Page 69 of Beautiful Rush
Because I had no choice.
After he left, I poured the rest of my whiskey down the drain and loaded our glasses in the dishwasher. Then I stared at the bottle of whiskey on my kitchen counter. The label taunted me. It reminded me of my father so I stowed the bottle in the cupboard where I wouldn’t have to see it. Killian liked whiskey and I would give it to him, but then I’d have to explain where I got it. So yeah, it was relegated to the cupboard, along with my secrets.
As I brushed my teeth, I wondered why I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of having dinner with Anthony tomorrow night. I would have thought I’d be thrilled to see him again, but I felt the opposite, partly because it felt like a dirty secret. Partly because of something I couldn’t fully identify. Just a bad feeling that had taken hold of me and I couldn’t shake off. I wrapped my hand around the cross on my neck and closed my eyes. I saw Sasha’s face so clearly. His blue eyes and unruly sun-bleached blond hair, his bronzed skin covered in ink. He wasn’t religious but most of his tattoos were. When he gave me his cross, he had it tattooed on his chest.
“Why did you always have to act like such an asshole, Sasha?” I whispered. “I hate you for leaving me. Were you right about Anthony?”
“He’s just another one of your father’s goons,” Sasha said. We were floating in his marble swimming pool, the frenetic beat of “The Vortex” by Hadoueken! thumping from the surround sound speakers. Sasha was lounging on an inflatable sofa, smoking a blunt. I was on the inflatable that looked like Mick Jagger’s lips, sans the blunt, trailing my hand through the crystal-clear blue water. “There’s nothing special about Anthony. He’s unoriginal and he doesn’t have the brains or the backbone to rise above his current station. Which is lower than the dirt on my boots. He’s a cockroach. One of these days I’m going to squash him.” Sasha sang the chorus of “La Cucaracha” and laughed maniacally like the madman he was.
“He’s not like the others,” I insisted. I was always defending Anthony to Sasha. I didn’t know why I bothered. “My father trusts him. And he’s good to me.”
“Your father trusts no one. He tolerates Anthony. There’s a difference, grasshopper.”
I rolled my eyes. Sasha was in one of his superior moods. He slid his aviators down his nose and eyed me over the rims. “Don’t mistake him for a friend. I’m your only true friend and I’m an asshole so where does that leave you?”
Having delivered his message, the Prince of Miami leaned back against the arm of his inflatable sofa and smoked his blunt. I got out of the pool and slipped a cotton tank dress over my wet bikini, stuffed my feet in my flip flops, and walked away without saying goodbye. Sasha and I never said goodbye or hello. We never apologized for anything either. Not even when we should have.
“Come back later for a fuck.”
I gave him the finger. He laughed. “You hate it when I’m right. Too bad for you I’m always right.”
21
Keira
“Miss Shaughnessy, package for you. Hang on a sec,” the guy on the desk said as I walked into the lobby after work.
Gus returned from the storage closet where they stowed the packages and handed me a hanging bag and a shoebox. My stomach churned as I took them from him and saw the Versace logo on the bag and Louboutin on the shoebox. There was only one person who would have had these delivered to me. “Thanks, Gus.”
“No problem.”
When I got inside my apartment, I set the shoebox on the coffee table and unzipped the hanger bag. I stared at the Versace dress. Midnight blue silk trimmed in black. I didn’t have to check the size on the label to know it would fit me perfectly. I lowered myself to the sofa and pulled the shoebox into my lap. Taking off the lid, I read the note nestled in the tissue paper: Looking forward to seeing you in this dress tonight. A. xx
I read the note five times, searching for a clue as to why he had felt the need to buy me a designer dress and shoes. Anthony used to know everything about me. My favorite color. My dress and shoe size. My favorite food. He knew I used to be scared of the dark. That I wore braces from the age of twelve to fourteen. When I sideswiped a concrete pillar in a parking garage, scratching the paint on my dad’s Jaguar, he’d taken care of it for me, and my father was none the wiser.
Anthony was my father’s ‘fixer.’ He could make anything go away. Dead bodies never got found. Cars were restored to factory condition. And now he was sending me designer clothes and taking me to dinner.
I tossed the box onto the coffee table and slunk down on the sofa, dread pooling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I had never looked at Anthony as a man. Only as my father’s loyal soldier. My bodyguard. The man who fixed all my screw-ups and never breathed a word of it.
When he had handed me that flash drive, I had asked him why he would do that.
“You want your freedom and I want to be the man to give it to you.”
At the time, I thought his gesture was noble. That he would risk his own neck to give me something I had always wanted. My freedom. My independence. The key to unlock the gilded cage my father kept me in. Now, I got the feeling that it was time to pay the piper.
Was Anthony trying to be like my father? The whiskey he brought over last night, the expensive tailored suit and white dress shirt he wore, the designer goods delivered to my door with the expectation that I would jump to do his bidding.
“Wear the dress I bought you for your birthday, Maggie. With the sapphire earrings.”
I am not my mother.
I am not my mother.
I am not my mother.
Maybe Anthony had just wanted to do something nice for me. Maybe he thought I’d appreciate a designer dress and shoes. But that sinking feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away. He knew I’d never cared about those things. Had never wanted the gifts my father lavished on me. Maybe that made me sound like a spoiled princess, but after I had found out where the money came from to buy those gifts, I had wanted no part of it.
Anthony had an ulterior motive. I just wasn’t sure what that was yet or what part he expected me to play.
