.

  Hayden is close again, I feel him. His fingers touch the curve of my neck and I turn to look up at him.

  He’s not looking at it yet. He knows this will change everything.

  Nora wasn’t who he thought.

  She wasn’t who any of us thought. She was too broken to be innocent.

  I watch him shift his gaze to the desk, watch his eyes as he reads those two words.

  I can’t.

  I put my hand on his shoulder when he moves his arm and he stops for a moment. Meets my gaze.

  “That book, it’s mine. I’d lent it to Nora a long time ago. I think she had it with her at the chapel. I think the stain in the corner…it’s blood.”

  He clenches his jaw, still doesn’t speak.

  “You don’t have to look,” I try. One last-ditch effort. “You don’t have to see.” I’m crying now. Tears like a river down my face.

  He shifts his gaze back to the desk and I know he will look. I know he has to see.

  And I know the instant he’s turned the photo over. I hear it in the sound that catches in his throat. See it as he processes, even though I think some part of him knew.

  But maybe it’s different when your stepbrother is sleeping with your sister. His sister. Maybe it’s different if it’s your family.

  After that moment that stretches into an eternity, I feel him tense, like he’s coiling up, readying. I look back at his hand on the photo, see that it’s becomes a fist. The photo inside it, one that my father managed to preserve for all these years, is crumpled in that fist, destroyed.

  It’s not so easy to destroy history, though. Once you see, you can’t unsee.

  “Hayden,” I start as his eyes harden, as his whole body hardens. No pain here. Rage. Only rage.

  “Why?” His voice sounds like it’s been caught in his throat for decades.

  I shake my head, put my hand on his shoulder.

  He grips my wrist and I gasp with the force of it. He’ll snap it if he’s not careful.

  I hear him force a breath, and it takes him a long time to release me.

  “Why?” he asks again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He steps away, turns and stalks to the door.

  “Stop, Hayden!” I run to catch up to him, grabbing hold of his arm, my hand too small to wrap around the thick muscle as I try to stop him from leaving.

  In an instant, he has me backed up against the wall and this Hayden, this seething, raging Hayden, he’s dark and dangerous and when he leans his face close to mine, my heart pounds, pumping adrenaline through my veins, telling me to heed his earlier warning. To not become his enemy.

  “You’re going to get hurt. Again,” he says.

  “You can’t go to him,” I force myself to speak. “Not now. Not when you’re like this.”

  “Do you think I’ll be some other way soon? Do you think I won’t kill him if I wait five minutes? Five years?”

  “You don’t know the whole story.”

  “I know what I need to know.”

  “She wasn’t innocent, not like you think.”

  He grits his teeth, his jaw tight as he presses a fisted hand to the wall.

  “Don’t defend him—”

  “I’m not defending him.”

  “And do not condemn her,” he continues like he doesn’t even hear me. “She’s in the ground. He’s not. It should have been him in the fucking ground. Not her.”

  “Hayden—”

  “No one should die at sixteen! No one should die like she did!” He slams his fist into the wall, and I jump. I see the effort it takes him to step away, both hands now fists at his sides. “Stay here.”

  He turns to the door and I follow. “You can’t go to him. You’ll kill him!”

  “Maybe he deserves to be dead.” He opens the study door and I grab his arm.

  “Hayden, please.”

  He turns to me, takes my hand off his arm. “Stay. Here.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He walks out the door and before I can reach it, he closes it and I hear the lock turn and his footsteps recede.

  “Hayden!” I try the door, but I’m locked in. “Let me come with you at least! You can’t go to him. Not like this!”

  My hands hurt from beating on the door, but he doesn’t come back and a few minutes later, I hear the front door open and close.

  35

  Hayden

  Shane is smoking outside when I open the front door. He takes one look at me and tosses the newly lit cigarette.

  “Where to?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’ll drive myself.” I start down the stairs but he’s on my heels.

  “You don’t look like you’re in any condition to drive. Where to?”

  I suck in a breath, nod. He’s right.

  “Jonas.” I can barely get the word out. I feel sick at the thought of it and the photo I’ve crushed in my hand singes the skin of my palm.

  “He just headed out of the apartment. Let me see where he’s going.” Shane puts the phone to his ear as he starts the engine. A minute later, he disconnects the call. “Headed to the office.”

  “Mother fucker.” I’m going to kill him. I have to.

  Persephone’s words circle my mind. “She wasn’t innocent, not like you think…Nora gave me the drink that night. Told me to finish it. Not Jonas…”

  I grit my teeth and fist my hands. “Drive. Faster.” Fuck. I should have driven.

  Shane nods and accelerates but fuck, it’s not fast enough.

  “She told him to do it. When he hesitated.”

  She told him to rape Persephone?

  No. No fucking way.

  The image of what I saw when I walked into the chapel that night invades my mind as if arguing against me. Against what has to be true.

  How strange they all looked with Nora holding Persephone down. How could she hold her down? She wasn’t strong enough, not if Persephone didn’t want to be held.

  But she was drugged. I saw that for myself.

  “She told him to do it. When he hesitated.”

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  No. I shake my head, clear these thoughts. She was fifteen. Just turned sixteen. A child. He was a man.

  It’s sick, when I think about it. I feel sick at the thought of it. Of them together. Jonas and Nora. Jonas and Nora naked together.

  I force myself to look at the photo, at the back of it. I’ve crushed it so badly, it’s hard to read the words but I know what they say.

  I can’t.

  I wonder when she’d written the letter to Abbot. When she’d decided to do it, to end her life. Did she know on Halloween? She’d been more distant those last weeks, but I’d had my own shit to deal with. Fuck. If I’d known she was in trouble would I have been able to stop it?

  “Fucking drive faster!” I slam my fist into the dash and when, a few minutes later, we pull up to the front entrance of the Montgomery office building, I open my door and I’m out before the car comes to a complete stop.

  I don’t bother to greet anyone in the lobby this time. I don’t bot
her to speak a word. I just get on the elevator and ride it up to the top floor. I register the look of shock on the receptionist’s face when the doors open and she doesn’t get a word out before I’m stalking to Jonas’ corner office, my hands fists at my sides.

  I see him through the glass wall. See him with my father who’s pacing and looks pissed as fuck.

  Jonas sees me before I’m inside and his face goes from that sickly jaundiced look he sometimes gets to one of surprise and then panic as I push in.

  “Are you fucking insane? She’s a fucking kid! You’ve gone too far!” my father yells.

  “You goddamned piece of shit!” I throw the crumpled photo at Jonas, watch it bounce off his chest. I close my hands around his throat before he can utter a word and slam him against the wall so hard, there’s a dent where his head hits.

  “What the fuck?” My father tries to drag me off, but he’s no match. Not by a long shot.

  “Get off me, old man, or I swear I will kill you too.”

  I hear the door open, hear a woman gasp.

  “Maryanne, call security,” my father yells.

  I don’t turn around. “You raped her. You fucking raped her.”

  Jonas is trying to shove against me. I’m stronger than him on a normal day but today, today is special. Today, the murderous rage erupting like a volcano inside me makes me invincible.

  “Hayden!” my father is still trying to get me off Jonas.

  I turn to him. “I said get off me.” I shove my elbow into his gut and hear his grunt as he stumbles backward.

  When I shift my gaze back to Jonas, I look at him, see him for maybe the first time ever. I’ve always hated the son of a bitch. He’s always been an arrogant mother fucker. But what I see now, it’s different. It’s worse.

  “You’re sick, you know that?” I release his throat, draw my arm back and punch him so hard, his head snaps to the side and he stumbles, only staying upright because he catches the edge of his desk.

  I grab him by the collar and shove him hard against the wall again, watch his dazed expression as he bounces off it, a second dent right beside the first. I slam my fist into his face and follow it up with a hit to the gut before two men grab hold of me and drag me backward.