Love on the Edge: Nine Shades of Romantic Suspense, page 169
“Not now!” he shouted, striding into the room. “Not now? What do you mean not now…”
She dropped her head to her chest. “Look, we both know this, this, us, was nothing more than pity on your part,” she said softly. “I know that and you know that.”
“What?” he bellowed. “Are you insane, woman?” He moved around the bed and took her upper arms in a hard grip. “I love you,” he whispered angrily. “How can you say that?”
Adrian lifted her hands and placed them on his chest. “Devon, please. Don’t say that. You don’t mean it, so don’t say it.”
He stared into her icy eyes, trying to see past the shield that had suddenly risen between them. “I do mean it.” He lifted a hand and caressed her face. “Don’t do this…you don’t have to run. Stay, please, stay with me. I’ll protect you.”
The ice in her eyes melted just a bit. “H—How?” she stammered out the question. “Castalano is a powerful man.”
The anger left him and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest and sighing into her hair. “He wouldn’t hurt the woman his son loves…”
He felt it immediately.
She stiffened in his arms and pushed against his chest. “So…you’re the third one,” she whispered, searching his eyes.
He was perplexed and it must have reflected in his gaze. “Third what?”
She shook her head from side to side, voice jerking. “Vincent Castalano Sr. fathered three sons.” She took a step back, out of the circle of his arms. “That’s what this has all been about? You knew…from the beginning…and you felt guilty.”
He gulped. “This wasn’t the way I wanted…” He sighed dejectedly. “Yes.”
The hand came up before he could duck away, slapping across his cheek with an angry crack.
“You bastard!”
He rubbed the side of his face, trying to ease the sting from both her hand and her words. “No! No! It’s not what you think.”
But she wasn’t listening. She was shoving things angrily into the bag again. “You bastard!”
He reached out to grab her hands, trying to pull her around to face him. She needed to see the sincerity in his eyes. “Adrian, please listen to me.” But she pulled away moving into the bathroom. He followed her “Adrian! Please, at least hear me out.”
“I don’t need to,” she tossed out sarcastically. “I knew it was too good to be true. I knew you had to have an ulterior motive.” She tossed her toiletries into the small overnight case. “I just knew it.”
He locked a pained gaze on her and tried again. “Please, hear me out.”
She spun on him and the angry flash of her eyes reminded him of the night they’d met.
“What?” she asked with a sneer. “What, Devon?” she said a second time when he didn’t respond.
His shoulders slumped. He’d lost…
Everything he’d tried to show her, everything he’d given her in the last six weeks was gone in an instant. He gulped, pleading with her as he explained. “I admit I stayed at the hospital out of guilt,” he whispered on a catch. “At first…”
She grunted, tossing the last of her things into the bag on the counter. “I figured that part out, actor boy.”
He watched her draw further away from him but he continued undaunted. “Please, just listen.” He took in a deep breath. “I admit that, okay? Guilt was the motivating factor, but when…when you…after you came around,” he paused, trying to put his feelings into words without sounding like a total sap. “After I really started to get to know you, I found myself drawn to everything about you.”
She snorted, closed up the case and pushed past him out of the bathroom. “I’ll bet. What were you hoping for, Devon?” she asked as she set it on the bed next to the suitcase. “Was it a pity fuck? Or maybe that I’d forgive your guilt once I found out you were more closely related to this than just sending me a new client?”
He dropped his head to his chest. “Adrian, please, it’s not like that.”
She spun on him again, her voice deadly calm now. “It’s not?” An eyebrow rose into the air and she pursed her lips. “Then what, Devon? How could it possibly be anything else?” She paused and took a deep breath. “He tried to kill me!” She paused again, striding forward to punch him in the chest again with that finger. “He tried to kill me because of a client you recommended. And now I find out you’re the bastard’s son?” She punched him in the chest again. “Tell me, Mr. Varick, how am I supposed to see this as anything other than your guilty conscience?”
He slowly reached up and took the finger in his grasp, tears pooling in his eyes as he stared into hers. “Adrian. No,” he stated as firmly as he could. “Up until three years ago, I didn’t even know he existed, much less that he was my natural father.” He gulped and took a long breath into his lungs. “My mother told me he was dead years ago and I never thought anything of it.”
He sighed out the breath, blinking away the tears. “Three years ago, he came to me.” He spent the next few moments telling her everything…how he’d met his natural father and everything that had transpired since that day. “Please, Adrian. I—I didn’t know he would go so far.”
She pulled her hand out of his grasp and turned away. “Well, what did you expect him to do?” She stomped over to the window and folded her arms around her waist. “He’s a killer. Tried and true, and one of the most powerful underworld figures there has ever been,” she whispered without looking at him. She shuddered, her figure silhouetted against the sinking sun. “When Jack came to me, I started to dig. To be honest, I didn’t really expect to find anything of value,” she confessed. “I’d hoped to find something small…something to bargain with. What I didn’t expect was that he’d fathered three illegitimate children. A set of twins, one of which he raised as his own son,” she paused and turned to look at him. Her cold eyes raked him over then she turned back to the window, casting her face in the shadows. “And you.”
He gulped. “That wouldn’t be a secret worth killing for,” he stated softly. “Illegitimate children are the norm nowadays.”
She shrugged. “No, it’s not.” She turned and leaned against the window. “But it did get me to thinking. Why would he keep a bastard child when he was already married?”
A deep fear clutched at his heart, causing it to pump madly. “Maybe he’s a nice guy?” he asked hopefully, trying to lighten the moment.
She snorted out a soft sound that was dejected at the same time. “Yeah…right. No, he kept a bastard child because his wife had had surgery some years before.”
“So? She had a hysterectomy.”
She pushed off the window and grabbed up her bags. “He had a sex change, Devon.” She said slowly. “Your natural father, in 1964, married Marie Salventino.” She gripped the bags in her hands, her knuckles white. “Up until that point, though, Marie didn’t exist. However, there was a Marion Salente, a young man who died tragically in a car accident in October of 1963. Your father paid a large fee to a clinic in Austria in December of that same year. According to the records I could dig up, the clinic claimed it was Castalano that underwent surgery.”
She moved toward the door with another laden sigh. “But, according to the aging family doctor I found, Vincent Castalano Sr. has never had so much as a cold in all his life.” She paused in the doorway and turned to look at him. “In March of 1964, Vincent and Marie married,” she whispered softly. “I can assume from the one society page I could find from back then, that Marion was a transsexual that met and married your father.”
She turned and disappeared out the door.
He hung his head. “That’s definitely a secret worth killing for.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Devon! Devon!”
His head snapped up at the frantic sound of Richard’s voice. A sinking feeling settled in his gut and he rose, waving at the confused stuntman as he pushed his way through the gathered crew.
Richard looked down on him, his eyes sad as he took his arm and dragged him toward the set of trailers the stars used on location. He didn’t say a word as the two men ducked into the cool interior and out of the blazing Australian sun.
They’d been down here for a month, working on the production of his new series. As always, he had immersed himself in the work, on the set at four a.m., off late into the night. There at every phase, producing, directing, urging the crew on when they were hot, tired, sweaty, and wanted to call it a day.
But he was relentless. Throwing himself full-bore into everything. Only Richard knew the real reason why on this film he had become even more of a slave driver than usual.
Richard pushed a tape into the VCR. “This just arrived from the States…”
“…Our top story this hour is the unexpected death of Mrs. Shelly Cummings…” a blonde reporter that he recognized from Channel 5 said. “Early this morning, Mrs. Cummings appeared to be on her way back from Las Vegas,”
For a moment the reporter’s voice droned on stoically but the words were lost to him until, “As many of you know, Mrs. Cummings was the wife to recently deceased Jack Cummings of the Cummings Conglomerate of Industries. She is survived by…” The reporter went on to name her children and grandchildren. “Police are suspecting foul play, as a second vehicle was reported leaving the scene.”
He sank back onto the counter behind him, jaw hanging open as the news moved on.
Richard turned his eyes to him and sighed a second time, fast forwarding the tape as he did so, “There…there’s more, Devon,” he said bleakly.
“More?” He croaked out, but Richard only nodded and hit the play button again.
“…In other news, the Los Angeles legal community is in mourning the death of one of its own. Ms. Adrian Hoyle, who many of you may remember suffered severe injuries in a still unexplained explosion at her offices last year, died today during surgery at Los Angeles’ St. John’s Hospital. Reports say that the surgery was routine, following the accident, but doctors have confirmed that her heart failed due to an unforeseen complication…”
A picture of Adrian, the same one from the Times, flashed beside the reporter as she gave the funeral details. “Sources from Sterns & Hoyle say that services will be held tomorrow at St. Christian’s Catholic Church at two p.m., followed by a small private burial ceremony at an undisclosed location in Santa Barbara…”
There was a somber moment of silence from the reporter then she moved on to the next story on the teleprompter.
“How old?” He croaked out in a shocked whisper.
“What?” Richard asked quizzically.
“How…old?” Richard didn’t answer fast enough. “How old is the tape dammit!”
“Devon, two days man, at least two days…”
He let out a tortured bellow of rage that shook everything in the trailer. Turning, he spun with another long moan, slamming open the door. He stumbled down onto the hot Australian sand, eyes darting this way and that, unseeing. The startled faces of the crew stared in openmouthed shock. He turned left then right then left again, looking like a frantic animal trapped in the scope of a hunter.
With another bellow of tortured rage, he tore off the set and disappeared into the Australian wilderness.
*
Richard stepped down out of the trailer and watched him go. He didn’t follow, but nodded to one of the many guides on the set. When the native arrived he spoke softly explaining as much of the situation as he dared then gave his instructions. “Follow him, but leave him be. Just make sure he doesn’t get hurt.”
The aboriginal man nodded once, crisply, and spear in hand, trotted off at a sedate pace after the actor.
Richard found him as the sun was setting, hunkered down atop a large rock about half a mile from the set. Devon squatted, arms across his upraised knees and stared off into nothingness. His best friend was dressed in a form-fitting tank top, cargo pants and matching boots, and in that moment he looked exactly like the character of his new movie.
Richard plopped down next to his friend, leaned casually back on his hands and waited. He knew Devon well enough that, despite the hours that had passed, he’d talk when he was good and ready.
Sure enough, after what seemed an eternity, Devon’s deep voice rattled against the growing darkness. “I should have been there.”
He didn’t need to respond, but waited in companionable silence for him to go on.
“I should have been with her…when…before,”
Again Richard didn’t respond, just waited.
“I—I shouldn’t have let her leave…”
“She pushed you away, Devon,” he finally said. “She left you.”
“Because I let her!” Devon spun on him, bellowing his response. After a moment, his head drooped, his voice choked and angry. “Because I didn’t tell her how much…how much…how much.”
“How much you loved her?” Richard supplied helpfully.
Devon’s head lifted and he sat staring at the setting sun. “Yeah,” he finally managed. “Because I didn’t tell her how much she’d come to mean to me…because I didn’t tell her how much I wanted her to stay…because I didn’t tell her how much I loved her.”
Time passed slowly for Devon after that. He marked it only by the rising and setting of the sun, and the bottom of the bottle into which he poured himself each night when shooting was done. Not one to normally drink, he found he had a high tolerance and it was taking more and more to dull the guilt in his mind…and the pain in his heart.
As shooting finished each day, he locked himself in his trailer, bellowing angrily at anyone who dared to disturb him. At one point he even threw a bottle at Richard. It became an unspoken agreement between all too just leave him be as much as possible. He was grumpy and sullen, snapping at everyone for no reason whatsoever until finally the crew came to Richard and all but begged him to help snap Devon out of it.
A couple of days later, Richard opened the door to the trailer, breaking the flimsy lock with one twist. Devon was flopped across the couch at one end, an arm over his eyes and a half-empty bottle on his chest.
“So,” Richard said leaning against the kitchenette counter and crossing his arms over his wide chest and lifted a nail, inspecting it casually. “Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of your life?”
“Y…hhhep…” Devon slurred out slowly, moving only to lift the bottle to his lips and take a long swig of straight scotch.
“I see.”
Devon sat up on the couch, weaving drunkenly “No, you…don’t see,” he slurred, tears pooling on his lids. “You…you,” he hiccupped, “you don’t s—see…her…face every time you c-close your e—yes you d—don’t hear her l—laugh every time t—there’s s—silence. Y—you don’t hear her voice…talking to me…c—confessing things, her f—fears, her d—dreams, her…fantasies,” he slurred around several hiccups.
Richard moved, striding forward and snatching the half-empty bottle out of his hands. Turning in the small trailer, he poured it down the sink. Then he did something he never dreamed in his life that he’d do. With an open palm he reached out and slapped Devon hard across the face.
“By the gods, you are one sorry son of a bitch,” he muttered, throwing the bottle into the trash. “She’s gone, man, get over it and get on with your life. This…this,” He waved a hand around to encompass the trashed trailer. “This has got to stop, Devon. You’re killing yourself over something that you could no more control than your own breathing. She’s dead, Devon and I’m sorry that she is, but there’s nothing to be done for it. Pouring yourself into the bottom of a bottle every night for the rest of your life isn’t going to help anything. And it isn’t going to bring her back…”
Devon shot up off the small couch and grabbed Richard by the shirt. Pushing him hard, he lifted the larger man off his feet and slammed him bodily into the wall.
“You don’t understand!” he bellowed angrily, his face inches from Richard’s. “I failed her!” He added, fresh tears coursing down his cheeks, “I let her down!”
Just as quickly as he’d picked Richard up, he dropped him, slamming out of the trailer. With a drunken weave to his steps, he moved across the darkened set toward one of the many off road 4 x 4’s the crew used to get around. He wanted to be alone. He didn’t want Richard reminding him of his failure.
But Richard wasn’t about to let it go. Coming up behind him, he grabbed his arm and spun him around. Richard’s meaty fist landed dead on and knocked him off his feet. With a woof and a thud, he landed on his back in the sand, lip split and bleeding.
“Jesus Christ, son,” Richard muttered, shaking out his hand and squatting down next to him. “You’re a man, and as much as you’d like to think otherwise, you’re not a superhero. Men fail, my friend, men have feelings, and most of all, men, especially you,” he said, punctuating his words with a poke of his chest, “are bull-headed idiots.” Richard paused, a lopsided smile creasing his features. “Did it ever occur to you to think this thing through?”
He looked up at him in confusion, propping himself up on his elbows, wiping a hand across his split lip. “Huh?”
Richard rolled his eyes and helped him to his feet. “Come on, let’s get some coffee in you and talk about it.”
Chapter Eighteen
An hour later found them seated next to a campfire a hundred yards from the set. Devon had a large mug of black coffee in his hands and he stared into the fire as Richard spoke.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “And it just didn’t make any sense. I mean, ok, she almost gets blown up, but lives, right?”
He nodded silently.
“When she left you she was fine, right? I mean, she had a ways to go, but she was going to be fine, yes?”
Again he nodded.
“So what was the surgery for? What happened between the time she left you and the day she died? Did that thought ever occur to you?”
He lifted soulful eyes to his friend, his brow furrowing deeply.
Seeing the confusion still, Richard rolled his eyes and sat forward, ticking off the events with his meaty fingers. “Ok, let’s go back a bit and start at the beginning. You and she meet. She cusses you out, you send flowers, and she sends the script. You send her Jack.”
