The house was dark. And I was alone. The alarm beeped as I entered the front door, and I punched in the code to make it stop.
Theo, the driver, lived in the cottage at the end of the property. Jim’s bodyguard was no longer around. It was just me and seven empty bedrooms. An office wing. A formal dining room. Eight and a half baths.
There was so much room, and I rattled around inside it like a lost toy.
In the dark I went to the drink cart in the sitting room, and I poured myself a glass of something that burned as I shot it back. I poured myself another one and took off my light-as-air, pencil-thin Jimmy Choo stilettos and walked barefoot with my drink through the kitchen and the sliding glass door to the pool deck. Another drink and with nowhere to put the glass I heaved it at the far end of the patio stones where it smashed spectacularly.
Tonight . . . tonight had to be the end of something. Or the beginning. The way Caroline changed the speech. The way I came apart in Ronan’s hands only to be tossed aside the second he’d taken me apart. I was being used by everyone. Enough.
I lit a fire in the small fire pit I’d made out of bricks and stone, and I took off the dress and the thong and naked in the moonlight I burned them.
Shivering, I watched my old life burn.
My blood was up. And I was ready for a fight.
9
The next morning, my head pounding from my night of fury drinking, I walked the two miles over the ridge from my house to the giant Constantine compound on the very top of the hill. The 300-year-old mansion was known as The Queen of Bishop’s Landing. Originally an apple orchard and farm, the land got sold bit by bit, but the house never changed hands. Hundreds of years of Constantine matriarchs and patriarchs, adding wings and electricity. Bathrooms and theaters. Tennis courts. Guard houses. Swimming pools. Manicured gardens. Helicopter pad.
Since the last troubles with the Morellis, it had been heavily guarded with armed men on the various balconies and in guard houses along the long driveway. Winston had bought the houses closest to the compound, so for a mile in every direction it was Constantine land.
My parent’s old house was part of that. The willow tree and pond.
Rumor was that the Morellis used to have a house on this hill. I didn’t know if that was true or not.
It was damp in the early sunlight, and the fog clung to the hedgerows and the tall trees. Despite the compound and the bulldozing of houses, most of Bishop’s Landing was still forested.
I walked the overgrown path up the hill. The turret on the Constantine mansion was obscured by mist. I bypassed the driveway and used the old wooden gate built in the side of the fence set deeper in the woods. Mom showed us this fence when Zilla and I were girls, when we were in and out of this house like it was our own. I hadn’t used it in years. But this morning, in my muddy Wellingtons and bedraggled ponytail – it seemed right.
I knocked on the door and squeezed the water out of my hair, waiting for one of the maids to answer.
“Poppy!” It was Denise. My favorite. She’d been around the longest and remembered my mother. “Ms. Constantine didn’t tell me she was expecting you.”
“She told me to come by last night.”
“Did you make an appointment?”
“Nope,” I said, stepping inside the foyer. I wiped off my boots on the rug. I liked Denise, but I wasn’t going to be sent away. “Is she in her office?”
“Yes,” Denise said. “But why don’t you let me—”
“I know the way, Denise. It’s fine.” I gave her a blinding smile. The kind of smile I gave servers and photographers when they noticed a bruise on my wrist and their eyebrows went up. It was my no further questions smile.
Caroline’s office was up in the turret. And I took the wide sweeping center staircase up to the second floor and then the smaller staircase to the third, and in the corner by the old nursery and the maid’s quarters was the final staircase up to her throne.
Justin had a desk at the top of the stairs. “Poppy!” he cried as he stood. “You don’t have an appointment.” He looked down at his desk like this unexpected interruption was going to send the whole house of cards to the floor.
“You’re right,” I said and pushed my way into Caroline’s office anyway, right past him. The room was windowed on three sides, and the ceiling was gorgeous refurbished mahogany. All the décor cream, white, and gold with accents of pale pink.
In the middle of the room, standing opposite her desk was a man with his back to me in a black suit. I knew in a heartbeat who he was.
Ronan.
I had not anticipated him. And my body lurched with memory and shame. The urge to run was not small, but I stood there. I stood there, and I folded up those conflicting memories and I put them away. I wasn’t stupid. And I wasn’t a little girl. It was time for me to stop acting like I was.
And more importantly it was time to stop being distracted by what he did to me.
Who is he? I wondered. And how did he get so close to Caroline? So fast? That office in her building that I’d been sure was for family; it was clearly his. Which meant he was deeply inner circle.
“Poppy?” Caroline asked, looking around Ronan to see me in the doorway. Her eyes went wide at the way I was dressed. Jeans and wet hair, muddy boots. An old raincoat I found in the gardener’s closet. “Are you all right?”
At that, Ronan turned, his face registering nothing. Not surprise or happiness or anger or disdain. Not even the memory of my ass grinding against his cock as I came so hard I left my body.
Nope. Ronan stared at me like we were strangers. And that was just great with me.
He’d worked some magic on me last night. Not just my body, but in my head, too. Pushing me out of that trap I’d lived in, too terrified to ask for what I wanted in fear of it being taken away.
Too terrified to want anything.
I felt stronger for having asked for something, even if it was something as strange as that man’s hands on my body. Even if getting what I wanted sent me someplace dark and shameful.
Sex was so easy for some people. Why was it always a Greek tragedy for me?
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was hoping we could talk?” My gaze flicked to Ronan, and I took great pleasure in sniffing dismissively. “Alone.”
“Of course,” she said. As she stood, she nodded at Ronan who turned and walked for the door. Brushing so close to me I could see that scar under his neck. I watched him go, all but daring him to look at me.
Of course, he didn’t. Because in the end, I was a senator’s widow, the good friend of his boss, and he was the help.
Now who is the coward? I thought. But didn’t necessarily feel better for the thought.
The door closed behind him, and Caroline gestured to the ivory chairs in front of her desk.
“You’re mad at me,” she said.
“I am,” I said. “Those things you changed in the speech—”
“The new foundation was something your husband and I were working on. He signed the papers just a few nights before . . .” she trailed off.
“He put a bullet in his own head?” The crassness was a surprise. It was shades of my sister coming out, and I understood how delicious it could be to be irreverent. To say what I wanted.