The Arrangement (The Blankenships Book 9) (6 page)

“But—then why are we here? Why did it matter?”

He grinned, and she loved that grin, loved the mischievous light in his eyes. “Because of this.” He stepped past her, not towards the door that connected with his office, but to a different one, on the opposite wall. He ran his fingers along a piece of paneling, she heard a distinct click, and then a section of wall swung open.

“Are you shitting me? Secret passages in a modern office building?”

He wore that cold smile again. “What can I say? My father wanted access to his women whenever he wanted it. There was no question of propriety. Follow me.”

He stepped into a—well, a surprisingly well lit corridor, with a nearly complete absence of spider webs or monsters, given that it was a secret passage. There wasn’t any choice but to follow.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Alex had almost hoped that the insinuations and comments he’d seen in his father’s papers would be wrong. That the comments about a secret passage would be lies, or misunderstandings. It was one thing to know that his father had cheated on his mother as often as he could manage. It was another thing to realize that he’d set up his work place—their work place—to allow himself to carry on even in the middle of the day, even while his mother was working hard, harder than Philip ever had, to keep the company afloat.

But he’d never actually convinced himself to doubt that this passage way would be here. He knew it would be, just like he knew that all he needed to do to hide from the view of most of the staff he’d known for these past few months was to put on a uniform shirt and a ball cap.

That had both stung and been expected. When he’d explained that part of his plan, both Luke and Zoey had looked at him like he was completely insane. As if it would never work, as if his status as wealthy somehow trumped the fact that he was, in the eyes of almost everyone, just a Black man. Strip off the signs that he had money to burn, and he was no better than every other stereotyped man walking the streets of the city, day or night.

It was not lost on him that every other woman his father had fucked was some variant of white. It did not help him hate the man any less.

“This is not what I expected from a secret passage,” Zoey said behind him as she stepped into the narrow hallway. He swung the panel shut behind her and started to walk down the hallway. It was narrow, a slim passageway carved out of the space between the backs of framed walls and the exterior of the building. It wasn’t so narrow that they needed to turn sideways to make their way through, but they wouldn’t have been able to walk side by side. There was a faint layer of dust now, accumulating in the corners. The old man had paid one of the cleaners and extra bonus to sweep the hallway at the end of every work week after everyone else had gone home. It was done off the books, as a cash bonus, and the man who had done it had been informed in no uncertain terms that if he ever revealed the passageway to anyone, that he would be ‘dealt with.’

But when the cash stopped, so had the cleaning. Alex couldn’t blame the guy. Likely, the man assumed that the passageway would just become one of those secret oddities that someone would find years in the future.

“What did you expect?” Alex asked, after a few moments had passed, and he realized that the silence had grown. He winced at his tone, full of snark and bitchiness, and took a quick moment to rein his emotions back in. “Sorry,” he said.

“No problem. None of this is easy for you—”

“No,” he said. “But at least it’s my mess. It’s not yours. I feel horrible that this mess is falling all over your life as well.”

“Our life,” she said. “We’re in this together, remember? You said.”

It was strange, the warmth that flooded through him at that. He turned back to her, tangling his fingers in hers and pulling her in tight against him. He thought of kissing her and letting the moment change into something else, here in this hidden hallway that his father had used and abused, but that thought put the cap on his burgeoning interest. He found her other hand instead, threading those fingers together as well.

How often had they stood together like this? How often had he gazed down into her eyes as she looked back at him, a small smile teasing over her lips? She thought he was going to kiss her, he was sure of it, and if it was any other time, any other place, he knew he probably would have. But now wasn’t the time.

“I never thought I’d do this,” he said. “All of this. After the way my father was—I needed to be a different man.”

“You are a different man.”

He shook his head. “I am and I’m not. There’s a long way still for me to go. I’d be a liar if I told you that I thought I was good enough for you—”

She freed one of her hands and laid her finger over his lips. He stopped, even though it hurt to shut off the flow of words. “That’s for me to decide,” she said. “Not you. I promise, the second that I think you’re not behaving in a way that’s worthy of me, you will know. If you don’t listen when I say it—”

He nodded. “You’ll send your daddy to tan my hide?”

She grinned, and he was glad she appreciated the joke. “Hell, no,” she said. “My daddy would kill you. My mama would hurt you. But they’d both have to beat Helen to you, and I think she’d skin you alive.”

He wiggled his eyebrows, and she laughed, and then covered her mouth, glancing at the wall behind him. “That sounds like fun,” he said, mostly to make her laugh again. God, he loved her laugh. He was a complete fool for this woman, which was the best thing he’d ever been, he was absolutely sure.

She slapped gently at his arm. “Let’s get moving, mister. We have to survive this without a prison sentence before we can suss out just who is going to skin who.”

“Whom.”

“Pedants never prosper.”

“Says you.”

Her fingers were light and warm in his as they made their way down the narrow corridor.

He’d thought something would happen. There would be some trap lying in wait, some action movie plot device set to spring down and capture them, some Bondian villain to step out of the darkness and cackle madly while they swung from some sort of high tech net device. But nothing happened. The door panel on his father’s side was conveniently obvious; it even had a doorknob to twist so that he could enter the old man’s office.

It was like stepping back in time.

His mother had ordered nothing changed. She was convinced that sooner or later, Alex would move to this corner office and take on his father’s legacy. Now, with a little more time between him and those vivid and vicious arguments, he could imagine why she’d been so committed to that ideal. She’d wanted to know that he was going to fill out his father’s shoes in a way that satisfied her. She’d wanted to groom him, ease him into that space. She’d wanted to give him what he’d wanted, the chance to be a better man than his father had been. She’d sacrificed everything to give her children a better chance than she’d thought they’d have as the Black children of a dentist’s daughter, no matter how rich he had been.

And look what it had done. This was the kind of story the Greeks would have loved, a human brought low by the gods through their own refusal to accept fate and destiny.

The office was exactly as it had been when his father had died. Everything pin straight, everything carefully lined up. Someone had been cleaning it regularly. Even though the office door was closed, there was an occupied air to the room, as if the old man had stepped out for a quick fuck and would be back any moment.

It was enough to twist Alex’s guts inside out. He didn’t want it to be real. He didn’t want any of this to be real. He wanted to go back in time, all the way back to when he’d had both his parents, as much as he’d detested them, and try it all over again. This time, he’d do better. This time, he’d help them make peace. He’d be more careful, he’d be a better son, he’d do what his parents wanted him to, be who they’d wanted him to be—

The only thing centering him in the panic that wanted to squeeze his heart into crumbs between his lungs was Zoey’s hand, still soft in his. She must have seen the conflict and twist in his expression, but somehow, she was resisting the urge to do what every other human being had ever done when the panic had overwhelmed him and squeeze him even tighter. Instead, she moved to the side into his peripheral vision, where he could choose to look at her or look away. “Hey,” she murmured. “Hey. You’ve gone away. I’m right here. Can you come back to me?”

He started with his fingers, locked in hers. He was gripping her so hard that it had to hurt, but he couldn’t relax his fingers, not yet. He focused on the feel of their hands, knit together. His fingers had gotten cold, and it made hers feel burning hot, but he could use that, focus on that. What else was here, what else was now? His socks were itchy, rubbing awkwardly against his skin, because he’d been wearing them for a full day of plane travel. The shirt Luke had brought him didn’t fit properly, stretching over his biceps even as it was loose in the shoulders. And Zoey was here. Zoey was here, holding his hand and trusting in him. That made the panic worse, but for just a moment, and then the crushing force in his chest began to loosen. As the burning eased, a little bit more of the outer world began to filter back in. He could feel the slight press of the air filtration over his skin, cooling the sweat that had broken out over his body.

But mostly, it was her hand. Her fingers in his, not squeezing, not pushing, but just being present. Just quietly waiting for him to be ready to take the next step.

He kissed her, softly, mouth closed, just to say thank you.

“What do we do next?” She asked, quietly.

He opened his mouth to tell her the next step of his plan—to hack into the old man’s computer and look for evidence here—but a sharp laugh behind them shattered everything into ugly pieces.

“This is the part,” said a voice that was nothing more than an ugly snarl, “Where you lay down and die. I’ve had enough of both of you.”

Aaron Schwartz had slipped into the office, and he held a small, ugly, but efficient looking gun in his right hand. The door made a quiet snicking sound as the latch caught behind him, and Schwartz focused his watery eyes on Alex. “Now,” he said. “I think it’s time that we talk.”

CHAPTER NINE

Zoey had watched the signs of a panic attack descend over Alex’s face. His eyes had gone almost blank, his pupils enlarging, and she could see his pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat. His fingers were cold, his palms slick with sweat. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and protect him from everything, but she knew it might not help. She’d seen Helen go through this before, and while Helen appreciated physical sensation, like an arm over her shoulders or fingers rubbing briskly at her hands to warm them again, there was something in the set of his shoulders that warned her not to try.

She spoke, instead, pitching her voice low and soft, like she would with an unfamiliar animal. She didn’t even notice the exact words that she said; they weren’t the point. The point was just to remind him that she was here, that she was present. That he wasn’t alone.

Helen had always told her that the most helpful thing—other than a small dose of Ativan—when things got very bad was to be present in her physical body, to notice sensations that spread over her.
You can’t panic when you’re present
, she’d quoted, the line clearly a direct pull from her therapist. She didn’t know if it would work with Alex, but it was worth a try.

It took a few moments for him to reground himself, but it happened, and she felt his icy fingers starting to warm again. His pupils slowly tightened down to a normal size, and she could see the dark of his irises again.

She was just thinking it would be safe to lean up on her toes and kiss him when the gravely voice of an older man shattered everything.

The man—she had to assume he was Aaron Schwartz; nothing else made sense—held a gun on them. He was tall, his skin the off-color of old paper that was starting to rot, and his eyes were pale and wet. His hair was clearly dyed, too dark and uniform to match the age lines around his mouth. No stylist would ever have dyed the hair of an old man that shade of black.

“Schwartz,” Alex choked out, his teeth clenched as tight as his fingers. God, she was going to get him to let go of her fingers. There was a pocket in the skirt, and she needed what was there. It was a hell of a long shot, but she might still manage it. Maybe. “I’m not surprised.”

The old man rolled his eyes. “Of course you are. Don’t like just to try and impress the piece of ass you’re wearing on your arm this week. No one knew how close Olivia and I had become. No one knew what she had promised me.”

Shit. Shit, this is what I need.

“Mr. Schwartz,” Zoe said, freeing her hand from Alex’s and stepping forward to reach out as if she would shake his hand. “My name is Zoey Gardener; I’m from the
Downtown Voice
. Mr. Blankenship and I were working on a profile piece about the transitions at AEGIS when things got so complicated. I would absolutely love a chance to tell your story.”

It was a ballsy move, and she knew in her heart that she only got as far as she did with it because both Alex and Schwartz were shocked by her movements. Schwartz’s eyes focused on her extended hand—it was a mark of how ridiculous her life had become that she scoffed at him and called him an amateur in her brain—but it was exactly what she needed. By the time he caught his attention in a firmer grip and retrained the gun on her, she was ready to put her hands up and take a step back, all innocent Southern girl. She poured on the honey as she let her hands shake with nervousness that she wasn’t at all faking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Mr. Schwartz. Aaron. May I call you Aaron?”

“No, you may not,” he snapped, and the barrel of the gun shook. God, if she could get clear of his focus, and Alex charged him—there’d probably be one shot to worry about, and even in an office building like this, the slug might carry through the walls or the floor, but the odds of someone being killed were slim. Especially if Alex could somehow aim Schwartz’s hand towards the passageway they’d just come through. God, they should have come up with some kind of exit plan. They’d figured out how to get inside the building, but never even talked about how to get out again. They should have made a plan.

Her distraction, though, had given Alex a chance to gather himself. Instead of the hot anger that had driven him to spit out the man’s name, she saw cold fury radiating off him now. His hands were loose at his sides instead of fisted. He took a step toward Schwartz as well, only he took it just a little bit sideways as well.
Yes. Perfect. Make it so he can’t see both of us at once.
“Come on, Aaron,” Alex said, his tone conciliatory now. “What’s with the gun? How long have we known each other? I hardly think this is necessary.”

Another step, and the words had drawn Schwartz’s focus to Alex’s face. “You don’t know much at all about what’s necessary,” Schwartz snapped back. Zoey took a slow and careful step away from Alex. His eyes flicked back to her, but she was still standing there, her arms upraised.
Please, let the pickup be good enough. Please let it be.
“That’s the whole fucking problem.” He spat out the curse like a man who thinks of himself as rarely swearing, who believes he’s been driven to it by someone else’s extreme behavior. “Your mother—”

“My mother,” Alex agreed. “What a piece of work, huh?”

The man’s eyes were darting around in a way that made Zoey feel even more nervous. He’d cracked, at some point. At some point, this had been a daring plan, an exciting venture, but it had all gone to hell for him. And he hadn’t known what to do, so he’d kept on going. He wasn’t a cold murderer; he was a frightened, greedy coward.

But a girl she’d just started to care about was dead because of him, and she couldn’t just let it go. She couldn’t.

“You didn’t know anything about your mother,” Schwartz said, his tone shifting again, almost cracking with emotion that had come from nowhere. “She was a good woman, she was kind and sweet and loving.”

Alex nodded, agreeing again. “She was. Until my father ruined her.”

“Yes,” Schwartz said, surprise layering his words. “Yes, exactly. He ruined her. He ruined everything.”

“I would have had him killed too,” Zoey said. Schwartz glanced to where she had been standing and realized she had moved. He spun to focus the gun’s sights on her again, and Alex took two steps closer, putting him within grabbing distance of the man. He didn’t move though, not yet. He seemed to understand that she needed more. “I understand why you did it, Aaron. Philip was killing her, wasn’t he? With the infidelity and the beatings. And he’d threaten the children, too, wouldn’t he? Hers, and because she wasn’t a complete monster, the other women’s. He broke her soul.”

“Yes,” Schwartz said, his eyes still flicking and wild. “Yes. Someone had to do it.”

“Someone had to do it,” she agreed. “But why did it have to be you?”

“Because no one else could do it!” He roared, and she began to feel hopeful for the first time since the bastard had opened the office door. “No one else had enough access to him; no one else had enough of his trust. I was Philip’s closest adviser, and it still took me months to get close enough. You have no idea how paranoid he was, how careful. And then she started to suspect, and there was the mess of the will—neither of us had expected that he would do something that foolish—and her pre-nup wasn’t good enough to protect the children.” He stared at her with those wide, staring, murderous eyes. “Everything she did was for the children. She loved the children with all of her heart.”

That was when things went deeply, powerfully crazy. Alex dove for the man, carrying him down to the ground. Zoey threw herself flat and rolled away from them. The gun slammed, a sound so extreme that she could hear nothing in the aftermath other than ringing echoes of pain. She hadn’t known that she could hear pain until then.

And then the office door burst open again, and Luke Pyramus, bless his heart in the most sincerest way she knew, came through, weapon drawn, shouting words that she couldn’t understand, but the words didn’t matter because the weapon was kicked out of Schwartz’s hand, and Alex was kneeling on him, carefully holding him down as Luke restrained him. He looked over at her, and she nodded, pulling her phone out of her pocket and wearily waving it at him. She’d gotten the recording. She’d gotten what he’d said on tape.

She was tired, now, painfully and deeply tired. She let her head sag down onto the floor, which was when she noticed that the pain wasn’t fading. It was getting worse, in fact, and she could feel wetness, in fact, warm heat spreading down over her thighs, and when she looked down to see if she’d peed herself in fear, she noticed that there was an awful lot of blood.