Page 6 of Hero & Villain
What had my time with Clint really given me, and what would my grandfather want now that Clint had betrayed me and I’d failed?
My blood boiled as I walked towards the park along the river, but behind the rage was an emptiness as cold as the dark water that swept past. The wind blew around my bare legs, but I didn’t feel the cold. Rage ate up any chill that dared creep in. However long I controlled Harrison, it wouldn’t be enough. My grandfather wouldn’t acknowledge any of the deals I’d gotten for him, only my failure. How long could I keep Toni hidden from my cousin and our enemies? What was I supposed to do now? My agents were all pulled? Had my grandfather decided to hand over the family business to my cousin? I’d kill him. I’d kill both of them. Not that I’d ever actually killed anyone before, but this feeling in my chest was murder.
A guitarist was cleaning up on the corner of Wall, putting away his instrument to protect it from the weather. I would never allow myself to play in public. My music was for my own personal enjoyment, not anyone else’s. But was that really what it was about? Or was it my grandfather manipulating me the way he manipulated everyone? Had it really been my idea to seduce Clint Harrison into bed with Haverscorp, or was my grandfather pulling all the strings?
Rage consumed all rational thought while desperation clawed at something underneath. I couldn’t go back to that world, to my grandfather, to the house where my mother had taken her life.
I walked up to the guitarist and held out my trembling hand. “Let me borrow your chair.”
He stared at me, with dirty blond hair falling over his face. “No one’s going to give you anything in this weather.”
I looked up at the dark sky. The city lights caught on the snow, casting a magical glow over everything. “I’ll bet you yourchair that I can get a thousand dollars tonight.” Whether I could or not, I wasn’t going to take his chair with me. I was going to play, though. I was going to play on the street, as base as I could be, peddling my wares to the masses, prostituting my music like I’d sold my body. At least that would be honest.
He nodded, and I sat down. I pulled out my cello, putting down the case and opening it up on the sidewalk like I’d seen pauper musicians do. I wasn’t allowed to play publicly. My grandfather controlled so much of my life, in spite of my working so hard to be independent. The only time I’d ever really won a fight was when I insisted on going to music school and clinched the deal by going to juvie after I dumped half a ton of pink lemonade powder in the city water.
I’d shown my grandfather that I would not lose the one thing that made my life bearable, and there I’d met Toni. I’d never felt so free as during those months behind bars for tainting the water supply with lemonade. I’d intentionally gotten caught committing a ridiculous crime whose sole purpose was to show my grandfather that he couldn’t control me. And it had worked for a little while.
He let me study music as long as I spent two hours a day studying with the preeminent business lawyer, a woman who hated herself for obeying my grandfather. These days she worked for me, but did she really have loyalty towards me, or was that just a lie my grandfather allowed me to have? He’d sent Harlem to bring me home. You didn’t do that to someone you considered free.
There I sat on the street with my instrument, without a purpose or a plan. If I went back to my grandfather, he’d compare me to Philippe. I couldn’t stomach the idea of my cousin taking Haverscorp because I’d failed, because my fiancé betrayed me.
I held the bow in my hand and felt so much rage and desperation, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t break my bow against the strings, but the moment I made contact, I was taken away from that terrible place and into a world where things made sense. Music had always made more sense to me than things or people.
I played a messy Shostakovich sonata, shaking with emotions, but by the end, I could practically breathe as I drew my bow over the strings for the last time. I opened my eyes, and the audience started clapping, stopping for the music in spite of the snow. A lot of people were recording this with their phones. Grandfather would be livid when he saw it, and there was no doubt that he would. There were a lot of bills in my case, but not enough. I met the guitarist’s eyes. He looked stunned, like he’d never seen a cellist before. Was this so shocking? Maybe I wanted to be shocking. Maybe I wanted to show the world that I was for sale— my body, my music, my soul. This was my first concert. I should wear black.
I unbuttoned my coat and let it slide off my shoulders, leaving me in my Thursday costume with my cello. I closed my eyes and let the rest of the world vanish as I played a piece that wept with betrayal, aching, agonizing betrayal. It was almost like Britten understood what it was like to spend two years giving your body and soul, only to be betrayed and left with nothing. It was my mistake— letting down my guard, believing Clint when he tried to talk me into marrying him, eloping to Paris or Las Vegas. He wanted more than Thursdays and secretary sex. He wanted to sleep with me in the same bed, in the same room. He wanted all of me— my nightmares, leg stubble, all of it. At least that’s what he said. Of course, he didn’t, not really. I’d started buying wedding magazines. I’d started thinking of his mother as someone I could talk to, but of course it was all a set-up for betrayal. Of course it was.
Fine. I would find a way to destroy Geotech, to rip it apart from the inside and leave it without a shred of dignity, exactly how I felt playing my heart out to an audience of complete strangers.
At least I knew I had a heart, because this pain wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have one. Too bad I’d never give it a chance to beat for another man again.
Chapter Three
DAGGER
My phone rang.
I answered it while I stood at the window of the pawnshop across from the bar where Danielle Delavigne had ducked in with her cello almost two hours ago.
I’d bought a pink rubber chicken and a set of pink golf balls while I’d been waiting for her to move. The weather was the worst Boston mix: sleet, snow, hail, and an icy rain that froze you to the bone. A day like this needed a rubber chicken, particularly a pink one.
“Hello, Clint. How can I help you?” I asked, trying to sound like I hadn’t fallen off the edge of sanity five years ago.
His elegant voice didn’t match the words. “You can take your deal and shove it up your?—”
“I can’t, actually,” I drawled, cutting him off. “It’s legally binding, as you know, because you insisted on it.” I frowned down at the felt flower corsage on the shelf that was possibly the most hideous thing I’d ever seen. This pawn shop was not accustomed to a more particular clientele. Clearly.
“Stop screwing around, James,” he ground out, voice losing its carefully cultivated apathy. “I’m getting my lawyers to call your lawyers. The deal is off, you psycho geek. You can take yourpink pants and your little tech sector and—” he hung up on me before he completed that thought. Sad day.
I squeaked the chicken absentmindedly. Poor Clint, getting entangled by a kraken like Haverscorp. He’d wanted me to help extract him, but he’d wanted to keep the granddaughter. That’s what we call wanting to have our cake and eat it too. You can’t eat the cake and have it, because it’s gone. You ate it. He ate her, and now she was gone.
I frowned as I looked up to see the very same woman slide on the sidewalk in her ridiculously high heels and barely not land in a splat, beige trench fluttering. Danielle Delavigne had an excellent sense of balance, which almost made up for the lack of sense. Who wears shoes like that on the street during a Nor’easter, particularly when executing spy-grade evasion tactics? If I didn’t have a tracker in the lining of her coat, it would have been quite difficult for me to find her in the trashy bar in the worst neighborhood of Boston after she’d ditched her phone and her engagement ring in the back hall of the curry place.
I waited until she was at the corner before I left the pawnshop, rubber chicken and golf balls in the pockets of my nondescript black coat. The chicken feet stuck out of my enormous pocket. That would ruin the bland picture I was trying to present to the world, but no one would notice in this weather.
I pulled out my phone and followed the beeping dot from a distance until the dot stopped moving. I squinted at the screen. Wasn’t that on the sidewalk near the river? Had she decided to throw herself in?
I broke into a sprint, running around the corner of Wall and stopped abruptly when I saw her opening her cello case. Right. Some people would want to end it all when faced with financial ruin and humiliation, but not Daniela Delavigne. If it wasn’t chocolate, it was music; her two great Achilles heels. Obsessions.
