Page 10 of Sapphire Storm

Once she’d been tender and affectionate. After that night onaNew York City streetcorner, she’d emerged tough andfull of purpose.

But first, there were the bad days, the days in which shelay in bed for hours on end, caressing his cheek weakly with one hand if hewandered into the room to see how she was doing. Ignoring the desperate calls fromhis father, who knew better than to return home and try to lay claim to thehouse he’d paid for, lest his secret life be exposed. Making Ronnie call thelocal grocery to see what they could get delivered, asking the neighbors todrive him to summer day camp each morning. He’d been on the verge of believinglife would be like that forever when suddenly she roused, did her makeup, andstarted packing up their things. They were moving west to live with his GrandmaNina, she announced. When they got there everything would be Californiasunshine and bright new beginnings.

Lucy Burton died that day. Lucy Russo came back to life andreplaced her after ten years of zombie-walking beside a man she didn’t trulyknow. But her resurrection left her with a colder heart and thicker skin.

In the years that followed, the stress of becoming a singleparent made her even tougher.

They moved into his grandmother’s spare desert ranch house,a temporary arrangement that grew permanent over time. The above-ground pool,the chain link fence designed to keep out the neighbor’s testy Dobermans, eventhe crazy vault of stars each night. They all seemed like bright, hard-edgedevidence that their old tree-shaded life had been a lie. That this sunbakedreality was the only reality. Meanwhile, his mom built a CPA business fromscratch as she deposited the child support payments right into his collegefund. After his grandma passed, the house and her tiny nest egg became theirs.

Sometimes during those first few years of dislocation andloss, he’d overhear his grandmother chewing out his mom for not taking his dadto the cleaners in the divorce. After all, she’d had that private investigatorfile documenting his affair. From what he’d been able to overhear—his motherwas never a yeller, even when her own mother was close to yelling at her—LucyRusso had wanted none of the trappings of a fancy life. They’d all been taintedby her husband’s betrayal. Not his nice cars, not his quaint, Cape Cod stylehouse shaded by elms, not his rich, martini-swilling friends who’d never feltlike hers.

But every now and then, usually after her weekly glass of Merlot,Lucy would make a comment that laid bare the shame that had driven her toseparate from Thomas Burton with a hatchet—she was a secretary who’d marriedone of the bigwigs at the firm, and deep down, she believed she’d been punishedfor shooting above her station.

Words like these would set Roman’s teeth on edge, but if hetried to console her, tried to tell her she was victim-blaming, she’d wave himback into his chair with one hand and change the subject to his grades, whichwere never very good unless the subject involved running or lifting weights.

And when his frustration with the brick walls inside hismother became too much to bear, he had canyon trails to explore, cliff faces toscale.

AndMen’s Fitnessarticles to read, where the gorgeousmale models accompanying the workout plans filled his young body with anintoxicating blend of ambition, envy, and terrifyingly raw lust. Models who lookedlike the man they’d caught his dad kissing that night. And somehow in hisyoung, twisted brain he’d thought the only way to overcome that moment—to makeup for the fact that he was developing desiressimilar tothe ones his father had almost kept secret—was to become a better, fitterversion of the man who’d convinced his father to stray, who’d killed hismother’s gentle and affectionate side. But a version who didn’t sleep withother people’s husbands, who didn’t wreck marriages. Who used his magneticpowers for good.

Now he knew that Ethan Blake hadn’t convinced his father tostray. Sure, he’d been an accessory to the murder of a marriage, but apparentlya clueless one. It was his father who’d made the call, sent the email, soughtout Ethan’s good looks and charm, probably after seeing his profile on somewebsite. If Ethan’s story was true—and the guy had told it with too muchconviction and detail for it not to be—the marriage had the same killer Romanhad always suspected: his dear old dad.

The 5 North was humming when he merged with it. The BentleyBentayga’s smooth ride focused him the way those long-ago mountain runs had.Whenever he hit a certain speed, a certain level of exertion, there was nopast, no future, just a throbbing, electric now in which his mom would liveforever in his heart, and he’d never age another day or gain a pound or lose asingle follower.

But his mom was gone, and no amount of speed would allow himto escape that fact.

And now he couldn’t stop seeing Ethan’s face, stillclassically handsome, with those big brown eyes that always seemed on the vergeof a welcoming smile. The trim, manicured mustache was a recent addition sincehis reality show debut. Roman kept seeing his patient gaze. Like he wasn’t justlooking at you; like he wasseeingyou.

When when Roman had started to cry, the man had seemed tocare.

Or maybe he’d just been afraid of losing his job.

Or maybe he was an expert at making you feel what he wantedyou to feel.

That’s why he’d been the favoredfucktoy of future senators.

Roman merged onto the toll road that would take him north.

This was his new version of his old mountain-cresting hikes,mounting the steep incline that cut through the dry and dusty hills that satbehind Orange County’s most famous beaches. Only now, instead of his own achinglegs powering him, he was carried along by the Bentley’s turbo-charged engine.Dark blue with tinted windows, it drove like a knife through butter, aluxurious four-door attempt at a family car too pricey for most families onearth. It drew eyes wherever he took it, then he’d step from behind thedriver’s seat and when they saw his age, the gawkers muttered things undertheir breath like,Damn.Whosekid is he?Or worse,What’dhe haveto do to earn that?

It’s not my car,he thought.She lets me useit, but it’s not mine. And she lets me live in the house because I’m paid totake care of it when she’s in LA. How does that make me awhore?As angry as the man’s final words left him, Roman preferred rememberingthat version of Ethan Blake to the patient and kind one who’d invited him tobarf up years’ worth of anger and pain on that penthouse suite’s rose-coloredcarpet. Who invited him to do something he’d done almost none of these last fewpainful months.

Talk.

Easier to hate the Ethan who’d threatened him.

Threatened him because Roman had threatened him first.

He was tempted to blow past the first sign for Highway 133.But if he kept driving, he wasn’t sure where or when he’d stop. So he turnedoff the toll road, and suddenly he was traveling the narrow, winding canyonroad that would take him back to the sparkling sea, only a few hours’ drivefrom the deserts of his youth.

But seemingly a universe away.

5

After a hard left on Pacific Coast Highway and a fewserpentine twists, Diana Peyton’s famed Castle by the Sea came into view. Fromstreet level, Roman could see the sloped, gabled roofs and the brick chimneyrising over the wood and concrete wall backed by protective hedges. A few topfloor windows were aglow with honey-colored light against the starry night sky.If you were looking up at it from the beach below, it was three stories ofimpeccably restored French Normandy perfection descending the cliff in acontrolled tumble.

In Laguna Beach, giant mansions sat cheek by jowl on anyscrap of coast with an ocean view, and the Castle’s neighbors were mostlycontemporary slabs of concrete and plate glass. But Diana’s oceanfront mansehad been trading hands between members of Hollywood royalty since the 1950s,back when Laguna was little more than a humble artists’ colony boasting greatweather and little crescents of beach chopped up by rocky cliff faces. At theheight of her TV fame in the mid-eighties, she’d snatched it up, adding bonusrooms and even a lower level to make up for the motor court she carved out ofone half of the house’s top floor. On the first tour she’d given him shortlybefore he moved in, she’d proudly explained the work she’d done to preserve thehouse’s original style—low, coffered ceilings, thick Oriental rugs atop pickledhardwood floors, cozy rooms lushly decorated in individual styles, and withnone of the trendy open floor plans Diana despised. “If I wanted to live in anairplane hangar, I’d become a pilot,” she’d huffed more than once afterreturning from some engagement at the wall-deprived home of one of her wealthyfriends.

After the motor court gate rolled open, Roman hit the gasand almost plowed right into the back of Scott Bryant’s parked Range Rover.

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