Deceptive Innocence, Part Two Read online

  He opens the bag and holds it out to me, as if in offering.

  “Taste it. See if it’s any good.”

  Goose bumps are rising all over my skin but I keep my expression calm. “I told you, Mr. Gable, I don’t do drugs. I wouldn’t be able to tell good from bad.”

  “Have a little faith in yourself, Bell.” He stands up, walks around the desk, holds his offering no more than a foot away from me. “Just one taste. I want to know what you think.”

  This is feeling more and more like a setup. I bought the cocaine and now he wants to get it in my system. Of course a little taste won’t be enough to do anything to me. I should know; I’ve tasted it before. I’d like not to ever taste it again.

  “I’d rather not,” I say quietly, hoping that he might be moved by meekness.

  “I’d rather you did, Bell.”

  I smile and zip up my purse, being careful to leave it open just enough as I press the record button on my phone.

  “I don’t do cocaine,” I say again. “But if you’re telling me that trying this is a requirement of my job . . .” I let my voice trail off, waiting to see if he’ll actually walk straight into such an obvious trap.

  “That’s not a bad way to look at it.” He licks the tip of his index finger like a stamp and then dips it into the bag. Once it’s coated in white powder he holds it up to my lips.

  This is becoming less and less appealing by the second. “Since you insist, Mr. Gable.” I step forward and with seductive finesse wrap my lips around his finger, letting my tongue absorb the powder . . .

  . . . and then I gag and jump back, sticking my tongue out as if that will take the bitter taste away.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Travis cocks his head and stares at me with mock concern. “What, you’ve never tasted crushed-up Tylenol before?”

  I lick the back of my hand like a cat, trying to wipe the taste away. “Tylenol? You had me buy twenty-five hundred dollars’ worth of Tylenol?”

  Again he laughs, and he drops the plastic bag into the wastebasket.

  “You didn’t think I would send one of my employees out to buy illegal drugs, did you?”

  I shrug and cast a longing look at the bottle of water on his desk.

  “I would never do something like that. You really thought you were buying cocaine? You were willing to do that without offering a single moment of protest? Do you really think so little of the law?”

  “Your instructions are not for me to question, Mr. Gable,” I say quietly.

  Travis smiles, leans back against the edge of his desk. “You didn’t run off with that envelope full of money,” he notes. “You gave it to L.J. You didn’t call the police. You didn’t run off and try to snort that stuff yourself, and you didn’t throw it in a Dumpster like some scared little rabbit. No, you did exactly what you were told, without question, without hesitation, without fanfare. Do you know what that means, Bell?”

  That I’m an idiot? A submissive? But I keep the thoughts to myself and simply shake my head.

  “It means,” Travis says, drawing out the words, “that I can trust you.”

  My lips curve up into a Mona Lisa smile. “And that,” I say softly, “truly means the world to me, Mr. Gable.”

  Travis grins and looks up at the ceiling as if he’ll find his next move there. “Your résumé says you speak Spanish fluently. Is that true?”

  “Sí.”

  Travis chuckles as if I’ve made a joke. “Sí, that’s good. Tomorrow at eight I would like you to come to a meeting with me, off the premises, with one of our prospective clients. Since he is a prospective client I would like to keep the meeting confidential. No need to broadcast news before it’s been made.”

  “Shall I meet you here?”

  “No, be at my home. I’ll get you when I’m done here. Just be sure Jessica doesn’t send you out on any useless errands during that time.” He pauses a moment before adding, “How is my wife, by the way?”

  “She’s . . . sad, Mr. Gable.”

  “Sad. Now, that’s interesting.” Again he chuckles. “I’ve given her everything any woman could ask for and yet she’s sad.”

  “If I remember correctly, you told her those gifts were simply on loan . . . or leased . . . I believe the words you used were ‘on lease.’”

  “It’s still a good deal. She gets my name, one of the best penthouses in Manhattan, all the Botox and Juvéderm money can buy, a wardrobe that would make any supermodel jealous. I already got two kids out of her, so I won’t ask her for more. I paid for the mommy-job plastic-surgery session. She has access to drivers, maids, chefs . . . She’s never even had to dust a picture frame.”

  “It’s a privileged life,” I agree.

  “Yes, and all she has to do is lie on her back for me every once in a while, and not very often at that. Fucking her these days is a little too much like necrophilia for my tastes.”

  Yes, because in so many ways your wife is already dead. You’ve been killing her for years.

  “You would be grateful, wouldn’t you, Bell?”

  The question is loaded.

  There’s a line to walk here. I can’t fight Travis with the easy insults and brutality that I used on L.J., and, considering my goals, a little flirtation and seduction are fine . . . But I don’t want to sleep with this man. It shouldn’t be necessary. In fact, if he is in pursuit rather than satisfied, he’ll be easier to manipulate.

  Sleeping with Lander was a prerequisite to getting into his home. And now I’ve managed to convince Lander to hide his relationship with me from his brother, a detail that will be very useful in the days and weeks to come.

  Plus, with Lander the act is not . . . unenjoyable.

  But being with Travis?

  I shift my eyes to the window, hoping to push out the image of him laboring on top of me. The brothers look so much alike, but while Lander makes me want to throw him on the bed, Travis makes me want to throw him down a flight of stairs.

  “If I were Jessica, I would be very grateful,” I say carefully. “She’s an incredibly lucky woman.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it. She earned her place . . . just as you’ll earn yours.”

  He steps forward, lets his hand brush against my hip. “I’m a very generous man . . . or at least I can be when people do what I want them to do.”

  I slide my eyes back to him. “And when they don’t?”

  His hand moves to my ass. “Things go badly for them. But we don’t have to worry about that, do we, Bell? You’ve proven yourself to be very . . . obedient.”

  I open my mouth to respond before I know exactly what I’m going to say—

  The intercom buzzes then. “Mr. Gable?” It’s the voice of the receptionist. “Your father wants you to bring—wait, I have it here—the Ramirez report to his office right now. He wants the hard copy, he doesn’t want you to email it.”

  “Your father works here?” I blurt out. “In the New York office?”

  Travis glares at the intercom. “He usually works in London, but he’s back for a few weeks.” He jams his finger against the intercom. “Tell him I will be there in a few minutes.”

  “He wants to see you now, sir.” The receptionist sounds almost chastising.

  Travis snatches up the phone but then seems to think better of it and slams it down again.

  “Wait here,” he growls before striding past me and leaving me alone in his office.

  For a second I don’t move. Edmund Gable is the only Gable I’ve actually spoken to before all this. I was ten, but still there’s always the chance he’ll recognize me.

  He was supposed to be in London!

  I close my eyes and count to ten. I need to stay calm. Travis went to his father’s office. That means that I should be safe in here. I need to stave off the panic and think.

  I open my eyes again.

  “Think!” I whisper to myself. “What’s the smart thing to do right now?”

  I look around the room, s
mile to myself . . . and then I walk around to his computer and get to work.

  chapter four

  It was just yesterday that I set up a dummy email account for Jessica. As soon as I can break Lander’s password, I’ll give him one too, but so far the code that will earn me entry into his virtual world has eluded me. Favorite sports teams and birthdates have yielded nothing but glaring error messages. But given time I’ll work it out.

  And with Travis, all I have to do is use his email account that I can access with this computer to email Jessica’s new account. I’m starting a paper trail. She’ll never read it. She barely reads the emails sent to the accounts she knows about. My fingers fly across the keyboard as my eyes keep darting toward the door. Once done I sit back and read my work:

  Jessica,

  Please be a little more careful with the information you share about my dealings, particularly with Lander. You know what I’ve gotten away with in the past. Think what I could get away with doing to you.

  —Travis

  It’s a good note. Vague enough for me to fill in the blanks once I get a few insights about whatever rules and laws Travis is actually breaking. A little truth, a little fiction. It’s a magical combination that allows opinions and verdicts to be shaped and manipulated. Creating fiction is easy. Finding incriminating truths, well, that just takes time.

  I press send and then quickly go to his sent mail folder and erase the message.

  I’m removing my visit to Travis’s email account from his computer history when I hear his voice in the hall. Quickly, I bring everything on his computer screen back to how I found it and rush to the other side of the desk—knocking over his Fiji water bottle in the process.

  I start to bend to reach for it but then I hear Travis right outside the door. The doorknob turns and I immediately take a seat in front of his desk, only to immediately pop back up and greet him as the door swings open.

  As Travis enters, I can see that his leering smile has been replaced with a nervous one.

  And right behind him is Edmund Gable. Tall, slim, wearing a gray pinstripe Kiton suit and an effervescent smile, he manages to look ten to fifteen years younger than his age despite his shock of white hair. The lines across his forehead are faint from lack of worry. He gives his son a jovial pat on the back as he walks past him.

  With what I hope is a subtle movement I reach for the back of my chair. I need the support to help stabilize me as my stomach drops and acidic bile burns my throat.

  Edmund smiles brightly at me. You’d think he was the nicest man in the world.

  “Ah, you must be Jessica and Travis’s new personal assistant!” He offers me his hand. “You’ll have to forgive me, but Travis didn’t give me your name.”

  I place my hand against his. It’s unlikely he’ll remember me. He hasn’t seen me in more than ten years. I was a child. Actually I had been less than that. I had been nothing more than a pawn, almost impossible to distinguish from any of the other dispensable pieces on his chessboard. On the face of it, the circumstances that led to our meeting back then couldn’t have been more benign . . .

  He had called my mother personally, asking if he could hire her to clean his two-story penthouse. He said Nick Foley had referred him. That Nick had given him her number.

  But it was a lie.

  “Bell Dantès.” I say the words carefully. I can’t afford for any of my venom to carelessly spill out now.

  “What a lovely name . . . appropriate for such a lovely woman.” His grip is firm . . . a little too firm. My fingers tingle as he releases me. “I’m Edmund Gable, Travis’s father.”

  I see Travis shift uncomfortably as he stands toward the back of the room as if waiting for his father to give him permission to make himself comfortable in his own office.

  “So tell me, Bell,” Edmund says, “are my son and daughter-in-law treating you well?”

  “They’ve been wonderful, sir.”

  My mother had brought me to Edmund’s house. She had nowhere else to leave me, but Edmund had been very understanding. He had video games left over from when Lander and Travis used to play. He let me occupy myself with that while he asked my mother to chat with him in the kitchen about the job.

  “My father has taught me the importance of being a generous and respectful employer,” Travis says as he holds his place by the door. He’s wearing a smile, but it’s strained, and his posture has grown rigid, as if he’s a soldier awaiting inspection.

  I remember playing Resident Evil for about fifteen minutes while my mother spoke with Edmund downstairs. But the game wasn’t my thing. I was into Disney fantasies back then, not Japanese-style horror. Plus, it occurred to me that Edmund and my mother had been talking for a very long time. How long did it take to ask a woman to vacuum? I had taken my shoes off, so they didn’t hear me approaching the kitchen, but I heard them . . . They were talking about Nick.

  “Let me get that file for you, Dad,” Travis says as he finally moves from his spot and quickly goes to his desk.

  “No rush, Travis.” Edmund takes a small step forward, his voice getting a little louder. I glance down at the water bottle lying on the floor next to the desk, but Travis doesn’t seem to notice it. He pulls a key from an inside pocket of his suit and unlocks the bottom drawer of his desk. As he pulls out another fat manila envelope, I glance back at Edmund, my palms sweating, my mind drowning in memory.

  “He loves you, I’m sure of it,” Edmund had said to my mother. “You need to fight for him. Do it publicly and do it aggressively. Confront his wife, let her know you won’t allow her or anyone else to take him away from you. Let it be known that Nick is yours and that crossing you in this matter would not be wise. Trust me, it’s the only thing she’ll understand and it’s the only way Nick will be able to grasp how strongly you feel about him. True love is always worth a battle.”

  Beside me, Edmund crosses his arms over his chest, his smile fading slightly as he watches Travis close the drawer but neglect to lock it.

  For a while the things Edmund said to my mother hadn’t meant much to me . . . It took years before I was able to look back at that moment and realize that Edmund had been planting the seeds of my mother’s self-destruction. He wanted her to make scenes. He wanted her to appear to be obsessive, unwilling to take no for an answer. He wanted everyone to see my mom as a poor man’s Glenn Close, ready to boil her lover’s rabbit. It made it that much easier to set her up.

  It worked.

  And now my mom’s dead.

  Travis holds out the envelope for his father, who is now barely smiling at all. Travis notes this and swallows hard before walking around the desk and putting the envelope in Edmund’s hand.

  “Thank you, Travis.” His tone is just slightly cooler. But then, in an instant, the smile is back, not quite as bright but certainly containing a practiced warmth. “Well, I’ll be going then.” He turns back to me. “Have we met before, Bell? You look . . . familiar.”

  My heart slams to a stop and my eyes sting as I struggle to keep them focused. “I don’t believe so, sir.”

  “Are you sure? I’m usually right about these things.”

  I shake my head and smile apologetically. “I’m quite sure we haven’t. I would remember.”

  He laughs. “Oh, don’t be so sure. Without the suit I look like your run-of-the-mill senior citizen. You know what they say: clothes make the man. In any case, it was good meeting you.”

  He turns and walks to the door, leaving Travis behind without another word.

  I glance at Travis, who seems lost in thought as he studies the door his father just exited through. His silence gives me the time I need to collect myself. So far his father hasn’t placed me. He may never place me . . . or if he does, hopefully it will be too late for him to do anything about it. I clasp my hands behind my back to keep them from shaking. Focus and calm, that’s all that’s called for. I take a quiet breath and will my heart to resume a regular pace.

  “Your father’s qui
te a . . . presence.”

  “He is that.” Travis leans back on his heels and stares at the door. “HGVB is . . . I suppose it’s as close to a family business as an international bank can get. All the Gable men work here. Me, my father, and, of course, my brother.”

  And there’s the opening I’ve been waiting for.

  “Oh yes!” I say enthusiastically. “I know! I assume Lander has talked to you about us by now. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  Travis’s eyes snap back to me. “Excuse me?”

  “Lander . . . He’s . . . he has talked to you, right?” I ask, now feigning uncertainty.

  “How do you know Lander?” Travis’s eyes are narrowing, his jaw growing more rigid.

  “Oh no,” I whisper, putting my fingers gently to my lips. “I just assumed . . . But I promised . . . Oh, I really screwed up!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He specifically asked me not to say anything, I thought he just wanted to be the one to tell you! Like he was going to make some kind of joke out of it and he didn’t want me to spoil the punch line . . . But I was so sure he would tell you by now . . .”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  His words cutting the air, Travis seems startled by his own outburst. I, on the other hand, can take it in stride. But perhaps that’s because this is the reaction I was actually trying to provoke.

  “I’m . . .” I hesitate, bite down on my fingernails like a scared little girl. “I’m dating your brother, Mr. Gable. I thought he was going to tell you. He asked me to let him be the one to tell you. He said he was going to do it right away or I would have told you myself. I swear, when I met him I didn’t even know he was your brother. It was all a total coincidence.”

  “A coincidence,” Travis repeats. He turns away from me and walks to the window.

  “Yes, I mean . . . it sort of was. I met him on the elevator of your building right after our interview. He asked me if I lived there and I told him I had just been hired to be a personal assistant to the couple in 1400. He didn’t tell me his last name right away. I think he was afraid that if I knew he was the brother of my boss I’d be scared off . . . and I suppose I would have been. He took me out for dinner and drinks and . . . well, by the time he did tell me who he was—”