Vengeful Love: Black Diamonds (4 page)

I shake my head but he gently tugs my shoulders, forcing me to face him.

“Look at me.”

I shake my head again, faster. His index finger is under my chin, lifting it in a too familiar way.

“
Not
the murder charge,” he whispers. “The CPS didn’t charge the murder of their own accord. That decision
is
yours. That was real justice. They didn’t charge because the right man died.”

I close my eyes both to break the intensity of our connection and to help me process what he’s saying.

“I’ve
never
lied to you, Scarlett. I may have withheld information but I’ve never lied to you and I’m not going to start now. You can trust me because I’m telling you this, I
did
bribe the CPS to get rid of any possible gun charge but that had nothing to do with the murder charge. I swear on my—”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare swear on your life.” I open my eyes to find those precious gems looking into my hazel-greens.

He nods. “I promise. I’m not lying about this. I flew here because I know you’ll have spent the last twenty-four hours thinking you did something wrong and you didn’t. This is the truth, Scarlett. Believe me.”

Taking a deep, soothing breath, I whisper, “I do.” But my relief is masked by the pain of his betrayal. The pain of his sending me away. If I don’t get away from him now, I’m going to crumble.

“Thank you. For coming here. For telling me.” Digging deep for all the confidence I can muster, I straighten my back. “Goodbye, Gregory.”

I move past him as fast as my heels allow and head back to the landing. Once again, I’m thumping the lift button and willing it to come.

The fire exit door closes and I can feel his presence.

“Scarlett—”

“Please, Gregory, don’t. You said everything five weeks ago and I... I’m not strong enough to do it all again.”

The lift pings and I finally drop my shoulders from my ears. I’m already making my way inside as the doors are opening. I hit the button for five
as quickly as I can and start to breathe as the doors chug.

Then two hands crash against the closing doors, prising them open. He’s standing at the entrance, staring right at me.

“Scarlett, I love you.”

My lips part as I stagger back against the wall of the lift. There they are. Those three words I’ve been desperate to hear. The words I imagined him saying to me weeks ago.

But he said he couldn’t. He said he wouldn’t.

“Why? Why now?” My words are barely audible.

He’s motionless and he looks...afraid. “I didn’t come here to say that. I...when I saw you...”

I shake my head as an overwhelming sense of confusion, of pain, love and anger, bears down on me. “I can’t do this again, Gregory. I can’t. No one has ever hurt me like you.”

He drops his head towards his chest.
God, I want to hold him.

“Please, Scarlett.”

My world begins to blur as tears fill my eyes. He looks so vulnerable. “Nothing’s changed, Gregory. We didn’t end because of the case, or even because you made me leave. We broke because you won’t let me in.”

The lift doors tremble and begin to close once more. He doesn’t stop them and I hear his words, almost exhaled, “I can’t.”

* * *

Why? Why now? After everything.

The hot spray of the shower caresses my skin and washes the salt of my tears from my cheeks.

Nothing’s changed.
It’s true. I still don’t know that darkness within him. The real darkness. The black that broke us. It’s still there and if he won’t share it, we won’t work. I’d spend every day wondering if it was the last. If he would do something deceitful. If he’d push me away. I can’t do it again. I won’t survive him a second time.

Water trickles down my face and kisses my lips as I open my mouth.
I want him so much.
My legs struggle to stand under the weight of his words, replaying in my mind. I lean my hands onto the marble fleck tiles in front of me to steady my aching body.

What if?

Maybe we could make it work. Maybe I never know his darkest secrets but he knows that I love him regardless. I convince him that he deserves to be loved, that he won’t hurt me just by loving me back.

No.
It’s not enough. I need all of him. Living in fear of his next breakdown, incomplete, isn’t a way to live my life.

After drying my hair, I lie back into the soft sheets of my bed with a towel still wrapped around my body.

He was supposed to be justifying his corruption, that’s all.
It’s not fair of him to ask me to do this. Has he actually asked me to do anything?

Hours have passed by as the questions whir in my mind, keeping me from the sanctity of sleep. My confusion and desire are losing the battle against my sensibility, and what I’m left with is frustration and anger.

He can’t just fly to Dubai after everything and throw out those three words like, like, like I don’t know what. He can’t just do that. He said he’s not willing to let me in. Right before the lift doors closed, he said no. And he sent me away, how could he love me and still send me away? And he
did
lie. He can call it what he likes, but he bribed the CPS.

Did they really accept self-defence? Were we honestly cleared?

I close my eyes and try for sleep again but it won’t come. I turn to face the alarm clock at my bedside.
05:55. I give in.

After cleaning my teeth and tying my hair in a knot on the top of my head, I dress in my black swimsuit, then cover it with leggings and a T-shirt. Grabbing my gym kit too, I head down to the ground floor.

I’m rinsing in the poolside showers when he steps out of the male changing rooms in a pair of swim shorts, the sight of his naked torso making me wetter than the hot spray.
Bloody hell, he’s gorgeous.
I ignore the dull throb between my legs and I ignore him, moving from the showers into the pool. I take a sectioned lane of the empty pool, just in case he tries to swim near me, and I set off swimming a mile—sixty-four lengths.

I’ve front-crawled three lengths before I realise he’s taken up the swim lane next to mine and dropped perfectly into my rhythm, swimming alongside me.

Well that’s just pissing me off even more!

He’s fitter than me but I’ve been swimming almost every day for the last five weeks. I’m up to this challenge. More than that, I accept his challenge and I raise him the gym once I’m done.

We power on. After forty lengths he’s still matching me stroke for stroke, breath for breath. I’m starting to think what’s infuriating me more is that, whilst he’s beside me, I can’t watch his muscles move beneath the water.

Just because I’m pissed doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate him from a distance.

The only snippet I catch is when we turn. We summersault in time and both kick off the end of the pool but his power moves him feet in front of me, until he drops back into my rhythm. In those brief moments, I watch him move, from his toes, through his legs, his flexing core, right to the tips of his fingers. He really is something else. And he loves me.
Me.

Shake it off!

At fifty lengths, he’s still mirroring my moves. At sixty-four, I don’t waste time pushing up on my hands at the top of the pool and climbing out of the water. Stomping to the showers, I rinse off the chlorine. For a moment he looks like he’s going to talk to me, so I shut down the shower, grab my towel and head into the ladies’ lockers where I switch into my gym kit.

And, of course, he’s already in the
fucking
gym when I get there. He feigns stretching when I know he’s actually waiting.

Oh, it’s on, Gregory Ryans.

After a quick stretch, I jump on the treadmill, set the time to forty minutes and hold my finger down on the speed button until I’m working at a run. I have to fight to contain my temper when he climbs onto the tread next to mine and sets his bloody machine to the same settings.

We run. It’s a stand-off. A protest. A test of will. He wants me to concede. Like somehow beating me on the treadmill means he wins. He doesn’t win. He won’t win.

You can’t just swan back into my life and throw around “I love you,” Ryans. You sent me to Dubai.

We may have been cleared of one murder, but there’s a good chance there could be a second any moment now.

At twenty minutes I ramp up the speed further and the arsehole matches me. Damn my body for starting to tire. I need a different beat. Unhooking my iPhone from my bicep, I scroll through my tunes and, without thinking, select a song that’s become one of my favourites. It reminds me of
us
, of being happy on our way to the opening hunt of the season. As Thirty Seconds to Mars’s
“Kings and Queens”
blasts in my ears, I cock one eye to Gregory’s iPhone, resting on the lip of the treadmill screen.

He’s listening to “Kings and Queens”?

Thank God for reflexes. As my feet stumble and lose rhythm, I throw my hands on the side rails and take my body’s weight until I’m composed enough to drop my feet back down and into my run. I can’t resist a glance at him.

He smirks.
Arrogant arse.

It’s the last straw. My body has had enough and so has my mind. I slam my hand on the big red emergency stop button in the middle of the treadmill dash and roll backwards with the belt until the machine draws to a stop. Then I plonk myself down on the end of the belt, catching my breath.

He does the same.

Panting, I look up to him. A moment of weakness. Those chocolate diamonds are staring right back at me as he leans forward on his knees.

“Have dinner with me tonight. Please.”

“Gregory—”

“I’ve thought about it. Damn it, Scarlett, I’ve been thinking about it, you,
us
, all night. And you’re right.”

I open and close my mouth without words.

“Have dinner with me tonight and I’ll tell you everything. If you want to walk away from me after that, I’ll understand and, though it might kill me, I’ll never ask you for anything more. I’ll leave you to move on, with someone you should be with, someone who can treat you the way you deserve.” I watch him with an overbearing urge to wrap him up in my arms and slap his face all at once. “I know I hurt you. Maybe I should have told you about Barnes and the CPS but you would never have let me go through with it and I’ll be damned if we were going to prison on a gun charge after everything we’d been through. And I know now that I shouldn’t have sent you here. I went behind your back but believe that I did what I thought was right by you, Scarlett. I’m no good at this, any of it. You, us, it’s... I’ve never had it before and I just keep fucking up at every turn.”

“You do.” Yet, on some level, I think I believe that he was trying to do right by me. The wrong thing for all the right reasons.

“Come tonight. Please. I have to try. You have to let me try, otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about what could have been, what I threw away. Give me a chance to beat my past, Scarlett. Please. I can’t promise you’ll stay and if you do, I can’t promise things will always be perfect, but I can promise you that I’ll try my best to be a man worthy of you. I’ll spend every second for the rest of my life trying to be what you need.”

Like he always has the ability to do, he takes my breath away.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

I nod. “Okay.”

That half smile I’ve missed so much draws on his lips and just like that, although I didn’t think it possible, I fall deeper.

Chapter Five

“Scarlett, is this really a good idea?” Amanda asks through a mouthful of popcorn—her pregnancy craving, so she says. Williams is so giddy about being a daddy that he just caves, driving around London at all hours to find the particular brand of sweet and salty
she likes
.

“Probably not,” I admit.

“I mean, do you
want
to know everything?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” I confess, moving from the bed to the floor-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe doors. “It feels like a first date.”

She sighs. “Just be careful, okay? Don’t forget he’s the reason you’re over there, alone.”

My best friend makes no attempt to conceal her dislike of Gregory. “You’re getting in some practice at playing Mummy,” I tell her.

“Stop trying to age me,” she laughs. “Seriously, don’t fall for his shit, keep your wits about you.”

“I’m nodding but you can’t see me.”

“Alright. Well, off you go, have fun. Nothing too short and definitely do
not
put out.”

“This conversation just ended.”

She laughs, a belly chuckle, as I hang up the iPhone then cast it onto the bed.

I scrutinise my reflection one last time. The cream dress I rushed out to purchase from one of Dubai’s extravagant malls is demure at the front. A high square neck, nipped in at the waist, resting an inch or so above my knee. I bite my lip as I turn to look over the open back, held together by two gold chains, one between the shoulders, the other midway down, the drooping fabric finishing just above my coccyx. I’ve curled and pinned up my hair and now, looking at myself, I feel silly. I’ve dressed up to find out the worst there is to know about the man I love. I’ve let myself get goose bumps and flutterflies in my stomach.

He broke your heart
,
I remind myself.

* * *

He’s talking to Paddy at the poolside bar on the fourth floor. The night is warm but a light breeze chills my back as I watch him. His sleeves are rolled up like they were last night and his baby blue shirt is tucked into dark grey trousers. He looks lean, tall, strong and sexy as hell. His dark hair is slicked black. His square jaw tenses when Paddy inclines his head in my direction. Gregory turns and watches me walk across the bar towards him. I won’t lie, I check him out, eat him up with my eyes. He’s standing in
that
pose. His hips pushed slightly further forward than his thighs and stomach, stretching the grey trousers across what I know is a more than adequate package. His shirt is unbuttoned just a little, teasing me with the olive skin of his chest.

“Good evening, Miss Heath.” He holds out a cocktail glass for me to take.

I cast my eyes to Paddy, then back to the glass that Gregory is offering. “There’s an olive in my glass.”

“It’s a dirty martini,” Gregory says, stating the obvious.

I turn again to Paddy. “It’s not a dirty martini night.”

“That’s what I said,” he says, throwing his bar towel across his shoulder. “I said it’s a dry martini night but your man there said you’d like it dirty.”

Gregory smirks, smug and supercilious.

I take the cocktail stick with two olives from the glass Gregory’s still holding. “Did he now?” I put the stick in my mouth, locking my lips around it then draw back slowly, pulling off the olives.

His lips part slightly.
Mission accomplished.

I drop the used stick back in the cocktail glass. “I’d like a dry martini, please, Paddy. There’ll be nothing dirty about tonight.”

Paddy throws his head back on a laugh and Gregory rolls his jaw, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he whispers. His words knot a rope in my stomach.

“Don’t, Gregory. I came here to talk, that’s all.”

He nods. “Let’s have your drink brought up to my room.”

“Whoa, you can think again if you think—”

“Scarlett, I’ve promised to tell you everything but I’m not sharing with the world. I’ve arranged for dinner in my room. I’m not suggesting you stay, I just don’t want to do this here.”

He leans over the bar and relays the message to Paddy, then he’s back by my side, smelling truly divine. He leans into me so I can feel his breath, an intoxicating blast of hormones on my neck. “You look stunning in this dress.”

I clear my dry throat. “Thank you.”

He gestures to the exit of the bar. “Shall we?”

I start to walk and falter when the flesh of his palm grazes my bare back. “Please, Gregory, don’t fuck with my head.”

I’m grateful for the group of four men and women who ride the lift with us. “Flutterflies,” I almost inhale to myself.

“Flutterflies?” Gregory asks on a whisper.

I let out a short nervous laugh. “Fluttering butterflies. I’m so witty.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.”

We ride the final three floors alone, the lift’s arrival ping breaking the palpable tension between us.

Gregory raises a hand to tell me to exit first. Two large double doors, not dissimilar to the entrance to Gregory’s apartment in the Shard, stand in front of us. He swipes his key card and holds open a door.

“Naturally, you have a penthouse suite,” I say, stepping into the big, open lounge.

“High and fast, baby.”

I turn my head quickly back and see his startled face. It’s scary how right it feels to hear him call me baby.
Dangerous.

“This is nice.” I wander further across the mock marble tiles onto a soft cream carpet, the stem of my heels dipping into the floor.

An L-shape leather sofa sits in the middle of the lounge in front of an electric fire. Heatless flames are alight in the deep red feature wall. The room is warm and luxurious in every way, the fabrics, the colours, the outstanding view across the city and out to sea.

“The dining room is this way.” Gregory moves through an archway into a separate area backing onto the lounge.

In the middle of the room there’s a table large enough for six mocha suede chairs. Abstract art decorates the walls and makes the whole room feel contemporary. The table is laid with gold placemats and red linen napkins, set for two, one setting at the head of the table, the other to the side of the table.
Too close.

A butler appears, wearing a red jacket that’s a near match for the napkins. His dark features are almost as black as his trousers, his skin smooth despite his age.

“Miss Heath,” he says with a dip of the head, before pulling out the chair at the top of the table. “My name is Roshan and I will look after you tonight.”

“Thank you.” I offer a soft smile as Roshan pushes me in and places a napkin across my legs with his white gloved hands.

As Roshan performs a similar fuss for Gregory, I enjoy the view through the wall of windows at the opposite end of the room.

We sit in silence as Roshan makes quick work of pouring water, filling our white wine glasses with the Sancerre Gregory has picked for our first course, and placing fresh bread rolls on our side plates.

“Are you ready for your appetiser, sir?”

“Yes, thank you.”

With another dip of his head, Roshan leaves us in our awkward bubble, his movement causing the intricate table lanterns to flicker. The soft light dances across Gregory’s face and knots the rope in my stomach a little bit tighter.

“How do you see this playing out?” I ask.

There’s a shift in his face and demeanour that reminds me of the little boy from my dreams. Young Gregory is sitting at the table with me, reminding me what tonight is about. He’s going to reveal everything to me and the thought must scare him because it’s terrifying me.

He turns the base of his wine glass with his fingers, then slowly raises the frosted glass to his lips. “Like I said, I’m going to tell you everything. The good, the ugly, for as long as you want to listen. I’ve never told anyone, not everything. I don’t talk about it. I’m not sure how to say it out loud. All I know is that I have to try because the last five weeks have been hell. I don’t want my life without you in it, Scarlett, and I know you need to hear this if you’re ever going to understand why I pushed you away.” He takes another sip of Sancerre. “I’m praying that once you’ve heard it, you won’t run. But I’ll understand if you want to. You should know that. I wouldn’t blame you. God, I’d probably think you made the right decision. I’ve brought so much shit on you and I... I couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

“You
did
hurt me more, when you left me with no choice but to move halfway across the world, Gregory.”

“I know. I do. But I did it because I thought I was protecting you, Scarlett. I did it to keep you away from what I’m going to tell you.”

“Your appetisers,” Roshan announces as he re-enters the room, placing a trio of seafood in front of us both. “You have spiced crab cake here. In the glass, salmon mousse with cucumber garnish. In the bowl, cold fish soup with tomato base.” He beams at me and tops up Gregory’s wine before leaving us alone.

Gregory leans back in his seat with a long inhale and twirls the base of his glass with his fingers again, staring down at the table.

“I’ve only ever loved two other people.” His eyes close and slowly reopen. “My mother. And my sister.”

“You have a sister?”

“I had a sister.”

He sips his wine and his shoulders drop a little. That’s the first admission and I don’t know if he started with the easiest or the hardest.

“I’m sorry.”

He nods and stares back to the table. “Her name was Elsa. She was older than me. Four years older.” He smiles sadly. “She was beautiful. Sweet. I adored her.”

I swallow as his glazed eyes make the first chip in my heart.
Pull yourself together, Scarlett, this is about him.

“She...she ah...” He drags a hand through his thick brown hair. “She killed herself. She was fourteen.”

I dig my teeth into my gums, the pain a distraction from the lump building in my throat.

“That’s why you were worried I might’ve harmed myself the night I didn’t come home from the office.”

He lifts his head to face me. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Gregory, I really am.”

He moves back to turning his glass. “She killed herself because of me, Scarlett, because I couldn’t protect her.”

He rubs a hand roughly across his mouth and chin.

“Your father,” I whisper.

“Yes.”

Roshan comes back into the room and removes our all but untouched plates after we assure him the food is good but we’re leaving room for the main course. He pours Pinot Noir into our red wine glasses as I watch Gregory. He’s left the room, gone to a place only he knows. I have to fight with myself not to go to him and fold my arms around his neck.

“I don’t remember it starting,” he says. “It seems like he just always beat us, for as long as I can remember. I see new things sometimes, in my sleep. Mostly, I remember the physical stuff but I saw a lot.”

I want to tell him to stop, that I don’t need to know, but the words don’t come because deep down, I know if we have any chance, he has to keep going. For us. For him.

“He would beat my mother raw. At first, when we knew he was coming home or when we heard his car, my mother would get Elsa and me in bed. She told us to pretend we were asleep and we did. But we heard. We heard every punch, every scream. I didn’t do anything about it.”

He takes a gulp from his Pinot Noir.

“Gregory, you were a baby.”

He shakes his head. “Sometimes, Elsa would come into my room, or I’d go to her, and we’d hide under the duvet, listening, crying, terrified, until it stopped. We’d get up the next day and it would be like nothing happened. He would go out to work and my mother would smile, make breakfast. Christ, and you know, that was easier. It was easier to be normal and pretend like life was fine. So I did.”

Almost reflexively, I reach out across the table and rest my hand on his.

When Roshan returns, we break our brief contact. He places two plates of thinly sliced rare beef with grilled asparagus and tomatoes in front of us then leaves.

“Please eat,” Gregory says.

I find myself cutting a mouthful of beef because I don’t want to defy him. Not now. He also takes a forkful of food, then washes it down with wine.

“When I got older, six, seven, I couldn’t lie in bed. I used to go to him. Goad him. Trying to keep him away from my mother. It would work. He’d turn on me instead. He’d beat me, he’d say...fuck, all kinds of shit about my mother. Things I wouldn’t repeat. One night, he ah...he was standing over my mother when I came downstairs. He’d been screaming at her because he was out of drink or she’d gotten rid of it. He was holding a broken bottle and it was...it happened in slow motion. She was on the floor, curled up like a foetus. When he lifted his hand, I ran, screaming, and got in his way.” He shakes his head. “There was so much blood. I think he shocked himself sober.”

My eyes are stinging. “The scar on your back.”

He nods and gulps down more wine. “It worked that night. So the next time, I did it again. Then again and again. He didn’t leave my mother alone but we shared the beating. She used to come to my room after he’d passed out and she’d cry, sob, saying thank you, over and over.”

“God, Gregory, I—”

He looks up to me. “Do you want me to stop? Do you want to go?”

“God, no. I want to be here. With you.” I take his hand and stare down at it until I’ve forced the building water from my eyes. I roll my fingertips across the burns on his wrist.

He interlaces his fingers in mine, watching our hands entwine. “He made me do it to myself. He lit a cigarette and handed it to me and watched me stub it out on my skin.”

I wince and grip him tightly.

“It was me or my mother. She was on the floor. She could barely move. I thought he was going to kill her.”

I lift his hand and press my lips to his burns, trying to cover the memory. He pulls away from me and goes back to fiddling with the base of his wine glass. “That night was the beginning and the end. Something changed in me. I begged my mother to take us away. Her, Elsa, me.”

“She wouldn’t go,” I croak with closed eyes, fighting against the pressure behind my lids.