No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

When Alex woke up for the first time in days, he felt — well, rested was a stretch, a huge exaggeration, but not like he was falling back into a slog that would devour his life and eat his soul. Like there might be an end to this tunnel of horrors.

Thinking of Claire was like dragging fingernails over the open, gaping wound where his heart used to live, but even that was an improvement, in a way.

He leaned over Zoey; she was still sound asleep, her soft curls splashed over the pillow, her lips were tipped up in a quiet little smile. He pressed his lips to her cheek, and she made a sleepy, happy little sound. Her eyelashes fluttered, but her eyes didn’t open. “Are you getting up?” She muttered.

“Yeah,” he said. “Do you want to sleep, or should I have Sophia make breakfast for two?”

She stretched languidly under the sheets. “Sleep,” she said. “But if you need me—”

He leaned over and kissed her again, just a little bit longer. “You’re right here. Thank you.” He took a long, slow breath. “I don’t know if this will ever get all the way better.”

She opened her eyes, then, and turned over to look him in the eye more evenly. “Your sister died,” she said, and he saw wetness gathering on her lashes. He brushed it away with the tip of his little finger. “I’d think less of you if you were ever the same after that. But I’m still here. If you could try not to go so far away, I’d appreciate it, but I understand.”

He nodded slowly and then said something much scarier than telling her that he loved her. “I had a therapist, a few years ago. I saw her a lot about — well, a lot of things. I’m going to call her again. Make an appointment.”

“Okay,” she said.

He waited for a push back, irritation, or some sort of insinuation that a real man would get through this on his own. Nothing came. “Last time, she suggested that I go on meds. That may happen again.”

She gave another shrug and turned all the way towards him. “If you’re waiting for me to tell you to buck up, buttercup, or something, you’ll be waiting a long time. Better living through chemistry, my friend.”

Obviously, the only solution was to kiss her until she whimpered.

When Zoey rolled over to go back to sleep, he slid out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a dark t-shirt. He wasn’t up to going into the AEGIS building itself, but he could do some work in his office, make a few phone calls, and conduct a few meetings if necessary. But first, some coffee and something to put into his stomach. He had that odd, hollow feeling in his midsection that meant that once he ate, he might end up very, very hungry.

Sophia was in the kitchen, leaning against a counter, staring off into the distance. Her gaze snapped up when he stepped towards her, and he watched the woman who had kept his home running for several years brush away whatever wetness had collected around her eyes and push a calm and businesslike expression back onto her face. “Good morning,” she said. “Just yourself for breakfast this morning? The others are still asleep, I think. Just coffee, or—”

He touched the back of her hand carefully, and Sophia froze, her gaze locked on the point of contact. “How are you? I’ve been so wrapped up in my own pain, I didn’t ask. Do you need to take a few days? Go see your children? Hug your grandbabies?”

Sophia lifted her eyes and gave him a watery sort of smile. “No, thank you. It’s worse to have nothing to do. I would rather be here, be myself. With them, I would just be in the way, an old woman sad about someone they do not know.”

He nodded. “If there’s anything you need, please. Just say the word.”

Sophia nodded and then pulled her brusque manner back over her shoulders like a shroud. “Coffee, then. Anything else? Eggs?”

“If you don’t mind,” he said.

“Not at all.”

He found his phone and flipped through his much neglected social media channels. He had PR people who took care of his public accounts and AEGIS’s interactions, but he liked to follow them anyway, to make sure that things were being handled well. And then there were his private channels flooded with good wishes from people who’d been at the funeral, people who hadn’t, and people who started their messages with “I’m so sorry for your loss,” but then worked their way around to asking for a job, a contract, or some other sort of favor. Yesterday, he would have smashed his phone in frustration at the implicit disrespect in the action. Today, he just deleted the messages and moved on.

Sophia brought him waffles and coffee, and he found that he was quite right about the state of his stomach. He ate until he ached, and then took a second cup of coffee into his office.

It was a strange experience, walking into that room. He’d known that he was letting it be turned into his walking casket and known he was letting the work swallow him whole, but he hadn’t had any idea what to do with the pain and brutal rushes of emotion that had been threatening to subsume him. What had shocked him so much last night was how Leo and Zoey together had managed to pull him out of that place together in a way that neither of them would have ever been able to alone. He wasn’t polyamorous in the sense of wanting to build romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, and last night’s episode felt like an especially kinky and delightful sexual episode, but he’d never felt more loved by two of the people he cared about most in the world. And that was something. It was quite a lot, in fact.

He picked up his phone and called Brianna. She answered on the second ring. “How’s it going, boss?” Her voice was trepidatious. “I heard about your sister.”

The gut punch of agony passed after a moment. “Thank you,” he said to the apology in her tone. “The thing that frightened you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s settled.”

“Will you forgive me if I say it’s too late? I don’t—” There was a big swallow of air, and then a quiet sigh. “If it were just you, I’d come back. But my son—”

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll make sure your salary is paid through the end of the month, and give my personal cell to anyone who needs a reference, all right?”

They exchanged pleasantries for a few moments more, but it was the winding down of a professional relationship, not a personal loss. He let himself check out of the moment and didn’t let it dig into his heart.

After the call, he sat at that big desk, spinning slightly back and forth in the big leather chair, thinking about the man who should have been a father to him. Philip had been a shockingly astute businessman, but he’d been a horrible person. Alex had planned to take a middle road between those two positions, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was being shoved into Philip’s path again and again. If that were true, if that was really the only choice he had, he knew in his heart that he’d rather walk away from the whole thing.

He pulled open a drawer to his desk, pulling out the old man’s desk planner. Flipping through it, every meeting was detailed, and every meeting was work related. Every evening function had something to do with AEGIS. Even his various mistresses had been about building better relationships for his company, giving his company an edge. Making AEGIS more competitive, helping it stand above its competition, and building more divisions, more departments. Expanding its reach.

In some ways, Alex wondered how much of it was about making sure that Philip never again reached the point he’d been at when he’d been forced to marry Olivia to keep himself solvent. Maybe, in some twisted way, all the work he’d done was about building a better life for his wife and children.

Alex could almost convince himself it was true if he didn’t think about any of the conversations he’d witnessed between his parents.

Rage rose up within him, boiling and bubbling up, and he found himself pulling on the pages of the desk planner until they started to come loose in fistfuls, yanked free from the binding, tearing in places, and he didn’t care—

And then one piece of paper, smaller and narrower than the pages of the planner itself, fluttered down to the desk. He stared at it for a moment, then stared back at the planner. There was a pocket, tucked into the back cover, craftily hidden; it had only popped open when the pages tore and unstuck the glue that had tacked it down. It was a code referencing the different colored dots and dashes on each meeting that he hadn’t been able to figure out.

The code was titled at the top, with the year that matched the planner. It had a list of names, topics, and discussions, all indicated by different dashes and marks. How had he remembered all of this?

His mother’s name was on every single meeting that Zhu and Tanaka had attended. Every single one. There were codes for the kinds of arrangements they’d described, codes indicating that Philip had agreed to their plans.

His stomach flipped with a heavy, sick anger.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Okay,” Zoey said, still working at blinking the sleep away from her eyes. She was sitting up in bed, the sheet tucked under her armpits. Alex had tried to sit, but found too much stress centered in his quads to allow it. He paced. It didn’t help, but it kept the muscles from itching from inactivity and tightness. “I don’t get it. Even if they did do all of that, you said it was done. Everyone who could threaten her control is, in effect, silenced. It’s you and her controlling the board until she kicks off, end of story.”

Alex nodded slowly. “There’s an ‘unless’ there.”

There was a long, slow moment, as Zoey brushed her hair off her forehead, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Unless? I’m really sorry if I sound impatient, Alex, but I’m really kind of sick of ‘unless.’”

“If we were to have kids.”

He tried not to think too much of the blush that colored her cheeks and lit her eyes up with a smile she pushed away. “What if we did?”

“Olivia was holding shares in trust for Claire because she was one of my father’s heirs. Olivia herself has some right to them as well, of course, as my father’s widow. So yes, things are just even between us now. But if you and I were to have children—”

“They would also be heirs of Philip Blankenship, potentially.” She buried her head in her hands for a moment, and he waited to see what she would say, what she would do.

He let the silence go as long as he possibly could and then forced out a breath. “If you need to go, if you need some time, I understand,” he said. He was pretty sure he could hear the audible crack of his heart falling to pieces as he spoke the words.

Her response was quick. “No,” she said. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I love you. I meant it when I said that. I just need this to stop. I can’t live my life in fear of what they could do to us.”

Alex nodded. The course of action seemed incredibly clear to him now. “I’m going to go talk to her,” he said. Zoey was already shaking her head, and he spoke over her protests. “I get it, I know. You’re afraid. So am I. My mother and I need to come to some sort of peace, some sort of clarity about where we are and what will happen moving forward. We can’t live under this shadow of misery.” He reached out and took her hand, squeezing hard.

She squeezed back, focusing on him for a long moment. “Stay safe,” she said, finally. He nodded his agreement, picked his wallet and his phone off the dresser where he’d left them, and slipped out the door for his shoes. He did his damndest not to walk like his heart was trying to bust through his ribs. She’d insist on coming with him, but then they’d both be in danger. He needed to say some things to his mother. He’d needed to say them for a long time, in fact. There was no more room for excuses. It was time to get going.

CHAPTER TWELVE

David had the car waiting when Alex walked downstairs, and he slid into the back seat without saying anything. As they drove through the light traffic of the early morning, Alex closed his eyes and let his mind wander through the things he needed to say, trying to anticipate potential arguments or problematic phrasings. It was a trick he’d learned while prepping for board meetings. Let the emotions of the arguments go, and focus on the desired results.

There had been so much bad blood between him and his mother over the years. He’d laughed once with his therapist about how stereotypical it all sounded. He’d walked into sessions and joked that it all started with his mother, but he’d never really realized how much he blamed her. For not being willing to settle down and be the quiet little wife that Philip Blankenship had assumed he was getting at the end of his business deal. Patents, money, and a wife out of season. Excellent deal, of course, unless they couldn’t stand each other. Alex had blamed her every time his parents had fought, every time Philip had come home to pretend that he was the family man AEGIS needed him to be, and then left again because when Olivia got mad, she didn’t just scream people down, she froze them out.

In therapy, he’d talked about how hard it must have been for her. From the way she told it, she’d been sold off to a white New York businessman who’d ruined his own fortune and looked like he would squander hers, too. Her daddy had told her that it would be all right, that he was finding her a place in society, but even though it wasn’t like it would have been in the 50s or 60s, it still wasn’t what she’d hoped. She doubted it was what he’d hoped, either, but she’d never told him that. She’d assured her father that everything was fine, because she didn’t know what else to do.

He could think now, in a way that he hadn’t been able to when he was younger, about how incredibly hard it must have been for her. His father had been a cold man, never earning the titles he received, demanding respect he never earned, and quick with his hands if he didn’t like the answers he got. Alex had never seen Philip go after his mother the way some men did, beating her until he felt better, but she’d also never been willing to hide the few bruises he gave her. When people started asking questions — well, it was yet another reason he’d taken his attentions elsewhere.

Even just a few days of being like his father were too much. Alex knew that he could do better than that. He owed it to Zoey. To Claire. To his mother. To himself.

David pulled up outside of the apartment and crossed around the car to open the door. The doorman, the same guy who’d been opening and closing that front door since Alex was a kid, nodded and Alex moved smoothly by. He still had his elevator key, and he rode smoothly up to her apartment.

He was humming in the elevator. Later, he remembered that so clearly. He was humming along, some show tune he couldn’t quite remember the name of, but the tune was stuck in his head. He was so sure that this would go his way that he couldn’t even be bothered to worry about what lay behind the apartment door. Because he was humming.

He knocked loudly on the door and waited. There was no response. He did have a key for the door, but he didn’t really have any interest in finding his mother half dressed in bed or – god forbid – tangled up with a lover half her age. He didn’t begrudge her a lover, or as many as she wanted. No matter who he blamed his childhood on, she deserved a chance to be happy. She certainly hadn’t ever had one with Philip, but that didn’t mean he needed to see it.

He knocked again, and then called her phone after the silence continued. Instead of ringing, the call went straight to voice mail.

The pace of his heart increased. Not a lot, not to levels of panic, but an increase nonetheless. He listened carefully, trying to hear something other than the hum of the hallway lights or the buzz of electricity. There was nothing. He couldn’t hear a single sound.

Sweat prickled under his arms and over his forehead. His hand rose to the door one more time, but instead of the calm knock, he slammed the side of his fist against the door several times in quick succession.

And waited.

For nothing.

His heart sped up one more level. He fumbled in his pocket for the key, turned the knob, and pushed the door open. “Olivia?” He called. There was music playing somewhere, soft and low. Some crooner he didn’t know off hand. The music didn’t have the hiss and pop of old recordings, just the polished sound of modern standards. He walked into the apartment, refusing to allow himself to rush. If he rushed, it would be admitting that something was wrong, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t allow himself to do it. Everything was fine, and his mother would be just fine; he just had to find her.

The music in the living room was playing from the Wi-Fi speakers she’d talked about buying a few years ago. In the center of the room, the music was perfect, surrounding him with its soft lyrics and gentle progressions. On the small table in front of the sofa was a bottle of wine, opened and half empty, and a glass, half full. He reached down and tilted the glass slightly to the side; there was a ridge of dark red where the liquid had evaporated.

The little curl of fear in the depths of his guts twisted up a bit more. “Olivia,” he called again, his voice louder. Still no answer, nothing but quiet. That didn’t make sense. His mother didn’t exist without her staff; she had a cook, a house keeper, and a personal assistant who did her hair and makeup for her, and he hadn’t seen her without Aaron Schwartz by her side since his father had died. He wasn’t sure this apartment had ever been empty. “Mother?” His voice sounded small, childlike. Why? What was he afraid of? He wouldn’t allow himself to think of the possibilities.

She wasn’t in the living room, obviously. He went to the kitchen and the dining room. They were spotlessly clean; there was no evidence of a meal, cooked or eaten. No coffee mug on the counter, no wine cork left out. The sink was dry.

He couldn’t parse it. His heart was hammering up in his temples, and breathing was completely impossible. He couldn’t breathe through the fear that was burning him up inside. The only explanation he could think of for all of this was not acceptable. Not so soon.

He hadn’t seen any sign of anything wrong at the funeral, but would he have noticed if it was there? He’d barely been able to look at the woman during the service, and after, while they buried his baby sister in the ground – the sister he’d loved more than she ever had — if he’d looked at her, he would have ripped her skin from her body and torn her hair from her scalp before throwing her into the gaping earth. Any truly kind and loving God would accept that trade; he was sure of it. A vicious, evil old woman in place of a kind one who’d only just started to live and had a smile that made the entire world brighter.

Call the police
, whispered something inside of him.
Call them right now. You need them here when you find what you know you’re going to find, otherwise there will be too many questions, too many questions you’re not going to be able to answer.

He pulled out his phone and stared at it, but dialing the number… it was a step farther, a step he couldn’t quite bring himself to take. All the pieces added up, after all. He’d inherited his tendency towards depression from his mother, and she was medicated just as he had been in the past, only she’d added on medications with a freedom that made her doctors nervous. She wasn’t supposed to drink, though she often did. And truly, a woman of her means could get whatever drugs she wanted. God knew what she might have mixed together last night.

God knew what someone could have mixed together for her.

He went back to the living room and sniffed at the wine glass. He was leaving more prints on it, but hell, he’d picked it up already. He was no amateur detective, but he still sniffed at the pinot noir, wishing it would tell him what he would find when he went into the bedroom. A woman who was already dead, or a woman who was barely breathing? Would he be calling 911 to report a death or to beg them to resurrect her?

He needed to go into the bedroom. This was like a bad movie. He’d go into the bedroom, she wouldn’t be there, and he’d find out later that she’d gone somewhere for an early meeting and given the staff the morning off.

And the wine
?

Fuck the wine; the wine wasn’t relevant. Even his mother’s museum-ready house couldn’t be perfect all the time.

Except she would fire any housekeeper who allowed a glass to sit out that long, and the wine would have gone sour from sitting out, and she would be livid. There’s no way she walked through this living room this morning, absolutely no way.

His stomach twisted, and he was suddenly swallowing hard against a rush of a sick taste in his mouth.

This was ridiculous. He ordered his feet to carry him to the bedroom, immediately, without further question.

They didn’t move at first, and then they did, in a shambling sort of half step that carried him slowly closer to his mother’s bedroom.

He’d grown up in this apartment, but he’d almost never gone into his mother’s room. Never playing as a child, never to hide under his mother’s bed, crawl into her closet, or admire her as she got dressed – all those things he was told that many young boys did. He’d never played here much at all, but he’d certainly never played in this room.

It felt wrong to even walk towards it.
A lady’s room is her palace,
she’d said to him.
You never interrupt
. He’d stayed away, even when he needed her, even when he desperately needed to talk to her, he’d stayed away. It just seemed… right.

Walking into her bedroom now made him feel small, tiny even, his hands shaking, as if he were about to be destroyed from the inside out.

“Mom?” He called out, as he pushed the bedroom door open.

For a moment, his heart settled. She wasn’t in the bed, and she wasn’t draped dramatically over the white duvet or the pale blue carpet. The covers weren’t in disarray on the bed itself. There was no sign that she’d even been here. He took a deep breath, the first one he’d taken in minutes — ages — and sagged against the door frame, relief spiraling through him. There was no explanation for why she had allowed that bottle of wine to be left out, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t in the apartment.

As he balanced himself, he took one step further into the room. It changed his angle just enough that he could see the bathroom door left halfway closed.

Odd. His mother didn’t do things halfway. Doors were either open or closed. If you poured a glass of a $300 bottle wine, you drank it. But still, there’d obviously been some sort of upset, some situation with the staff, and she just wasn’t here; it was that simple: she wasn’t here.

He needed to prove it to himself. He needed to prove it, so he could go home, hold Zoey, and start to rebuild his life. He pulled out his phone and dialed Olivia’s number. She never went anywhere without her phone. It wasn’t here because she wasn’t here, but if he left without checking, he’d tell himself later that he just hadn’t heard it because he was out in the hallway, and he’d end up coming back here and panicking more, and it wasn’t worth it. He pressed send on the call and waited for the silence that would greet him.

Her ringtone shattered the silence as soon as the call went through. His heart climbed back up to slam dance speeds in the space of a breath. He stepped farther into the room and saw the phone lying on the carpet. He went to it and picked it up, and by then he was far enough into the room to look into the bathroom.

The bathroom had been decorated in soft shades of pale yellow and sea glass green. He knew that because he’d seen the colors when the interior decorator was working. There was no way to tell now, because the entire room was spattered—spattered implied spots, this was waves, washes, soaking depths—in deep russet. The smell hit his nose with a tang, and he vomited, the sickness spilling out of him and splashing onto the carpet.

She was in the bathtub, her body ruined by the water, her wrists destroyed by a sharp razor. He sagged, falling backwards onto his ass, his cheeks wet even though he wasn’t sure he’d ever cried a tear. His brain stuck in an endless loop of
oh god, oh god, oh merciful god.

He was holding his phone again. He was still holding his phone. His mother’s clipped, polished voice — she’d worked so hard to lose her accent — came through the speaker, suggesting that if he had an important message, he ought to leave her a voice mail so she could reach him later, and he pushed the end button. He threw up again, hitting his pants this time, feeling the heat sink into the denim, and become cold.