End With A Bang (Slap/Bang Duet #2)

21. Play My Part

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Play My Part

Roused by a warm light, Ivy opened her eyes to a great expanse of orange-yellow sky. Sunrise was so pretty and peaceful from up here...

From up here .

Sunrise .

They’d fallen asleep in the chalet room, cozied on the couch. She turned his arm, the one that was coiled around her, to read his watch. It was six in the morning. She’d only meant to close her eyes for a second ...

Ivy tried to wiggle out of his warm, spoony, too-comfortable-for-comfort grasp, but that only made his python-squeeze tighter.

“Sever, lemme go.”

Still unconscious, he hummed in compliance, but didn’t let go.

“Wake up. Wake up, I have to—” She scoffed, struggling. “It’s morning. Morning!”

He buried his nose in her hair. “Mmm. G’morning.”

“No—” She broke away and stumbled to a stand, smoothing her hair, her rumpled clothes. “It is morning! As in, I didn’t get home last night!”

Unshockingly unsupportive, he stretched out on the couch, yawned, scratched himself and gave her a torpid grin.

She sniffed her blouse—good, his cologne was masked by wood-burning fireplace—and said, “Things. I need my things. Vikram must have put them somewhere.”

“Things,” he echoed.

“Bag. Shoes. Jacket. The things I came here with.”

“You had a jacket on?”

“It...” Ivy looked away, “didn’t stay on very long. I walked in and...”

“Off it went,” he said with a devious lip-bite, hand circling his torso.

“Please,” she said, voice falling to a desperate whisper, “I need to go.”

Taking pity on her, he summoned Vikram.

A few streets down from Sever’s mansion, Ivy sat in her parked car, phone at her ear. “Please don’t hate me, but I need your help.”

“What is it?” Mala asked, voice hoarse. “What, what happened?”

“I may have told Jason you were in town last night.”

She let out a sigh of dismay. “Oh, Ivy.”

“And um, I may have... fallen asleep there.”

“At Stéphane’s?”

“At Nicole’s?” Ivy ventured sheepishly, “The place you’re staying?”

“This is the exact opposite of careful, you know.”

“I know. I know it is. It’s stupid, and irrational, but I went to see him, and he was talking about...” She started over. “I couldn’t just leave. And now, Jason’s gonna have questions, and he’s gonna figure it out, and I know I’ll get an empty plate, but I’m not ready. I’m just not ready!”

“Calm down, Ivy. Breathe. You can fill up your plate again, you know that, right? You can find someone else. Or no one! Maybe that would be best for you; be with yourself for a while? The world will keep turning, and you’ll be okay.”

She knew that. On some level. But she didn’t want anyone else on her plate! And when did she become such an emotional wreck? “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Mal. I’ve never cried so much in my life.” Certainly never over a guy—Ivy always cut herself off before she felt any real pain. It was a fact so established that Mala affectionately referred to all emotional detachment as Powering up the Ivybot.

“Which one is making you cry? Maybe that’ll help. With the choosing?”

“I-I don’t know,” she said, because the truth was causing a panic attack. “I can’t... Just please say you’ll help me. Just this once.”

Mala hesitated. “Do I have to speak to anyone?”

“No. Text only.” She’d written it out already: This is Ivy using Mala’s phone. Lost track of time and passed out last night, phone died, so sorry if I worried you! On my way home now. See you at work. Xo “ I’ll send you the text, all you have to do is copy it and send it to Jason.”

With a whine, Mala fretted, “Flashback to junior high. Your secret date with Matt Kellerman? Your mom saw right through my charade.”

“Jason will be too busy to call back, I promise.” Ivy begged her, “Please. I know you disapprove, and, and, I swear I’m not using you, or manipulating you, or Jason, I just don’t want to hurt him and this will hurt him so bad... and when I think about them not being in my life, I?—”

“Ivy,” Mala said, shaking her down from the worry tree. “I’ll do it.”

Ivy exhaled her anxiety. “I owe you one. I owe you a thousand.”

“All you owe me is a phone call next time you’re about to do something drastic. Got it?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Got it.”

“Nothing drastic here,” she told her empty car. “Just lunch. In and out.” She smiled to herself. “Juuust a quickie.”

Granted, their quickies sometimes took a few hours, and if she kept taking long lunches she could potentially be fired. But that was something for future Ivy to worry about. It wasn’t drastic enough to involve Mala, and that’s all that mattered.

Following the GPS directions, she climbed a steep hill. “Where are you taking me, Sever?”

That morning, he’d sent her a text:

Meet me here at 12:30. It’s a straight shot up the 101...

Suggested attire: Cute sundress, no knickers. Pink optional.

She drove through a gate and pulled up to a sprawling, mid-century modern split-level with mirrored windows everywhere. It could have even been a Frank Lloyd Wright...

Sever, standing outside in sunglasses, jeans, and a black tee, ambled to the driver’s side and bent toward her open window with a smirk. “Love? Or hate?”

What exactly was he asking her? His outfit, yes she did love it...

Opening her door, he said, “The house?”

“This is your new house?” She got out of her car.

“Could be.”

A very tan, very thin woman in a pantsuit emerged from a Jaguar, yelling, “Well, Sever? Is this a sexy glass box, or what?”

Ivy looked at her, then at the house, then at him. “You brought me here to go house hunting with you?”

“Where’d you leave your knickers? At home or in the car?”

“I— In the car.”

He grinned, put his hand on her far shoulder and turned toward the agent. “Janelle, this is my daughter-in-law, Ivy.”

“Oh! It’s so nice that you’re so...” Janelle noticed that his hand had migrated to her waist. “Close.” As he squeezed it possessively, she smiled as if she’d gotten the picture. “Shall we take a look?”

“We’ll take a look. You stay out here.”

Ivy peered up at him from the corner of her eye.

“By all means,” Janelle said, and gave him the keys. “Take all the time you need.”

As they walked to the door, Ivy whispered petulantly, “What was that?”

“What?”

“You might as well have skywrote that we’re involved. She could be calling a tabloid right now.” When he unlocked the door, she marched in, but halted in the foyer. Ample light, center Zen garden, dark bamboo floors... This was her dream home.

“She’s the hottest listing agent in Hollywood,” Sever said, turning the deadbolt. “She spills a secret, she stops selling. Even so, I never do business without an NDA. Trust me, I know when it’s necessary to be discreet.”

“Well, why’d you have to go and say I’m your daughter-in-law?”

“Because it’s true.” Sever adhered to her back and said in her ear, “An’ it gets you hot.”

She let her eyes fall closed. “Does not.”

“Yeah?” He ran his hands down her front, bunched up her dress and dipped his middle finger into her slit, making her instantly ready for him. “Someone knows what you’re doing in here. They know you’re being a bad girl with Daddy.”

She whimpered. “Stop...”

He let out a chuckle, hand cupping hers. “‘Stop’, she says, fondling my crotch.”

“Shut up.” She yanked her hand out of his grasp and backed into the living room, arms outstretched to keep him at bay. “I’m not having sex in someone else’s house while the real estate agent waits for us outside. It’s tacky, and very slutty.”

“How could anyone think ill of you? That yellow frock makes you look so sweet and innocent.” He gained on her. “Like a little buttercup I just wanna eat.”

She shuddered as his knuckles grazed her spine. “A buttercup is a poisonous flower.”

“Ooh. Danger. Pretty poison.” Holding her close, he teased his lips against hers. “She already thinks we’re having it off, love. Might as well.”

“You don’t even want to show me this house.”

“I do. This is the lounge,” he spun her toward the windows. “And this is the view from the lounge.”

“Ohhh...” He knew full well what panoramic views, abstract art and Danish modern decor did to her. Throw in his cologne and his feathery neck kisses and she was bent over the closest Barcelona chair in under a minute.

There was no talking, just a lot of grunting and groping, his hand on her throat, until a beat before her climax, he asked her once more, “Love? Or hate?”

“Love,” she whispered, head tipping back, and the orgasm hit.

After a short recovery, they explored the rest of the property. It was huge—there were two wings and an infinity pool and a separate structure for staff, but it was still about half the size of his current place. Practically, it was a good choice. Impractically, Ivy could hardly contain her lust for it. Or him.

On their way out, Sever told the real estate agent, “I’ll take it.”

Ivy nearly chastised him for making a snap decision... until she remembered she was married to someone else.

Another day at work, another messengered envelope from Sever. She was surprised to see that he’d written the address himself.

Ivy Tyler-Mark

Lohmann Brooks that he’d blown up and kept close by.

Reading her mind, he said, “I haven’t lost you yet.”

Ivy found herself oddly unoffended. “I should be mad about this.”

He nudged her knee with his. “Why aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of cute.”

“Cute,” he said. “That’s almost like ‘nice’, isn’t it?”

“I hope I’m a high stake.”

He beamed at her. “Highest of the high.”

Elbow on the table, hand in her hair, she focused on her plate and ventured carefully, “What was it before you met me?” She slid her eyes to meet his. “The highest stake?”

Tone matter of fact, he said, “The cross.”

That was the answer she expected. “Do they know what it’s for?”

“No,” he said through a chuckle. “All they know is it’s a family heirloom. I mean, Vik knows what I use it for, but he doesn’t know the significance.”

Family heirloom. It was the cross. “So, it’s the one that...”

He dipped a fry in his sauce. “The very one.” He spoke while chewing, as if he were making small talk, not referring to years of his abuse at the hands of his mother.

“Why do you keep it?” She posed the question as gently as she could. “It’s an instrument of your torture. And Jason’s. You’ll never be free of her if you hold on to that cross; if you keep treating it like it’s... somehow precious.”

“ You don’t quite know the significance either.” Emotionless, as if he were sharing a factoid, he said, “My father was killed on that cross.”

Holy.

Shit.

“What?” She remembered what the article said, that after his disappearance it was rumored he was killed, but... on that cross? “How do you...?”

“How do I know? Because my uncles did it. They brought him to an abandoned church, tortured him for hours and murdered him. Slowly. And my Mum... They made her watch the whole horror show.” He added matter-of-factly, “Apparently, I was there too.”

“Oh, my god,” she whispered, horrified. “You don’t remember?”

“I was three years old. All I remember is her crying jags after.”

Ivy opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to say. It was no wonder his mother lost her mind, how could she not? “What were they trying to prove? I know he stole from them, but to make her watch...? That’s just... evil .”

He was remarkably calm. It was no wonder though, he had to remove himself from it to talk about it. “So you know the story.”

“I read a little. That your Dad grifted the Gentiles out of their entire fortune and got your Mom pregnant, he disappeared... no one knows what happened. To him, or the money.”

“No one but me.” He poured himself a glass of wine and refilled hers as he said, “He promised my Mum he’d take care of her, but a few months after I was born, he split. Sent her a postcard every few months, sometimes cash. My uncles found her and used those postcards to track him down. So she felt responsible, yeah?”

Ivy nodded.

“They lied to her. Told her they’d take her back to France, that their parents wanted her again, they’d even accept me, the bastard child. There’s just one little thing she needs to do first.” He breathed in, tracing the rim of his wine glass. “They uhm, take her to him. My Dad. All they want is their money, right, but he keeps saying it’s gone, he gambled it away. But, now that they’ve got her and me there, they can raise the stakes. They rough her up, hold a gun to her head. He sticks to his story, so they turn the gun on me. Someone’s got to talk then, right? But nobody does. My mum tells them she doesn’t want me anyway, go ahead and shoot me. So, they go back to my Dad. Peeling off parts of his flesh. Finally, when the pain gets too much, he tells them where it is. One goes out to get it, but it’s only a fraction of what he stole, so they kill him. Painfully. Mum said the Devil was revealed to her that night. I think she meant they cut the skin off his face.”

Ivy shut her eyes, let a wave of nausea pass. “Holy shit, Sever.”

“Sorry. It’s not really polite dinner conversation, is it?”

She placed her hand on his forearm. “I think we’re way past polite.”

“Yeah,” he said, covering her hand with his.

“What did they do with you and your Mom after? If she’d seen them commit this crime...”

“Hers wasn’t the type of family to involve the authorities. They only had to threaten her. ‘Tell anyone, you die,’ that sort of thing. She’s the one who insisted on keeping the cross, and they let her. She spent her nights scrubbing it and talking to it.”

“Have you ever thought about pressing charges? I mean, that’s a hefty piece of evidence you’ve got.”

“Charge them? For what? Giving him his just deserts?”

She scoffed. “You don’t believe that.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“Sever, you took his name, and you put it on buildings all over the world. You obviously don’t think he was all bad.”

“I took his name because my mother thought it was worthless. That I was worthless.”

“Then why did you take the cross?” Firm yet compassionate, she reasoned, “Why is it something you can’t afford to lose?”

“I...” He paused. “I don’t know.”

Had she ever heard him say that before? He was frowning like he’d never heard himself say it, either.

He looked up at the night sky, searching the stars for clues. Then, haltingly: “I think... it gives me power. ‘S’like facing a monster and,” he brought his gaze back to hers, “making it a mouse.”

He was still thinking about it, looking unsure, curious, and vulnerable.

Softly, she touched his face and breathed, “I get it.”