Chapter 36
Derek had held her in his arms all
night Friday night and finally sometime over in the morning, she
had fallen asleep.
Maleah awoke to a new day, yet she was
haunted by yesterday’s events. Physically, she ached like hell from
the beating Michelle had given her. Emotionally, she was a wreck.
Her thoughts and feelings were all over the place. She was shocked
and angry and sad about Michelle’s betrayal and equally sympathetic
about the intolerable choice Michelle had been forced to make.
Maleah wanted to believe that if she had been put in such a
horrific position, she would have chosen a better solution. Poor
Michelle, her life was all but destroyed.
What was going to happen now that
Anthony Linden was dead? Would it be only a matter of time before
the pseudo-York sent another gun-for-hire to terrorize
Griff?
Most of Saturday passed in a blur.
Sanders chauffeured them—Nic and Griff, Shaughnessy, Derek and
Maleah—to the sheriff’s department to give their statements
concerning the attempt on Maleah’s life. A distraught Michelle had
confessed that she had killed Shiloh Whitman and had been ordered
to kill Maleah. Griff had contacted Camden Hendrix, an old friend
and head of a law firm the Powell Agency kept on retainer. Despite
what Michelle had done, Griff had instructed Cam to provide her
with the best legal representation possible. Griffin Powell
believed that, no matter what, you took care of your
own.
After their trip to the sheriff’s
office, Maleah and Derek spent most of the day with Nic and Griff
and Griff didn’t mention anything about Nic being pregnant. When
Maleah and Nic were finally alone for a few minutes, Maleah asked
Nic why she hadn’t told her husband about their baby.
“I’m going to tell him. But not yet.
Not for a few more days. Not until we all have a chance to come to
terms with what Michelle did and sort of get our
bearings.”
And so that was what they did the rest
of the day Saturday—tried to get their bearings in a sea of mixed
emotions.
Saturday night Derek made love to her
so slowly and tenderly that she cried. And being the man that he
was, he understood that those tears of joy also released a myriad
of pent-up emotions. A lifetime of emotions.
Odd that in the midst of all the chaos
and upheaval in their lives, she could, on a very personal level,
be so happy. Happier than she had ever been in her entire life. She
loved Derek Lawrence and he loved her.
That morning, after they made love
again, Derek propped up on his elbow, looked down at her, and said,
“I think you’re going to have to marry me.”
Smiling like a lovesick fool, she
stared up at him and asked, “Why would you think
that?”
He grinned. “Maybe it’s because I love
you and you love me and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my
life without you.” He swooped down and kissed her. Then he lifted
his head and laughed. “I know it sounds corny, but I want your face
to be the first thing I see every morning and the last thing I see
every night.”
When she socked him in the chest, he
fell over on his back and laid his hand over his
heart.
“You’re right. That did sound corny.”
She leaned down and nuzzled his nose with hers. “But since I happen
to feel the same way, I think you’re right. You are going to have
to marry me.”
Griffin Powell stared at the letter in
his hand, the letter that had arrived special delivery this morning
via an international courier. The return address was a hotel in
London, Berkeley Knightsbridge, where Luke and Meredith had
stayed.
If that was someone’s idea of a joke,
that person had a truly warped sense of humor.
Griff had read and reread the letter
before he called Yvette.
Once she arrived, Sanders joined them
in Griff’s private study. Sanders closed and locked the door before
Griff gave the letter to Yvette.
After she read the letter, she stared
at Griff, a combination of doubt and hope in her eyes. “Could this
possibly be true?”
“I don’t know.”
Yvette handed the letter to
Sanders.
He read it quickly.
With concern in his black eyes, he
looked from Yvette to Griff and said, “You cannot believe what this
letter says, not without proof.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Griff
replied.
“I want to go to England, to Benenden
and see her for myself,” Yvette told them. “If there is the
slightest chance that she really is . . .” Yvette closed her
eyes.
Griff could not bear to see her in such
pain. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. This letter proves
nothing except that someone wants to hurt us, someone who knows
about what happened on Amara.”
“Whoever sent the letter signed it
Malcolm York and that signature looks authentic,” Sanders pointed
out to them. “But we know that it is not possible for him to be the
real York. This man, whoever he is, is a fraud. And this girl
mentioned in the letter, even if such a girl exists, may well be a
fraud, also.”
“But what if she does exist? What if
she’s not a fraud?” Yvette opened her tear-misted eyes and looked
pleadingly at Griff. “If I can see her . . . touch her . . . I
would know. Even without a DNA test.”
“It would take a DNA test to convince
me,” Sanders said. “This man who calls himself Malcolm York has
simply found a new means of tormenting us. Apparently killing
Powell employees and members of their families was not enough for
him.”
Griff nodded agreement. “You’re right,
Sanders, but this letter is not something we can ignore.” He walked
over, caressed Yvette’s damp cheek and said, “I’ll make
arrangements for us to take the Powell jet to London tomorrow. But
before I finalize my plans, I have to show Nic the letter and I
have to tell her everything.”
“Do you think that is wise?” Sanders
asked.
“No, Griffin is right,” Yvette said.
“He has to tell his wife. She has every right to know.” Yvette
glanced at Sanders. “Perhaps you should tell Barbara
Jean.”
“No,” Sanders replied. “Not now. Not
until we know for sure.”
Nic kept rehearsing how she would tell
Griff that he was going to be a father. Should she say, “We’re
pregnant?” Or maybe she should hold his hand over her still flat
belly and ask, “Which would you prefer, a son or a daughter?” Then
again, she could just put her arms around him, look up into his
gorgeous gray eyes and say, “We’re going to have a
baby.”
In the end, it probably didn’t matter
how she said it. Griff would be thrilled. No, the timing wasn’t
perfect and Griff, who worried about her way too much as it was,
would hover over her night and day. And she had every intention of
letting him smother her with attention. After all, why not give him
the pleasure of pampering her for the next seven
months?
When she arrived outside Griff’s study,
she found the door open and Griff waiting there alone.
She could tell him about their baby
this morning. She could walk right into his study and deliver the
good news that he was going to be a father.
But when he looked at her, the
expression on his face stopped her cold. Something was wrong.
Horribly wrong. What had happened now?
She rushed over to him. “Griff, what is
it? What’s—?”
He grasped her shoulders. “I love you.
If you never believe anything else, believe that.”
“You’re frightening me. Please, tell me
what’s wrong.”
“First, tell me that you know I love
you more than anyone or anything on this earth.”
“Yes, I know you love me. And I love
you.”
He released his tenacious grip on her
shoulders. “I received a special delivery letter from London a
little over two hours ago. The signature on the letter was a decent
forgery of Malcolm York’s signature.”
“Then it was a letter from him, this man you refer to as the
pseudo-York.”
“I want you to read the letter.” Griff
reached behind him and lifted the envelope from the desk. “After
you read it, I want you to sit down and let me tell you about what
happened on Amara. It’s something I should have already told
you.”
Nic felt sick at her stomach. It could
be nothing more than morning sickness, but she suspected it was
nerves. Fear-induced nerves.
Griff removed the letter from the
envelope and handed the single page to Nic. She took the letter in
her unsteady hand. When she first glanced at it, her vision blurred
for a few seconds and then instantly cleared.
Dear
Griffin,
I hope this
letter finds you and your wife well. Give Mrs. Powell my sincerest
regards. And please give my regards to our beautiful, delectable
Yvette. I think of her so often, of the two of you and dear
Sanders, too. Ah, what wonderful times we shared on Amara. How I
wish we could all be together again, as we were
then.
I have been
fortunate not to have spent all these years alone, to have been
able to keep a part of Yvette with me. She is almost seventeen now.
I gave her a little red Porsche for her sixteenth birthday. She
calls me Papa and adores me as I adore her.
I believe
I’ve been selfish far too long by keeping her all to myself. Being
a generous man, I have decided to share her with her mother. If
Yvette would like to meet her daughter, tell her that she can find
Suzette at the Benenden School in Kent. As you can imagine, I’ve
spared no expense on her education. You will find her to be as
beautiful and brilliant as her mother and as strong of heart as her
father.
Sincerely,
Malcolm
York
The letter slipped from Nic’s hand and
sailed slowly onto the floor. She lifted her gaze and stared at
Griff.
“Yvette has a daughter?”
“She gave birth to the child nearly
seventeen years ago when we were on Amara.”
“I don’t understand. Where has the girl
been all these years? And how would this pseudo-York know about
her? If what he says is true, this girl thinks of him as her
father. But if the real Malcolm York was her father—?”
“York wasn’t her father.”
“But Yvette was York’s
wife.”
“In name only.”
“What are you saying?” When Griff
didn’t immediately respond, she demanded, “Exactly what are you
trying to tell me?”
“Come over here and sit down.” When
Griff reached for her, she jerked away from him.
“I don’t want to sit down,” she told
him. “I want you to explain. Tell me what happened on Amara. Tell
me about this girl, about Suzette.”
“You have to understand what it was
like for us, for me and Sanders and for Yvette, who was as much a
prisoner as we were. She was forced to do things she didn’t want to
do, just as Sanders was. Just as I was.”
“I know that he used you and the other
men he captured as prey in his savage hunts, that you were treated
like an animal, that you were forced to kill in order to stay
alive. I know that eventually, you and Sanders and Yvette killed
York and . . . But there’s more to what happened on Amara, isn’t
there, a lot more?”
“Yes.” Griff watched her closely, a
look of agony and supplication in his eyes. “And I will tell you
everything. I swear I will. But for now, I have to explain about
Yvette’s child.”
Nic instinctively knew she did not want
to hear what her husband was about to tell her. But she had to know
the truth. She needed to know.
“Tell me.”
“York was involved in numerous illegal
activities. That’s how he made his billions,” Griff said. “His two
most lucrative business ventures were drug trafficking and human
trafficking.”
“Human trafficking?”
“All the captives on Amara were not
there just to be used as prey to hunt and kill. Some were there to
amuse York and his closest allies . . . his business
associates.”
“You’re talking about selling human
beings into slavery. Children and women and—”
“York was a sick son of a bitch. He
didn’t get any pleasure from sex with his wife or any other woman.
He preferred to watch rather than perform.”
Bile rose from Nic’s stomach, the taste
bitter in her mouth.
“Are you all right?” Griff
asked.
She swallowed. “Go on. Tell me the rest
of it.”
“York found Yvette the perfect tool to
give him unlimited pleasure. He forced her to use her gifts as an
empath to connect with the men’s minds, the men he hunted and
killed. Everything he could learn about how they thought, how they
felt, how they might react in any given situation, gave him an edge
over even the most resourceful prey.”
Nic felt dizzy. Don’t
faint, damn it, don’t faint.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You
look so pale.” Once again when Griff tried to touch Nic, she
avoided him.
“Please, don’t touch me.” She couldn’t
bring herself to look directly at him. “Don’t stop until you’ve
told me how all of this connects to Yvette’s child.”
Griff took in and released a deep
breath. “York forced Yvette to have sex with any of his business
associates who wanted her. He used her to find out their secrets.
When he realized that by her having sex with a man, Yvette was able
to connect with his thoughts and feelings more intensely than
simply by touching them, he began bringing whatever man he intended
to hunt the next day into his home and forcing him to have sex with
Yvette . . . while he watched them.”
Nic swayed. She backed up and braced
her hips against Griff’s desk.
“When Yvette became pregnant, York
threatened to abort the child, but being the evil son of a bitch
that he was, he decided to allow her to have the baby. And then
when the infant was only a few hours old, he took it away from
Yvette.”
Nic couldn’t imagine the agony Yvette
must have experienced. “And all these years, what did she think
happened to her child?”
“She didn’t know,” Griff said. “After
we left Amara and managed to claim some of York’s fortune for
Yvette, we started searching for the child. We’ve been looking for
nearly sixteen years.”
“What about the child’s
father?”
“Yvette doesn’t know who fathered her
child. It could have been one of several men she was forced to have
sex with during the specific time in which she became
pregnant.”
And then Nic asked the only question
that really mattered to her. “Were you one of those
men?”
“Yes.”
That single word upended Nicole’s
entire world, everything she believed in, every emotion, every
thought, sending her into a tailspin of confusion and
rage.
“Damn you, Griffin Powell. You swore to
me that you and Yvette were never lovers!”
“We weren’t lovers. Not ever.” He
grabbed Nic’s shoulders and shook her gently. “What Yvette and I
did was not making love. God, Nic, it wasn’t even having sex, not
really. We were forced to perform in front of York.”
Nic jerked away from Griff, rushed
behind his desk, doubled over and threw up in his
wastebasket.
When Griff reached her, she stood up
straight and backed away from him. “Please, don’t touch me. Not
now. I—I can’t think straight. You have to give me time to think,
time to sort through what I’m feeling . . . about you and me and
about Yvette. And . . . and about her child.” She looked Griff
square in the eye. “She . . . Suzette could be your
daughter.”
“Yes.”
Nic walked across the study, opened the
door and without turning back to look at Griff, said, “I’m going
upstairs to pack a suitcase and then I’m going to Gatlinburg to our
. . . to my cabin.” Knowing how she loved the mountains, Griff had
given her the cabin as a Christmas present.
Stay strong. You can do
this without crying, without screaming, without hysterics, without
falling apart.
“I don’t want you to follow me or
contact me in any way,” she told him. “When I’ve had time to think
about everything, I’ll come home. I’ll come back to Griffin’s Rest
and—”
“You can’t go off by yourself,” Griff
told her, his voice pleading. “It’s too dangerous for you to be
alone. If you have to do this, then I’ll send Shaughnessy or one of
the other agents with you.”
“I want to be alone, Griff. I have to
be alone. Try to understand.”
I need to think. And
cry and scream and rant and rave and go slowly out of my
mind.
“How about a compromise?” he asked.
“Ask Maleah to go with you.”
“I won’t do that. She and Derek . . .”
Nic swallowed her tears. “No, not Maleah. Not now. If you insist on
my not going alone, then send someone to follow me on the drive to
Gatlinburg. And you can post guards at the cabin twenty-four/seven.
But I want to drive there by myself and I do not want a bodyguard
in the house with me.”
“I don’t want you to leave, Nic. Stay
here. I’ll give you all the time and space you need. Just don’t
leave me.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t bear to
look at you right now.” She walked out of the study, her head held
high, her shoulders straight, and her heart breaking into a million
pieces.
Maleah didn’t know all the details,
only that Nic had left Griffin’s Rest after Griff told her that
Yvette had a child, a nearly seventeen-year-old daughter that she
hadn’t seen since the day of her birth.
“Griff may be the girl’s father,” Nic
had explained. “I can’t stay here at Griffin’s Rest. I need to get
away. I don’t want to look at Griff and see the pain in his eyes
every time he looks at me.”
“I’ll go with you,” Maleah had told
Nic.
“No, no. You and Derek, you two need to
be together now. I want you to enjoy being in love. Those first few
days and weeks are so incredible. I don’t want you to miss
them.”
When Nic made up her mind, there was no
arguing with her.
Maleah stood in the open doorway and
watched Nic drive away from Griffin’s Rest. When her Escalade was
barely out of sight, Griff motioned to the man behind the wheel of
the black Hummer. He pulled out and followed Nic.
At that precise moment, Maleah knew
what she had to do. She turned to Derek, who stood beside her, his
arm draped around her waist, and said, “She shouldn’t be alone.
Will you understand if I—?”
Derek clasped her hand. “Come on,
Blondie, I’ll help you pack a bag. But not until after I give you a
proper send-off.”
“I’m going to miss you
terribly.”
“Call me every hour on the hour,” he
teased.
“I’ll call you every morning and every
night and think about you every hour in between. How’s
that?”
He pulled her into his arms as they
reached the top of the stairs. “When this crisis with Nic and Griff
is over, you and I, Ms. Perdue, have a future to plan. A future
that includes a wedding and a honeymoon.”
“Yes, we do.” Maleah stood on tiptoe
and kissed him.
Loving and being loved gave her the
strength to believe in the possibility of a
happily-ever-after.