The Angel (The Original Sinners) (35 page)

With both hands, Griffin made a dismissive gesture as if
Michael’s father were simply a fly or a feral cat hanging about.

“That is my son.” Michael’s father stabbed an angry finger in
Michael’s direction.

“He’s my property.”

“Your what?”

Michael cringed outwardly even as his heart fluttered inside.
Being claimed as Griffin’s property spoke to him on the deepest levels.

“My. Property. He belongs to me. Completely by his choice. And
you are no longer relevant in this equation,” Griffin continued. “You make him
feel bad. Ergo you are not allowed to ever be in his presence until such a time
comes as you can control your insecurities enough to keep your mouth shut around
Michael.”

“I’ve been paying to keep him in food and clothing with a roof
over his head since the day he was born.”

“Money?” Griffin stood up straighter. “This is about money?
Money I have. How much do you want for him?”

“Excuse me?” Michael’s father repeated.

“How much do you want for your son? I’ll write you a check
right now to buy you out of his life forever.”

“Griffin, don’t give him a penny.” The words came out without
warning. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

He doesn’t deserve it.
Had Michael
actually said that out loud? Before he would have said, or at least thought,
I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you spending a
penny on me.
But Griffin valued him so highly, treated him like the
rarest and most precious possession…Michael started to think maybe he was.

“No, he doesn’t deserve it,” Griffin said, reaching into the
back pocket of his jeans and pulling out his wallet. “But you deserve a life
without him. Didn’t you tell me he keeps a running total of the child support
he’s paid out on the checks? Where are we? What’s the total?”

“Griffin…” Michael begged.

“Forty-two thousand, three-hundred dollars,” Michael’s mother
said in a loud, clear voice, her eyes locked onto Griffin’s. “And if I had the
money, I’d give it all back to him to get rid of him too.”

Michael watched as Griffin’s and his mother’s eyes met.
Something passed between them that Michael saw but didn’t understand.

“Let’s round it up. Fifty thousand?” Griffin grabbed Michael’s
father by the shoulder and turned him around, pushing his chest into the wall.
Then using his back as a flat surface, Griffin filled out his check. “I’m
feeling generous. We’ll make it sixty-nine thousand. I just love writing 69s.
I’ll even put that in the memo. For sixty-nining your beautiful son.”

Griffin spun Michael’s father back around, ripped out the check
and stuffed it in his father’s pocket.

“I’m good for it,” Griffin said. “Aren’t I, Mick? Didn’t you
say this guy here worked in a stock brokerage?”

Michael nodded. “At Hamilton’s.”

“Nice,” Griffin said in approval. “My father is John Fiske.
Heard of him?”

Michael’s father didn’t answer in words but his wide eyes
confessed he knew exactly who Griffin’s father was and just how much money
Griffin was good for.

“Go, Dad,” Michael said. “You don’t want me to be your son any
more than I want you to be my father. Now you don’t have be my father
anymore.”

“You just got dumped.” Griffin patted Michael’s father on top
of his head. “Sucks, I know. Oh, goodbye.”

Once again, Griffin made the shooing gesture. Michael’s father
shot everyone in the room a look of pure hatred.

He stormed out of the kitchen and down the hall, Griffin
following hard on his heels, no doubt wanting to make sure he actually left.
Michael and his mother trailed behind Griffin.

Out on the front lawn, Michael’s father turned around.

“It’s a sin, you know that right?” Michael’s father said,
looking back and forth between Michael and Griffin. “Sex between two men. It’s
against nature and against God. It’s an abomination even. You go to church,
Michael. You know that.”

“If it’s an abomination, Dad, you’re just doing it wrong. Bear
down hard, then release. It’ll fit better.” Michael nearly shouted the
words.

Michael’s father shook his head in disgust as he strode to his
car and drove off. Griffin looked at Michael and they both broke into
unrestrained laughter.

“Do you usually yell sodomy tips on your front lawn?” Griffin
asked, dragging Michael in for a quick kiss.

“What? You don’t?” Michael was still laughing when he pulled
out of Griffin’s embrace. It was then he saw his mother standing on the porch in
silence. “Mom…oh, Mom, I’m so sorry…” Michael said, his heart sinking through
the ground. “I didn’t even think…and the neighbors, I’m—”

Michael’s mother took two steps forward and wrapped him into a
hug.

He froze, unable to remember the last time his mother had held
him like this.

“Mom?” Michael tentatively returned the hug.

“I missed you, kid. Long summer without you.”

Michael glanced at Griffin, who only shrugged and mouthed,
Women,
at him.

His mother didn’t seem ready or willing to let him go yet. So
Michael leaned into the hug and closed his eyes.

“I missed you too, Mom.”

Finally she pulled away and wiped a tear off her face. Turning
to Griffin she held out her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Griffin.”

Griffin looked down at her hand and rolled his eyes. He took a
step forward and hugged her so hard she came off the ground.

“Griffin, you should put my mom down.”

Griffin put Michael’s mother back down on her feet.

Michael looked at Griffin and then at his mother and back
again.

“So,” Michael said. “Lunch?”

25

Suzanne entered Sacred Heart’s sanctuary and found it
empty. She’d made one final appointment to talk to him; she had a few questions
left to ask, but the questions weren’t why she came. What she really wanted was
to apologize for her suspicions and thank him for helping her believe, if not in
God again, at least in one priest.

Wandering the perimeter of the sanctuary, she studied the
plaques on the wall, images of Christ’s passion with Roman numerals engraved on
them. She stopped at one plaque that showed a woman kneeling in front of Jesus
holding out her veil. Suzanne furrowed her brow and tried to remember the
woman’s name. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d prayed the Stations of
the Cross. Maybe she never had.

“What’s your name?” she asked out loud as she started to dig
out her iPhone.

“Veronica,” came a voice from behind her.

Suzanne spun around and saw a woman standing at the end of a
pew with her arms crossed over her chest. The woman wore a tight black skirt
that hugged her shapely hips, strappy high heels, a fitted red blouse and a
mysterious little grin on her stunningly lovely face. The woman looked familiar.
Extremely familiar.

“Oh, God,” Suzanne said, suddenly making the connection.
“You’re Nora Sutherlin.”

The woman nodded as she uncrossed her arms and pushed a strand
of wavy black hair behind her ear.

“Guilty,” she said with the kind of smile that told Suzanne
this was a woman who had possibly never experienced a moment’s guilt in her
life. “And you’re Suzanne Kanter. You’re even more beautiful than he said you
were.”

Suzanne blushed and shoved her shaking hands into the back
pockets of her jeans. As intimidating as she found Father Stearns, she’d never
felt half as nervous as she suddenly felt around Nora Sutherlin.

“Um…” Suzanne began and rolled her eyes at her own awkwardness.
“Well, you are as beautiful as he said you were.”

Nora Sutherlin, unlike her, didn’t blush. She only stared at
Suzanne with her darkly intelligent eyes.

“One question,” Sutherlin said.

Suzanne blinked.

“One question? You have one question for me?”

Sutherlin shook her head.

“You’ve been hounding him all summer. Following him. Breaking
into the rectory. You even went to see his sister. You’re tenacious. I can
appreciate that. It is, however, time for you to leave us alone. You know he’s
no danger to his congregation. I can only assume you’re still here for other
reasons. Reasons I don’t have to guess at because, let’s be honest, we’ve both
seen him.”

Suzanne’s blush deepened but she couldn’t deny the truth of
Sutherlin’s words. Her attraction to Father Stearns was still too fresh a wound
to bother denying.

“Yes,” Suzanne admitted. “I’ve seen him.”

Sutherlin raised her eyebrow, obviously hearing the deeper
truth to the words. She smiled again, uncrossed her arms and sat on the arm of
the pew.

“I said one question and that’s exactly what I mean, Ms.
Kanter. You can ask me one question—” Sutherlin held up a single finger “—and
I’ll answer it. Truthfully. Without subterfuge or disingenuousness. I will tell
you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to whatever one
question you ask me.”

Suzanne’s eyes went wide.

“Next you’re going to tell me I won the lottery,” she said,
scarcely believing her ears.

“Only the truth lottery. But this prize comes with a price.
I’ll answer your question, but the answer will be off the record. And you can
use nothing I tell you to hurt him. And you can take nothing that I tell you to
find out more. If a single word of mine appears in print, I will have Kingsley
destroy your career so thoroughly you won’t even get a job as a weathergirl like
your old professor suggested. Do you understand that?”

Swallowing hard, Suzanne nodded. She heard the threat in
Sutherlin’s voice and knew she meant every word. That she even knew about her
old prof suggesting she become a weathergirl was a sign this woman’s world was
not one Suzanne needed to linger inside a moment longer than necessary.

“Also, once I give your answer,” Sutherlin continued, “you will
leave me, Kingsley and Søren alone. We will cease to exist to you. You will
banish us from your thoughts, your memory, your conversation and your
vocabulary. Can you accept that?”

She couldn’t imagine completely banishing Father Stearns from
her memory. Her body still tingled when she thought of his hands on her arms.
But she would try. For the sake of the truth, the whole truth, she would
try.

“Okay. I accept. I’ll be going to Iraq soon anyway. Time I
moved on.”

“Yes,” Sutherlin said. “It is. Now ask your question, and we
can all move on.”

Suzanne didn’t have to pause even one moment to think of her
question.

“Are you and Father Stearns sleeping together?”

If she’d thought such an inquiry would faze Sutherlin, Suzanne
was highly disappointed.

Sutherlin looked neither shocked nor scared at the question.
She leveled her dark green eyes onto Suzanne’s face.

“You really want to waste your one question on something you
already know the answer to?” Sutherlin asked.

Suzanne’s stomach fell a few inches. She’d hoped…believed…at
least wanted to believe… But it didn’t matter. Sutherlin had been a virgin even
at age nineteen. Whenever she and her priest had become lovers, she’d been at
least a legal adult.

“No, I suppose not.” Suzanne sighed heavily. “How about this?
The conflict of interest that’s on that anonymous tip someone sent me—what is
it? Is it his sister Elizabeth? She practically confessed to killing their
father.”

“She did kill their father, and she did confess to Søren. And
Søren refused to reveal her confession. I overheard it at the funeral. And he’s
been worried for seventeen years that Elizabeth would find out I heard. But no,
that’s not the conflict of interest the church is worried about.”

“Then what is it?”

“Søren’s father was a very wealthy man when he died. He got
half his wife’s fortune in the divorce and with his ruthless business acumen,
he’d trebled it by the time he died. And when he died, he left every single
penny to his only son. Nearly half a billion dollars.”

Suzanne gasped. “But…his father had sent him away after what
happened with Elizabeth. Nearly killed him.”

“True. But when his father had no more sons and had no
relationship with either daughter, he had a change of…whatever he had in his
chest in place of a heart. But the money wasn’t a peace offering. It was a
bribe. Priests take vows of poverty. To accept all that money, Søren would have
had to leave the priesthood. For nothing and for no one will he ever leave the
priesthood.”

“So what did he do?”

Sutherlin grinned.

“What any good priest would do. He tithed. He gave ten percent
of the money to the church. Five percent to his old Catholic school in Maine.
And five percent to this diocese. The rest he split in half and gave to each
sister. He kept not a single cent for himself.”

Suzanne covered her mouth with her hand and turned away. In her
head she quickly crunched the numbers. Five percent of five hundred million
dollars was…

“Twenty-five million dollars,” Suzanne breathed. She turned
back around. “He gave that to this diocese?”

“He did. You know how it works. Parish priests get transferred
all the time. Yet Søren’s been here for almost twenty years. How does he get
such an exemption? He bought it.”

“I wondered why they hadn’t moved him around, moved him up the
ladder.”

“He likes it here.”

He likes his privacy,
Suzanne
realized.

“What would you call giving a promotion to a man who’d donated
twenty-five million dollars to your corporation?” Sutherlin asked.

“A conflict of interest,” Suzanne whispered. “I’d thought…I
thought he might be a predator. Or, you know, because…with you he had…”

“Sex? You thought the conflict of interest was about sex?”
Sutherlin laughed as if that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“This is the Catholic Church, Ms. Kanter. And the Catholic Church has been
winking at sex for two thousand years. It’s the money that makes them
nervous.”

Suzanne shook her head. Too many thoughts crashing about inside
it.

“He gave away it all? Every penny?”

Sutherlin nodded.

“He did. Stubborn asshole priest. When he and Marie-Laure got
married, he got access to his massive trust fund. Once she died, he gave every
penny of that away too. He was born to be a priest. Money doesn’t interest him.
That’s the conflict of interest. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get on
with my life without worrying about a reporter hurting Søren.”

“You call him Søren?” Suzanne asked, the question coming out
before she could stop it.

“Of course I do. It’s his name. Why do you ask?”

“He said he only told his real name to the people closest to
him, to the people he trusted and who knew the real him.”

“That’s very true.”

“How long have you called him Søren?”

Sutherlin’s face softened as she turned her gaze away from
Suzanne to smile at the image of Veronica holding out her veil to the fallen
Christ.

After a long silence, Sutherlin looked back at Suzanne.

“Since the day we met.”

Suzanne nodded and said nothing. Those five words told Suzanne
everything she needed to know. Father Stearns and Nora Sutherlin had something,
a connection, an intimacy…something deep and unexplainable, something
untouchable, unreachable. The night that Suzanne had begged him to make love to
her, he’d said that he did not belong to himself. She thought he’d meant he
belonged to God or the Church. Now she knew he meant Nora Sutherlin.

“I’m leaving now,” Sutherlin said. “And you should too.”

“I’d like to at least tell him goodbye. Or am I not allowed?”
Suzanne asked. The question held no sarcasm. Whatever Nora Sutherlin told her to
do, she would do.

“I’ll allow it. He does like you. I don’t, but I’m a little
biased.”

“I can see that.”

Sutherlin raised her chin at Suzanne’s words and somehow knew
she’d misspoken. Slowly Sutherlin walked toward her, her hips swaying with each
step forward. She’d never been in the presence of a more immediately, viscerally
sexual being in her life.

“No, you can’t see that,” Sutherlin said, coming to stand in
front of her. “You can’t see anything. Not me. Not him. Not us. We do not exist,
remember? Do you know what I am?”

Suzanne shrugged her shoulders in confusion.

“You’re…a writer.”

“I am. I’m also one of the most famous dominatrixes in the
entire world. I used to be Kingsley’s number one. Did you know that?”

Suzanne swallowed again.

“I might have heard some rumors.”

“Believe them,” Sutherlin said. “And know they are only the tip
of the iceberg. I once had a Texas cattle baron pay me fifty thousand dollars to
brand him with his own branding iron. I had a Silicon Valley CEO pay me sixty
thousand dollars to piss on his face. I have put the rich and the famous in the
hospital. And they paid through the teeth for the privilege of it. I have a
police file as thick as Kingsley’s cock, and yet I’ve never been convicted of
any crime as an adult. Why? The cops and the lawyers and the judges live in
Kingsley’s pocket. And one or two of them lived in mine. In the city, I can get
away with murder.”

Suzanne straightened her shoulders and looked Sutherlin
directly in the eyes, something that took all of her courage.

“Are you threatening me, Ms. Sutherlin?”

Sutherlin only smiled.

“No. Of course not. All I’m saying is that I’ll do anything to
protect him. Anything at all. But there’s no need to worry. I’ve hurt people.
I’ve hurt them badly. I’ve left permanent scars on some clients. Some outer
scars. Some inner. But all that pain I’ve inflicted…it was all consensual. I’ve
never hurt anyone without their permission. All I’m saying, Ms. Kanter, is…”
Sutherlin leaned forward and pressed the lightest, softest, most terrifying kiss
onto Suzanne’s lips before pulling back an inch and whispering, “There’s a first
time for everything.”

And with that, Sutherlin took one step back. And another. Then
she turned on her heel and walked out of the church.

Suzanne took a deep breath. She raised her hand and found it
shaking. War zones, she reminded herself. She’d been in war zones. This woman
shouldn’t terrify her.

Determined to get a shred of her dignity back, Suzanne ran from
the sanctuary and saw Nora Sutherlin heading toward a Porsche that had pulled up
to the curb.

“Wait!” Suzanne called out and Sutherlin turned around.

“Yes?”

“Just one more question…please.”

Sutherlin smirked.

“One more. But make it a good one.”

Suzanne nodded.

“What’s he like…you know, in bed? I have to know. I’ve never
been so attracted to someone in my life. And I’ll never get to be with him. Can
you just tell me that?”

Sutherlin looked positively shocked by the question.

“In bed? Me and Søren? We aren’t sleeping together,” Sutherlin
said.

“But…but I asked you if you were. And you said not to ask
questions I already knew the answer to.”

Sutherlin nodded.

“Exactly. Of course we aren’t lovers.” Sutherlin slid on a pair
of chic black sunglasses. “He’s a priest. That’s gross.”

Once more Sutherlin turned on her heel and walked away. This
time Suzanne let her go.

She watched as Sutherlin reached the Porsche. Two men got out
of the car. No, not two men. One man and one teenage boy. The man was Griffin
Fiske. And the teenage boy was… Suzanne narrowed her eyes at him. A beautiful
young man, whoever he was. Almost angelic in appearance. Shoulder-length black
hair, eyes so brightly silver she could see them shining from ten feet away,
pale skin, thin but only in that teenage boy way…even his wrists still had that
teenage boy delicateness to them. Suzanne looked more closely at his wrists and
saw they bore gauze bandages. Bandages? She made the connection finally. Michael
Dimir—the boy who’d slit his wrists in the sanctuary—he would be seventeen now.
Griffin Fiske and Nora Sutherlin gave each other a quick kiss as the boy,
Michael, unwrapped the gauze from his wrists. Sutherlin gave his wrists a
thumbs-up before she kissed him quickly on the lips. The boy leaned back against
Griffin Fiske’s chest as Fiske wrapped an arm possessively around him.