Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (24 page)

“No.”

With an exasperated sigh, he folds his paper and looks over at me. “No, what?”

“I’m not divorcing or annulling it or whatever it is. You can’t make me.”

“You can’t make me,” he parrots in a singsong voice.

“Oh, fuck you, you obnoxious jackass.”

“I’m not going to let you fuck up your life.”

“You’re already doing a fantastic job.”

He glares at me. “Really? Is that the gratitude I get? Maybe you’d rather be working at a McDonalds in Arizona to help your mother pay her mortgage.”

“I’d rather spend the rest of my life with the woman I love than be alone and frustrated because all my riches can’t buy me happiness.”

“Do I look alone and frustrated? I just got married.”

“To the future Ex Mrs. Marshall. Number three. Or four? I’ve lost count. All of whom but one married you for your money, and we both know it.”

“You talk a big game, but you wouldn’t be anything without my money and influence. Your Army postings, schooling, it’s all because of me. I
made
you.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem, Dad. I’d rather be what I made myself, whatever it is, than what you try to make me.”

He sits up and downs his drink. “What is it about this girl?”

“I love her. I feel like trying to explain this to you is like trying to explain purple to a dog. What do you want me to do, write a poem?”

“Why? Have you seen her? Her face looks like somebody took an angle grinder to it.”

I let out an exasperated sigh, and regret it right away. My muscles feel like I’ve been worked on with hammers all day. Or night. I don’t know how long I’ve been out.

“She’s more to me than her face, and her face is more to me than her scars. When she smiles I see all the times she’s ever smiled for me. When I look in her eyes I see somebody that’s looking at the man I want to be. Besides, it’s not the scars. She wasn’t scarred before. I don’t know what it is about her that you disliked, but it had to be something, or you wouldn’t have tried to kill her.”

He looks genuinely surprised, his big bushy eyebrows climbing up his face. “What?”

“The accident. It was you, had to be.”

My father jerks upright and stands up, almost hits his head on the curved wall of the plane, and sits back down.

“Are you fucking crazy? Do you think I’d risk killing my own son?”

“What, did the steering and brakes just stop working out of the blue?”

“Yes. It was a goddamn accident.”

“Then why were you so adamant that I never see Ellie?”

“For fuck’s sake, son. You were sixteen years old. I didn’t want you carrying that baggage for the rest of your life. I knew you’d get over it. She was just a girl. The world is full of girls. You can get all the girls you want.”

I struggle to lift my head from the seat.

“Do you fucking hear yourself?”

He blinks.

“She’s not baggage, you egotistical asshole. She’s a person. Do I have to draw you a fucking map?”

“You’re not going to get elected to public office with a wife like that. The American people are not going to vote a man into office who has a first lady that looks like Two-Face.”

“I don’t fucking care. Do you really think you can just push me around like a puppet for the rest of my life? I’m not running for Congress or anything else.”

“Then what the hell are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, I’ll figure it out. As much as it disgusts me to take advantage of what you’ve given me, I can get started on my own, with my wife. I can have a good life. We can be happy together. Now, where is she?”

He looks at me.

“You don’t have to tell me. I’ll find out. I’m never going to stop. Ever. I will find her. If you did something to her, I swear to God, I will fucking kill you myself, you sick, reptilian, cold-blooded asshole motherfucker son of a bitch.”

“She’s with her mother,” he says flatly.

“Now where the hell are we?”

“By now? Oklahoma-ish. I sent them on a different plane. I left Jessica to deal with Ellie. I don’t get involved in anything between them. That’s by Jessica’s request. I handle my child, and she handles hers.”

“If she hurts her…”

“Why would she?”

I tug at my handcuffs. “She already has. She had some crazy plan to make Ellie a singer or get her on TV or something when she was a kid.”

“That’s why I married her. Love a woman with ambition.”

“Ambition?” I spit. “She starved Ellie, pushed her to exercise until she hurt herself, put her down all the time. Hell, Ellie told me that…”

I trail off.

“What?” my father says, leaning forward. “Told you what?”

“The night of the accident, when Ellie was burned. When her father died. Her parents—her father and stepmother—were arguing about something to do with her. About her ‘career’ or something. I remember seeing them before we went out to the restaurant…”

My father looks at me and has gone completely pale.

“Jesus Christ,” he says softly.

Ellie

“
Jack!”
I wail.

I fight with a strength that I didn’t know I had, my arms twisting with animal fury as I claw and scratch and try to worm loose. Two of Richard’s goons pin me to the bed while they carry off Jack’s limp body, and a wailing sob bursts out of me.

I struggle and kick until I hear a familiar voice.

“What the hell are you doing? Let go of her!”

They release me all at once. I surge to my feet, stumble, and fall. Mom kneels at my side, grabs me, and pulls me into an embrace.

“Mom,
stop them
! They’re hurting him.”

She sighs and hugs me tighter. “It’s going to be okay, honey. They won’t hurt him once he stops fighting them.”

“How can you let this happen?”

I start to stand up. She clamps down on my arms.

“Ellie, listen to me, okay? This is going to be tough for you, but you need to hear it. Jack has been manipulating you.”

“What? No he hasn’t.”

“Of course he has. I know you’d never do something as crazy and dangerous as this without his influence. Would you?”

Before I can answer she crushes me in an embrace. “I was so worried about you. When you wouldn’t answer me I had Richard bring us back right away. Fitzgerald was beside himself. He couldn’t tell us where you were. I’ve had people looking for you. I wanted to go myself but Jack said we had to stay and coordinate the search.”

“How did you find us?”

“Jack registered you here under his own name.”

“I have to see him—”

“No, I’m afraid you can’t. Richard will have him escorted away. He’s going to be kept away from you from now on.”

“You can’t do that, we got married. He’s my husband now.”

She gives me a strange look, sort of flat and cold, and grabs my hand, trying to pry the ring off my finger.

“Give me that.”

“No, it’s
mine
!”

She yanks the ring loose, and I haul back and slap her. Mom falls to the floor and lies there, and when she looks up at me, I can see her softly begin to weep.

“You hit me,” she says, very softly.

“Mom—”

“You hit me,” she repeats.

“I’m sorry!” I wail, “I didn’t mean it! I just want my ring back!”

She thrusts her hand out at me. “Take it, if it’s so important to you. Your own mother, Ellie.”

I pluck the ring from her finger and grip it hard in mine.

“You’re not acting like yourself, Ellie. You wouldn’t hit me like that.”

“I know, I’m s-s-sorry,”

“Come with me. It’s time to go home.”

“My home is with Jack.”

She sighs, exasperated, as she stands up. “Ellie, you need to understand that Jack is not good for you.”

“Then who is?”

“I don’t know, honey. If you’re lonely you should have told me. I’ll help you find somebody who will value you for who you are.”

“I found somebody like that.”

“You think Jack is like that?” She chuckles a little. “Take my hand, honey. Let’s go home.”

“No.”

“Ellie, I know this is going to be difficult for you.”

She stands up, looming over me.

“I don’t know what he told you, or what happened, but you need to hear me out, and we need to leave. We can’t stay here.”

Slowly I rise to my feet, leaning my useless claw-hand on the bed. I stagger a little when I stand, and start walking. Richard’s minions surround us still. Maybe I can at least see Jack. He won’t abandon me, I know he won’t. He’ll get out of it somehow. He might still be downstairs.

When they walk me past the terrified owners of the bed and breakfast I find Jack already gone, spirited off in one of the hulking black Escalades that lurk outside. I know that if I resist now they will not be afraid to drag me off. There’s nobody else here.

“We’re going home,” Mom says firmly. “Get in the car, honey.”

Dread flows down my back like an ice cube as I step up into the car. My head spins. I slip my ring back on my finger and clutch my fist tightly, so no one will try to take it away from me. Mom sits down next to me and sweeps her blonde hair out of her eyes. The red welt on her face from my slap stands out raw and vivid, and I flinch a little when I see it.

No. She tried to take my ring. She wants to tear us apart. Her voice is as smooth and silky as ever.

When Richard’s man closes the door, she sits back.

“I need to ask you something,” she says softly.

I press my lips shut and look away. I’d rather stare at my reflection in the window.

“Have you been with Jack while you were gone? Sexually?”

I flinch at the question.

“I see. I assume you didn’t use any protection.”

“Sometimes. Not after we married.”

“We’ll take care of that. I’ll get you a morning-after pill. That should work.”

My stomach twists and I clutch my arms to my body.

No, no, no, you can’t, you can’t do that. I want to scream, no, you won’t make me, but I manage to keep quiet, as much as I begin to tremble at the thought.

She wants to take him away from me. All of him.

It was always in the back of my mind, and her words have ripped it to the front. Jack and I had sex a dozen times and we used a condom, what, three times? I could be pregnant. I could already be carrying his baby.

“Why?”

“Ellie, we need to talk to a doctor before you even think about having children. We don’t know how you would handle it,
if
you could handle it. More importantly… you can’t have Jack’s baby.”

“Why not?”

She sighs.

“He’s only interested in your money, dear. He wants you to give him a child so he can use the child to get your father’s money.”

That’s not true, I know it’s not. I know in my heart that Jack loves me. I know it the way I know which way is up and down, that the sky is blue under clouds, that the sun will come up tomorrow. Her words are soft and silky and there was a time when they would have slid right into my mind like a thin, sharp blade and started working us apart, but no. It’s not true.

I look over at her and chew my lip. My scars tug painfully at my mouth. I used to chew my lip like that when I was little and she’d yell at me to stop. I flinch, expecting her to say something, but she doesn’t.

Mom looks over at me with big teary eyes and that red mark on her face and her wild, disheveled hair, and it’s like looking at a total stranger. She keeps glancing at me, calculated and slick, appraising me.

Something is wrong.

There’s no love in her voice. It’s like listening to a soap opera. Her voice is like AstroTurf, like diet soda, like sugar-free candy. It’s right and wrong at the same time, too realistic to be real.

She’s fucking acting.

She always used to do this when she wanted me to do something. She’d provoke me to anger and then use my guilt against me. Even after I was hurt, it was always the same. She’d push me until I lashed out at her and then act wounded until she got her way. She’ll find some way to guilt me until I take that pill, too.

Or she’ll try.

I’m not looking at my mother. My mother is dead. She died when I was a little girl and this creature wormed her way into my father’s bed and took over my life. My skin feels alive, crawling with disgust. It was not her place to try to force me into some acting career or whatever she had planned.

My father was seeing it, too.

My head starts to swim. I sway in the seat. It’s like I’ve been lying down forever and I just stood up, like I’m dizzy. That’s not my mother in that seat. Not my mom. I don’t have one. There’s some reptile that stole her place, cold blooded and calculating.

That’s what she’s like. Her eyes. Like some lizard.

“It’s going to be alright,” she says, reassuring me in a voice like honey.

I nod and turn away. She expects me to be meek, keep my eyes down, not look at her. I play my part.

The driver takes us to the airport and to a private plane. I trudge up the steps, trying to think of how I can get out of this and get to Jack. I’m drawing a blank, but I have to do
something
.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Mom watches me lower myself into my seat and clips the seat belt for me, tugging it snugly around my waist. Something about the way she doesn’t quite look at me sets off alarm bells.

It’s like there’s a puzzle in my head, all the pieces swirling around. Sometimes they catch on each other and the picture starts to take shape before the wind picks up and blows them apart again. She sits down on the other side and straps herself in. The engines spin up to a steady drone and I grip the armrests, hard.

I’ve never flown before.

“It’s about a nine-hour flight. Try to get some sleep, honey.”

Sleep? I don’t need sleep, my mind is going a mile a minute. Where did they take Jack? What’s going to happen to him? Would Richard hurt his own
son
?

Mom toys with her phone until the plane starts to move and she slips it away into her jacket. She adjusts herself in the seat, glancing at me with every move like she’s willing me to go to sleep.

I might as well play along. I look out the window while the plane leans back and leaves the ground, staring at the runway sliding away from me. My whole body clenches in fear, but it fades quickly. The fear of flying is nothing next to my fear for Jack. My heart has been ripped out and sits beating in someone else’s hand.