Page 8 of Taming the Beast (Fairy Tales of New York)

“Wallowing?”

“Well, what else would you call it? I get the guilt, Seb, really I do. But it’s been thirteen years and it was an accident. Just a tragic accident. You weren’t to blame. No one was. So don’t you think it’s time you stopped punishing yourself? And Zelda? Because it’s not fair. It never was.”

“You need to leave,” said Seb. “Now. And don’t think I’m above throwing you out.”

Long heavy silent seconds ticked by, and all out of words, all Mercy could do was stare at him, note the rigidity visible in every line on his face, every inch of his body and feel her heart plummet to her feet.

She’d failed. Of course she had. What had she expected? That he’d suddenly see the light and fall to his knees in grati

tude that she’d saved his soul? He had a reputation for being intransigent. Stubborn and resolute. And why would she succeed when Zelda hadn’t? She’d been an idiot coming here. There was no getting through to him. There really wasn’t. He was as implacable as rock and as cold as ice. She couldn’t appeal to his better nature because he didn’t have one. He was a lost cause who had no soul and he’d never change because he didn’t want to.

Which meant that she was wasting her time here.

And so was Zelda.

“Fine,” she said, fairly overflowing with frustration, disappointment and defeat as she got to her feet. “I’ll go. And you can carry on sticking your cowardly head in the sand if you want to. It’s your loss. And I’d have thought you’d lost quite enough already, but what do I know? You are so lucky to have her, Seb. I would have killed for a sibling. It makes me sick to see you squandering yours, so you can rot in this mausoleum of a mansion for all I care. Zelda’s better off without you anyway. She has her friends. She’ll be fine.”

*

The slam of his door echoed throughout the apartment, but Seb barely heard it above the incandescent fury that was now smashing apart the ice inside him and sweeping through him as Mercy’s words reverberated round his head.

How dare she?

How fucking dare she?

Who the hell did she think she was, coming in here, sitting on his sofa and invading his space while she looked at him, psychoanalyzed him and judged him? What gave her the bloody right to meddle like that and stir up things that were best left well alone?

Did she seriously think he didn’t know how messed up he was on practically every damn front? Nor why? Of course he knew. His parents had died and it had been his fault.

They’d been living in London at the time, where his father had been the US ambassador. Things for him back then had been good – he’d had friends and fun and life had been a breeze. At eighteen and about to go up to Cambridge, he’d had the world at his feet.

Until that horrendous, devastating night.

His parents had had a dinner out of town. At a loose end for a change and so stupidly proud that he’d just gotten his licence, he’d offered to drive them. On the way a truck swerved across the freeway, crashed through the median strip and hit them side on. His parents had been killed on impact. He’d survived.

His physical injuries had been bad. Battered and bruised, he’d broken three ribs and suffered horrendous gashes as a result of shattered glass and twisted jagged metal, but he’d recovered from those soon enough. Emotionally, however, he’d remained a wreck, and the external scars he eventually bore were nothing compared to his internal ones.

How many times had he wished he hadn’t offered to drive that night? And how often had he wished he’d driven more carefully, and crucially, more slowly?

But he hadn’t, and because he hadn’t, because he’d been driving at a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit, their car had been right in the middle of the accident instead of way behind it.

Knowing that it had been avoidable he’d held himself entirely to blame. He’d ripped his family apart and the guilt had been overwhelming, crushing and agonizing. He’d been utterly lost and he hadn’t had a clue how to cope with what he’d done.

Then there’d been Zelda.

Overnight he’d become responsible for a grieving thirteen-year-old girl, and he’d had even less of an idea what to do with her. How could he possibly comfort her when her desolation, her despair and her tears, so many tears, were all because of him? Why would she even want him to? How could she bear to live in the same house as him? To even look at him?

It broke his heart and tore at the very fiber of his being to witness the depth of her sadness but what could he say? What could he do? He didn’t know so he said, and did, nothing.

For days after the funeral he and Zelda had rattled round their aunt’s house in London like ghosts. Helpless, Seb had been unable to function until the overwhelming grief, the unbearable weight of guilt and the crushing responsibility of his sister simply became too much and he just sort of shut down.

At least it meant he could begin to operate again on a practical level. He sent his sister away to her first boarding school. He was in no place to look after her. He was in no place to do anything, except to enlist in the French Foreign Legion where he intended to push himself to extremes, to see how much he could take before he couldn’t.

And that had worked too. He’d had to request special permission for leave to deal with Zel, who’d gotten herself expelled from every school he’d sent her to, but other than those minor irritating blips, he immersed himself in army life. It was brutally tough and just what he needed. Everyone had secrets in the Legion. No one asked any questions. He could be anyone he wanted to be and he chose to be someone else. His past became a blur. The accident, his sister, the Madison fortune, the Foundation, the houses, the responsibilities, all pushed back into the recesses of his mind, forgotten about, granting him the escape and absolution he craved.

Until the day he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had come out the hero he didn’t deserve to be. He’d been lauded, feted, admired – misguidedly, of course, but then no one knew what a fraud he was. They’d tried to give him a medal but he’d declined it, and stuck it out for another couple of years, until unable to stand the continued unwanted, unmerited attention, he’d left with the aim of taking up the reins of the Madison Foundation, as if dedicating himself to running the philanthropic side of his family’s considerable operation might somehow atone for what he’d done.

As for what had become of his sister, well, since he hadn’t kept tabs on her, he’d hardly known. When he returned to New York, thanks to the media’s rabid interest in her modelling career which was impossible to avoid however hard he tried, he learned that on leaving the Swiss finishing school he’d sent her to after she’d been expelled for stealing that wine at St. John’s, she’d wrecked merry hell all across Europe, but that was about it. By that time she’d become a virtual stranger to him, careening further and further off the rails until she’d gone into rehab.

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