Unbind (49 page)

Cai’s heart hammered against his ribcage and acidic tears swelled his poor eyes.

His vision burned, soul… destroyed.

She’s always seen me, I just never knew it. Why didn’t she say she was here? She was always here? I wasn’t always alone!

Jennifer mocked, “You’ll just end it, then? Like a selfish bitch? You’ll just kill yourself?”

“Yes, it’s the only way. You don’t know… you just don’t know. Philippe got me pills but I never took them. Didn’t want them. This… here… with Philippe… it has been no life and it kills me that my son might have to pay for my mistakes!”

Jennifer sounded impassioned and through the very narrow slats of wood above him, Cai saw her reach for Claudia’s hands. “We’ll search higher, we’ll get proper help for you! I’ll find people to help you. Philippe didn’t have the connections I do.”

“Oh. Philippe had connections alright, sis. Don’t doubt that. He just preferred to keep me behind bars. His son… kept from school. I had to take measures. So, finally, he left the house in the Lincoln I’ve been tampering with the brakes on so long I almost decided I should take up a job as a mechanic.”

“What in the heck are you talking about?”

“I wanted him dead,” Claudia gritted out, impatient.

“Who said anything about dead? What are you on about? Honestly!” Jennifer spoke hurriedly.

Claudia murmured. “No. He
must
be dead. How could he survive? I meant to kill him! I meant to do it… I wanted it as much as I wanted Willem to murder our parents. I asked him and he did it. He even showed me how he’d done it. He was kind, Willem, he knew… he knew without me having to say… he knew who’d made me like this.”

“I can call someone if you need help. I think you’re hallucinating now. Our parents died in a tragic accident. Philippe’s car may have tumbled off a bridge but he most certainly wasn’t in that vehicle. No body was found, Claudia.”

Claudia sounded cool. “No, I most certainly killed him. You don’t know what it was like living with him. You don’t know how desperate I felt sometimes. He never listened to anything I said. He’s dead now and Cai’s free.”

“For the last time… there was no body. Claire and Dirk told me he was gone… run off. Pushed his vehicle off the bridge. Gone. When they said he was gone, they meant scarpered. Not dead. Gone. He told them the suicide note was a joke… apparently he always knew you were fiddling with the brakes.”

“They’re mistaken,” his mother laughed, not buying into this ‘theory’.

That man’s alive? How? How? A part of me wanted him dead too!
Cai thought.

“I’ll find him for you if you want me to. I’ll prove that sack of shit still lives. Klaus will help. Oh yes… I prefer the younger model. Klaus knows people… who know people.”

“What?” Claudia seemed horrified.

Cai wished he could see more but there was little space between the wood slats to give him vision. He only saw what happened up above and even then, that was patchy.

“Klaus. He’s nice. I might marry him,” Jennifer shrugged, as though it was a whimsy.

“What? What? What? What? What…” Claudia kept on repeating.

“We’re lovers, you loon.”

Something nearly choked Claudia before she got her words out. “Then you’re sleeping with your nephew… oh god! Oh god! He’s 16 years younger than you. Oh god. Oh god. How did you do this? How did this happen? How did you not know? How did you not know?” Claudia rambled on and on and on. Through tears, she admitted, “One retreat… I gave birth at. Willem took the child. As his own. I was 17 and had been hiding the bump a while. It was why Mum finally let us go. Oh god…” Claudia cried, her lungs heaving, “…I wasn’t sure of the father. He’s my son. My son. Willem married that au pair as a matter of convenience!”

Claudia fell to her knees on the floor and bawled her eyes out. “My son. My son. My other son. My son. Oh god. No.”

The gun fell out of her pocket.

One of the women took the weapon in her hands.

And shot herself.

The other woman fired off a shot.

But missed.

Something stopped her.

THREE hours later, Cai woke up covered in his own vomit. He’d also defecated himself. He remembered very little except that heart-stopping shot that had made him pass out.

As he came round groggily, it took him some minutes to gather his faculties, to stop himself excreting anything else. He tentatively lifted the lid and saw nobody in the room. Just a huge spill of blood right nearby. He climbed out and used the sash window to escape outside. He shimmied up a drainpipe and snuck upstairs into his bedroom, showering then changing into some clean clothes.

He emerged downstairs to find a gathering in the study, acting as if he didn’t know anything had happened. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Son, you better come with me,” an officer said.

He was told his mother took her own life, that she was very ill. Everyone was very sorry. He nodded along and agreed, “She was very ill.”

When no mention of Jennifer was made, he didn’t seek to correct those people—didn’t tell them she was right there when it happened.

Cai assumed Jennifer was too embarrassed to admit—she bedded her own nephew—imagining she would do anything to conceal that.

Past

IT WAS SO simple, really. Cai had just graduated high school and while circulating prom parties on the Upper East Side, he bumped into Jackie who he hadn’t seen in four years. The girl was a year older than him and seemed to be chaperoning her younger sister, Estelle, maybe even helping her navigate the crowd. He harboured a suspicion that Jackie was trying to help Estelle become more popular, the younger sister no beauty or personality in comparison to Jackie.

Jackie loved him, he knew it, and that night they caught up like no time had passed. She raved on about having taken a year out to help Guatemalan kids and now she was preparing for medical school no less. He mentioned briefly about his woes—the controlling aunt dedicated to keeping him away from that money—and the rest was history after he revealed he only needed to get married to get his hands on it.

THE night before the wedding, he and Jackie shared a hotel suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Nobody on earth knew they were getting married, not even Jackie’s parents. The truth was, Cai was a very angry young man and he had spotted an opportunity.

On the huge bed, Cai sat on the edge naked, his legs spread. Jackie licked his penis and tried to suck him to hardness, but nothing was working. She was naked too and Cai tried to tell himself that her soft body and small breasts were enough… he should be hard already. Yet, he wasn’t. He was struggling, he was flaccid, but she kept on.

“It’ll happen,” she said softly, encouraging him. Cai thought she was either deranged or in denial. He wasn’t sexually attracted to her and he wasn’t sexual. Period.

“Could we try later? It might be nerves.” He tried to shrug it off.

“Okay, should we cuddle in bed?”

“Sure.”

She pulled back the covers and he followed her beneath them.

Inside the bed, Jackie laid on his chest and he sensed her tears. She was just so happy to be with him yet the thought of being with her sexually made him feel ill. She pressed her body to his, still seeking his response, but he just didn’t have one.

“What about eating me out? Touching me? We could try it.”

“Okay,” he said unemotionally. “Whatever you want, wifey.”

She smiled and pulled the covers from their bodies. He laid back in his pillow while she straddled his head and got comfy.

“Is this okay?” She was so sweet, checking with him before lowering.

“Umm-hmm,” Cai replied, hoping his body might produce some response, soon.

Jackie lowered herself on Cai’s tongue and he enjoyed the salty-sweet taste of her centre, allowing himself the time to explore all of what was between her legs.

Jackie held the headboard and began gyrating, circling herself on his tongue. “Cai, oh god, Cai. Please. I’m gonna come baby, oh… I’ve wanted you forever.”

Cai watched her fondle her breast and rock herself over his mouth. Finally, some response… his cock began to harden.

He let his tongue run riot and sucked hard, taking her into his mouth and swallowing. An urgency sped up inside him, one he hadn’t ever felt before. Jackie came with his fingers and tongue buried inside her.

She laughed and threw her head back, “That was amazing.”

“You got a rubber?” He motioned down to his cock and she groaned with delight.

“Here,” she said, passing him one from the nightstand.

He needed help getting it on but luckily she was experienced. The 19 year old girl he was about to fuck was no virgin.

While she laid on her back, he slowly slid inside her. Jackie immediately bucked into his pelvis and groaned, “You’re huge. I love you, Cai.”

He couldn’t reciprocate; he didn’t know what love was.

Cai buried his head in the pillow and pumped six times before he was done. Jackie cried into his ear, whispering, “That was the best moment of my life.”

The taste of her in his mouth then felt gross and the sensation of being inside her, repulsive. He didn’t really want this and he knew it was wrong.

He went to the bathroom to clean up and when he came back, she was still sprawled out naked, waiting for him. He stood by the side of the bed, unsure what to do.

“Cai, cm’ere.”

He walked toward her and she sat up, reaching for his cock again. Still semi-hard, it was difficult for him to resist when she began sucking him. That time, he came in her mouth.

She kept repeating that she loved him even though, after five rounds, he didn’t love her anymore than he had done before. He began to imagine he was incapable and switched off that thought as they finally laid down to go to sleep. All that mattered was he was finally escaping his witch of an aunt.

WHEN they checked out of the hotel the next morning, he contemplated the credit card in his hand. He’d stolen it from Jennifer’s drawer even though he did have enough to pay in cash, too. At the last minute, after the clerk asked him to sign the bill, he handed over the credit card.

He and Jackie caught a cab outside the hotel. He wore a grey suit and she a pretty white dress that wasn’t very special, but it was sweet. Just like her. She wore her blonde hair in a mass of curls and did look beautiful. Other members of her family might have been ugly, but she certainly wasn’t.