The Betrayal

by J G Alva

  After it was done, there were some more calculations, and everyone in the room waited in perfect silence. Nick studied them all carefully, and then settled on Mike and Jessica. Mike had a small, self-satisfied smile on his face, and Nick felt the blood pounding in his head. Hold on, he told himself, just hold on, it’s not over yet.

  “Well,” Hammond said, looking at a small piece of notepaper in his hand. “The total amount of shares backing Mr Karipidis’s proposal has only come to 43.4%, I am afraid.”

  There were smiles around the table, and one of the men leaned over and shook Mike’s hand. Mike looked down the table at the three of them and smiled widely.

  “As I have the majority of the shares in my corner, and consequently the majority of the votes, I formally refuse Mr Karipidis’s proposal to seize control of Mitchell Cole.”

  Somebody clapped, and there was a light sprinkling of laughter. It was all very gay, Nick thought. All very gay indeed.

  “Well,” Graham Hammond said, looking at Yilmaz, “I believe this meeting is over.”

  This is it, Nick thought. This is your moment.

  “Not quite,” Nick said, getting to his feet.

  The conversation died suddenly, and he felt the eyes on him again, like the beaks of hungry birds. Nick had never felt so exposed.

  “Mr Sommers?” Hammond inquired.

  “My name is not Mr Sommers, Mr Hammond. My name is Nick Mitchell, and I am formerly declaring my right to my 17.5% of Mitchell Cole’s shares, which my wife” – and here he indicated Jessica – “had no legal right to use.”

  The silence was so perfect that Nick could clearly hear the pounding of his blood in his ears, like a bass drum.

  “Nick?” Jessica cried.

  She had risen from her seat, her face a mask of...what? Betrayal? Shock? Terror? He couldn’t tell.

  “And my 17.5% backs Mr Karipidis’s proposal, which would give him the controlling stock, I believe. And Mitchell Cole. Mr Karipidis?”

  Yilmaz rose, and it was his turn to smile, hugely and with a triumphant twinkle in his eyes.

  “My first action, as the new owner of Mitchell Cole, is to remove Mr Michael Ross from the board. Do I have the backing to do this?” He looked inquiringly at Hammond, and Hammond nodded.

  “You do,” he confirmed.

  “Mr Ross,” Yilmaz said clearly, “you are fired.”

  Mike rose out of his chair, a slight trembling in all his limbs, his face frozen as if it was carved out of rock…but the red crept out of his collar like water poured into a bucket.

  “You can’t do this,” Mike stormed. He looked at Hammond. “This can’t be right. This can’t be...legal.”

  Hammond shrugged. Nick thought he might be trying not to smile himself.

  “I can’t see as there is any way this is not legal,” Hammond said. He turned to Nick. “I assume you have the means to prove your identity?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Of course.”

  Hammond turned back to Mike.

  “Then there is nothing that can be done,” he told him.

  The shocked faces around the table were a sight to behold.

  Nick eased himself out from where he had been sitting and walked up the length of the table to where Mike and Jessica sat.

  “Get out. Both of you. Get the hell out. You’ve lost. You’ve lost it all.”

  A noise came from somewhere, so strange that at first Nick couldn’t place it, or even determine where it was coming from, until it resolved itself in to the beginnings of a roar from Mike’s throat.

  Mike lunged for him, both hands out in claws as if he wanted to try and tear him apart. Nick was so shocked that he just stood there as Mike reached him. He felt the hands around his throat, and then Mike was pushing him back against the bookshelf, his face only a couple of inches from his own, he could smell the hot sour breath of him, and Mike was pounding him, pounding him, digging his back in to the wood of the shelf, and volumes were falling on to them, books hitting Mike and Nick on the head, but Mike was still pushing him, and they slid along the shelf to the antique sideboard, the cups and plates rattling pleasantly, and Nick heard voices, and saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but nobody seemed to be stopping him, why weren’t they doing anything? Didn't they care that he was being strangled? And as the grip on Nick’s throat tightened he began to have trouble breathing, a squirming, insidious darkness appeared at the edges of his vision, his ears roared, and it felt as if his head was going to burst.

  Suddenly, the grip on Nick's neck fell away, and Mike collapsed on to the floor. Nick stared down, gasping. The broken parts of a ceramic mug lay buried in the crown of Mike's hair; as if planted there, like a flower. But all that blossomed was a dark pool of blood.

  The room was absolutely silent.

  Nick wasn't sure what had happened but, looking up, it became clear when he saw the broken handle of the ceramic mug held out as if to illustrate bad workmanship. Graham Hammond seemed surprised and shaken by what he had done.

  Eventually his eyes came up to meet Nick's. He looked ashen, and his expression was at once sad and fearful and shocked.

  He said, "he was killing you. I had to. He was choking the life out of you." And then, as if Nick had argued, Hammond pointed and said, "I saw your lips turn blue."

  "Yes, Mr Hammond," Nick said, struggling to speak. "He was going to kill me."

  Once again, a moment of quiet, where everybody looked at the tableau as if from outside themselves. Perhaps gauging their culpability in the final outcome.

  “Somebody call a doctor,” someone shouted, an androgynous call to action that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.

  ◆◆◆

  Later that night, Nick was examined by a doctor.

  Alex had gone home, smug, but Yilmaz had stayed with Nick in the hospital for some time, before Nick had sent him away. Yilmaz wanted to call Agathe and tell her it was done, and Nick told him to go, that he would call him when he was done and wanted to be picked up.

  The police had spoken to him, and had promised they would come back later for a more detailed statement, but Nick wasn’t worried about that. He could handle them. He was the victim in this, after all. But then again, hadn’t he always been?

  The doctor had been a white-haired man in his sixties, not prone to idle chit-chat, or to any small talk for that matter; just as well, seeing as it hurt Nick to speak. He prodded his patient's larynx and peered under his jaw, asked if it hurt, grunted at Nick's confirmation, and wrote out a prescription for mild painkillers. Time, he said, would provide the necessary healing. Nick wondered if that were true of other, deeper hurts.

  As he left the cubicle he had been examined in, a woman's agonised wail captured his attention. He shouldn't have been surprised to find that it was Jessica wailing: she always wanted to be the centre of attention. A tall doctor with dark hair guided her to nearby seating. She collapsed into it as if unaware of her surroundings, and the doctor sat next to her, speaking quietly and seriously to her. Jessica went on crying as he talked.

  In a moment, the doctor asked a nurse for help and, his obligation fulfilled, left the two women alone together.

  Nick stopped the doctor on his way back into the theatre.

  "You treated Mike Ross?" He asked.

  The doctor looked at him, frowned.

  "Who are you?"

  "The man he attacked."

  The doctor checked the authenticity of this by looking at his neck and, satisfied, cleared his throat and responded.

  "I was the surgeon, yes."

  "How is he?"

  "He didn't survive, I'm afraid."

  Nick felt a hollow sensation in his chest, as if he had been punched.

  "What? But…he just got hit on the head – "

  "Yes. A subdural haematoma. In ninety nine times out of a hundred the patient will be fine. Nothing more than a slight headache. But one time in a hundred, there will be an unanticipated complication. This, I'm sorry t
o say, was one of those times. We tried operating to relieve the pressure but…it was too late." The doctor gave a sigh of frustration. "He died ten minutes ago."

  Nick didn't register anything else the doctor said – if he said anything at all – or even when he left; instead, he found himself alone in the corridor. Jessica too was now alone, the nurse obviously called to action elsewhere on more urgent matters. There was always some other injured fool, and a grieving widow wasn't going to die of a broken heart.

  Further down, nurses shuffled back and forth in the corridors, and at the end a young mother sat reading a magazine, her son causing his own kind of havoc with a set of model fire engines scattered across the floor.

  Mike Ross was dead.

  He had won.

  It all felt unreal.

  Nick walked down the hall and stopped in front of his wife.

  "Jessica."

  Slowly, she looked up at him.

  She looked like a wreck, he thought approvingly. A shambling wreck, a homeless woman who had just come in off the street. He smiled pleasantly, but there was no substance to it; he had won, but now he felt drained, like somebody had pulled the plug on his soul. He didn’t even have Toad’s odious company anymore; he had served his purpose, and was gone. There was nothing left to Nick Mitchell except a void. A husk. An abyss.

  “Nick?"

  "Yes."

  He sat next to her.

  “Is it really you?”

  Nick spread his hands.

  “None other.”

  She didn’t know where to look.

  “I thought you were dead. When they threw you over the side – "

  “Cut the shit, Jessica. I’m tired. I’m so tired you wouldn’t fucking believe it. We both know what really happened. You paid to have me killed. You, Mike, and Arthur Keats. That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?”

  He studied her, and realised with horror that he was feeling something after all, and that the feeling was...sympathy. And why not? She had been his wife. They had shared a bed, shared a life, for five years. He had loved her, loved the way she looked, who she was. But sympathy, now, after all this time, after all that she had done? He angrily stamped out the sympathy, ground it under a mental heel like a still burning cigarette butt, until there was nothing left but cold ash.

  “What are you going to do?” She asked fearfully, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “What – you mean, like go to the police?” Nick laughed, but it was a dry, unpleasant sound. “No. Going to the police at this point would be...too complicated. And I don’t need to see you behind bars to know I’ve won. I’ve taken everything from you. Everything. Oh, I suppose you could fight for half of the house, even for half of Mitchell Cole if you were set on it, but I’d find some way for you to lose. Maybe a witness that saw you and Mike romantically entwined before I disappeared. No. No police. This is enough. To see you suffer. You’ve got nothing. I took your livelihood, your lover, and even though it wasn’t intentional, I took your baby from you as well. Isn’t it strange how things come around?”

  Her face came up, blank with complete shock. She touched her throat where he had put his hands on her.

  “You...?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh yes. I was going to do more than just scare you, but that worked well enough. And the baby...well, that was a bonus. You killed mine, don’t forget. That seems pretty fair to me too.” She stared at the floor, struck dumb by these revelations. “I wanted you to suffer, you superficial little bitch, and now you will. Like I suffered. Now you'll understand how it felt.”

  She did not cry; that was what he wanted, a final crushing defeat from her. Instead, something even more terrible happened. Something seemed to leave her face, some sort of life, some sort of spark, until all Nick felt he was looking at was a very skilfully constructed robot in a Jessica-shape, empty of programming, the hard drive corrupted beyond retrieval. Whatever, or whoever, Jessica had been was no longer present; a wraith had taken its place.

  Slowly, she rose to her feet and walked down the corridor and out of the hospital, and Nick never saw her again.

  ◆◆◆

  EPILOGUE

  “It is unbelievable,” Yilmaz said.

  “I know. Still…”

  “Yes.”

  "We won."

  Nick still couldn't quite believe it.

  Yilmaz smiled, but it was measured.

  "It is over," he said.

  Yilmaz put a hand on the back of Nick’s neck, and pulled him in to a hug.

  Nick let go of him, and then, his head down, said, “I sort of...love you, Yilmaz. You know that, don’t you.”

  Yilmaz seemed uncomfortable, but not unpleasantly so.

  “My one regret is that I never had a son,” he said. “To have you as a son would have been a great honour.”

  They stood in companionable silence for a moment, and then smiled at each other.

  “What will you do now?” Yilmaz asked. “Now that you have won.”

  “Run my company, I suppose,” Nick said, and then smiled. “Or, more accurately, your company. I can tell you, it’s going to be nice to be working with someone I can trust for a change.”

  “Ha!”

  “Other than that...” Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. I never really thought any further than getting them back. Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He paused. “What about you?”

  “I miss my Agathe,” Yilmaz said. “And my Kate. I will go to see them. I am thinking we might go to America. Disney world, I do not know. Things have been...too dark. I am needing some light. You understand?”

  Nick nodded solemnly.

  “Give my love to them, won’t you.”

  Yilmaz nodded.

  “I will. But it is you I am worrying about. You will not do well to be alone at this time.”

  “I’ll be alright.”

  “No.” Yilmaz held up a finger. “You need to be with someone. I think there is someone who cares very much for you. You would do well to let her know that you are also caring for her, yes?”

  “Jesus, Yilmaz,” Nick said. “I can’t...I can’t go to her like this...”

  Yilmaz frowned.

  “Why not?”

  Nick shook his head, walked a few paces away from him.

  “I don’t deserve her, Yilmaz. Some of the things I’ve done...”

  “Yes. You have done bad things. But bad things were done to you, no? And...” Yilmaz indicated himself. “If you have done bad things, you are still able to do good things too. This I believe, or I would have given up many, many years ago.”

  Nick nodded dumbly.

  “It is time to do good things, Nick. To be good. Go to her. That is all I can say. If you were my son, I would order you to go to her, but you are not. You are my friend, so I am telling you: go to her. And do not wait. You cannot lose her. She is your heart, no?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “I don’t know if she still – "

  “She does, my friend,” Yilmaz said, and smiled. “Oh yes, she does.”

  ◆◆◆

  He sat in the car for an hour, staring at the house halfway down the street.

  He didn’t know if he could get to it, didn’t know if he had the strength in him to go to her. But, he thought, you can’t sit in this car all day, and with an effort forced himself to open the door and climb out. His limbs felt leaden, as if he was wading through soup. Walking to the house seemed to drain him of everything, thought and emotion. He didn’t know what to expect. He wouldn’t be surprised if she spat in his face.

  But when she answered the door, he could not have guessed at the change in her.

  “Nick,” she said, shocked, and automatically covered her small, but clearly defined, pregnancy.

  He felt more than shock; he felt like he'd been kicked out of his own body.

  "But…but I can't…"

  He stopped. My God. He had been an unbelievable fool. Jessica had been
pregnant. Jessica had been pregnant. He wasn’t sterile. So that must mean…

  “Is it...?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling. “You’re going to be a father.”

  He didn’t deserve this. Tears obscured his vision. He felt himself hiding his face from her, ashamed at his weakness, but she took his hand, and brought his face around to hers.

  “There’s more,” she said solemnly. “You need to come inside. We need to talk.”

  Like a child, he let her lead him inside.

  The bungalow was small but pleasant, with a large open kitchen that ran the length of the house. It ended in patio doors that looked out on to a small, tidy garden.

  A scarred dining room table sat in front of the doors and Rebekah made him sit in one of the chairs dotted around it. She sat carefully in front of him, one hand on her belly.

  “How long have you known?” He said, wiping tears from his face.

  “Since we were on the island.”

  Realisation dawned in him.

  “That’s why you wanted to leave,” he said. “That’s why you changed your mind about the raft.”

  She smiled, raised her eyebrows.

  “It wasn’t the best place to give birth.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He demanded.

  “I wanted to. God, I did. And Agathe encourage me to. She told me – "

  “Agathe knew?”

  Rebekah gave a small shrug with one shoulder.

  “She knew as soon as I stepped on their boat. Must be a woman thing.”

  Nick stared at her.

  “But why didn’t you tell me, Rebekah? For God’s sake, of all things…” He didn’t know how to continue, how to convey his despair.

  “You know why,” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Because of her.”

  “Jessica?”

  “You were married, right? That’s what you kept telling me. I’m married, I’m married. What the hell difference was it going to make if I was pregnant? I wasn’t going to have you. Not when your heart still belonged to her.”