The Darkness of Perfection (5 page)

My mother tried over the years to teach my brother and me to be different; to be better men, and change our destinies. Our father was grooming us to take over the family business when he was ready to step down. My brother was quick to embrace the power our father possessed. After all, what could be better than being rich, powerful and untouchable? Knowing that men groveled and cowered at your feet, ready to do anything or give up anything just because you demanded it of them?

Jayden’s father had done just that when he gave her to me.

I didn’t have that realization until Jayden’s mother took her away from me. That was when I fully embraced the man my father wanted me to become. It was my idea to let her parents come to prove how good of a job I had done with her. It was my softness due to my mother’s whispered words over the years which lost me Jayden. Never again. If I’d been stronger like my father, Jayden would have never had the opportunity to escape for so long.

We were able to track down the used car salesman who sold them their means of escape. After some persuasion, he told my father she’d used his computer to look up directions to Springfield, Missouri and gave us the make and model of the car she purchased. Years of searching every possible route between Houston and the state of Missouri, leaving no stone unturned, had come up empty. We even searched Arkansas and Oklahoma in case she stopped before reaching her final destination, but it was like they vanished into thin air.

Her father was held accountable for his wife’s actions. She stole from my family, from me. Jayden was my property and I watched in cold indifference as her father paid for his wife’s crime with his life. I encased my heart and my feelings in ice, never allowing anyone close enough to be able to hurt or betray me again. I pushed my mother away and became just as cold and callous as my father and brother.

I refused to accept my father’s attempts to replace Jayden. I would bed the whores available to me, but nothing more. My brother chose his wife when he came home from college, surprising everyone by picking the daughter of one of our servants who had been slated to be sold overseas to a private buyer.

He could continue the Harrison empire with his own kids if they ever had any. It was unrealistic, but if I couldn’t have Jayden, then I wanted no one. I’d built her up in my mind over the years as the ultimate in perfection. The perfect beauty. The perfect complement to my home. The perfect companion. The perfect wife. Anyone less would never be good enough in my eyes.

From the moment I gazed into eyes the same rich color of jade that she was named for, I knew my waiting hadn’t been in vain. Fate was rewarding me for my patience. Our surroundings faded to gray. I didn’t notice the tropical beauty around us, the magnificent sunsets over the ocean, or the opulent décor of the ship. I only saw the beauty she had become.

My imagination failed to do her justice. She had grown to be more beautiful than I could have ever dreamed. She made people smile just by being in her presence. Her eyes shone when she laughed and made you want to act like a fool just to encourage her laughter to continue. She was affectionate with her family, and gracious and kind to the crew members who waited on her. I couldn’t help but picture her on my arm and overseeing the care of my home with her beauty and grace.

My thoughts were interrupted by my friend Daniel leaning against the rail beside me.

“You realize it may not even be her,” he said for the hundredth time, playing devil’s advocate and trying to make me see reason. He was my closest friend and confidante over the years. He was there and knew my feelings about Jayden. “Be real for just a minute, would you? I mean, what are the chances? She disappears for all these years only to turn up on your cruise, running smack-dab into you? That’s a million-to-one shot in the best of circumstances. You wouldn’t even play those odds, and you know it.”

He blew out a frustrated breath at my silence, knowing his words fell on deaf ears, and rubbed his face in annoyance. Daniel had followed in his father’s footsteps and taken over as the family attorney upon his death. It was his job to offer counsel and handle all our legal affairs. He also dealt with the Feds who’d been snooping more and more into our affairs over the last couple of years.

“Nick, man, I just don’t want to see you do something stupid that draws attention to your family right now. You can’t afford rash actions.”

“It’s her.” I said with conviction, my eyes never leaving her. I saw my men waiting in the distance to fall in behind her family. They would continue watching over her until everything was ready, and then I would bring her home. “I want those background checks on her family. I want to know who that man is. We both know where her father is.”

I had no clue who the man was she was calling “Dad” or the boy she said was her brother. Her father was dead and rotting in the foundation of one of the high rises in downtown Houston, and she never had a brother; she was an only child. I didn’t recognize her mother, either. I never paid attention to her the few times I saw her as a kid, and she looked nothing like the old photograph I’d seen in my father’s office in the city. None of that mattered though; the scar was all the proof I needed that she was my long-lost Jayden.

I absently rubbed my left thumb and forefinger together, remembering the feel of the line of slightly puckered skin on the back of her neck that assured me there was no mistake. Jayden had been with me four months when she received that scar.

“Dad, how long does she have to stay in here this time?” I had asked, trying so hard not to let him
knowhow worried I was about her. I knewshe was terrified and I only wanted to get her out of there. I
wanted to take her back to my room and let her have her stuffed bear that I kept hidden in my closet.

I tried not to show concern as I knelt in front of the wooden crate beside his desk. Her small fingers
clenched and unclenched around the slates that made up her tiny prison as she tried to reach me. She
had one eye pressed against the opening and I could see she was crying.

She’d dropped my hot chocolate the other day when she brought it to me. The cup was too full and it
sloshed over the rim and burned her fingers, causing her to drop it. The problem was, my father was
walking by her on his way to the table at the same moment, and it spilled on his pant leg. He needed to
get to a meeting, and was forced to miss breakfast because he had to change his suit.

“Three more days should teach her to be more careful,” he answered calmly as he looked over his
newspaper at me. She’d already been in there a day and a half. I picked up another small slice of
apple from the plate on the corner of his desk and held it just out of reach of her fingers like he taught
me. When she was being punished, the only food she could have was from mine or my father’s hand. I
hated this. She had to beg before I could give it to her.

“Pweethe. I’m so-sowy fo spiwing your ch-chochowat,” she whimpered as she struggled to reach the
apple slice.

My father viciously kicked the side of the crate repeatedly with his boot, causing her to scream and
sob loudly. “Stop with the baby talk. Say it right or you get nothing,” he snapped angrily. When she
was terrified, she would stutter and revert to sounding like a baby. Before she was given to me, I never
noticed she had a speech impediment. She actually had a pretty extensive vocabulary for a five-year-old, and could even read a few words. It didn’t help that she’d also lost two front baby teeth recently.

“Nowtry it again,”he ordered.

I cringed as I heard her gulping air rapidly, trying to calm herself enough to say the words correctly.

If she couldn’t gain control of herself, she would soon be vomiting in that tiny space, and then the
crate would be moved to another room so the smell didn’t bother my father. I was forced to be a part
of these punishments so I could learn howto control her on my own in the future.

“Please say it right,” I whispered as I pleaded to her with my eyes.

“I’m s-s- sorry for sp-sp-illing your cho-chochocwat,” she sobbed even as she reached again in vain
for the apple still held out of her reach. I closed my eyes in dread as I heard her gag and the sound of
her retching inside the crate.

“That’s it! Maybe another few days added to your punishment will fix that defective tongue of yours,”

my father snarled at her, kicking the side of the crate again. He threw the apple slices in the garbage
can in front of her, making her cry even harder. He picked up his phone, calling for a servant to come
move her crate to the room next to his office. He threwthe blanket over the top of it so she would be in
darkness until he chose to remove it.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of sirens blaring loudly and spotlights flashing past
my windows. Someone had breached our home security. I ran down the stairs in my pajamas, ignoring
the guards swarming the house and yard armed with automatic weapons. My only thought was to get
to Jayden and make sure she was safe and reassure her. I opened the door to the room where her crate
sat in the middle of the floor and ran to it, dropping to my knees, and threw back the blanket.

“Jayden, it’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe. Don’t be scared.” I didn’t stop to think how ironic those
words sounded in my ears. Here I was telling her not to be scared of the sirens or someone breaking
into the house, when she was locked in a crate by my own hand.

It took me a minute to process the sight in front of me. The crate was empty; the jagged, broken slat
proof of how she got out. I scrambled to my feet and ran back through the house shouting for her. I
didn’t want her to leave me. She was my friend and my life was lonely without her.

The dogs found her an hour later, hiding in the horse barn beyond the fence. Her feet were cut and
bleeding and full of thorns from running across the field, which had slowed her escape. She had
scratches and a nasty cut on the back of her neck either from squeezing past the broken slat of the
crate or crawling through the barbedwire fence. It needed fifteen stitches, resulting in the scar on her
neck.

My father replaced the wooden crate with a metal cage the next morning, and she spent a month in it
for her attempted escape. After she was finally released from her cage, she strived to do everything
right and never attempted escape again until her bitch of a mother took her from me.

She paused on the dock and turned back, some sixth sense alerting her to an unnamed danger. She scanned the crowd above her until she locked eyes with me. She gave me a small, timid smile before quickly turning away again. I noticed she shifted a little closer to the man she called “father,” slipping her hand into the crook of his arm like he would protect her from me. No one could save her now that I’d found her. She belonged to me and she would be mine again, very soon.

I left the sidewalk and crossed the damp grass, dropping my backpack on the ground before sitting down and leaning my head back against the tree. I closed my eyes and fought back the tears that threatened to overwhelm me, still clutching the evidence of my failure in my hand.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, hitting the speed dial without even looking. My thumb knew who I needed.

“Hi sweetie! Well, how did it go?”

I sniffed when I heard how proud she sounded, knowing it was going to turn to disappointment in the next few seconds. “I failed, Momma. I got a fifty-four on my test.”

She sighed, and I pictured her sitting on the steps of our back porch taking a break from working in the yard as she talked to me.

“I’m sorry, JJ. I know you’re upset. Can you talk to your professor to get some extra tutoring or something to help you understand what you got wrong? Is there a study group you could join?” she asked gently.

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. She didn’t understand. Mom never went to college; she dropped out after the sixth grade to help her parents and because of the way our life turned out, she could never change that fact. But she never let limitations set by others stop her from learning. She always sat with me and Kevin when we did our homework so she could learn with us, and Dad always encouraged her, never making her feel ignorant because of her lack of a formal education.