elevator flashes behind my eyes. The one I’m certain was Franco. The horrific look on his face when the elevator doors closed, as if he suddenly realized something. I didn’t recall having seen him leave.
The first tendrils of doubt crawl over the back of my neck. “Why are you still here, then?”
“It doesn’t matter. And whether you believe me, or not, I don’t give a shit. But my advice? Pay closer attention.”
Chapter 38
Lucian
Seven years ago …
Hunched over paperwork strewn across my desk, I cup my face in my hands, mentally trying to block out the screams of my month-old son, Roark, two rooms down. The minutes of the last investors’ meeting are my only prep for the report I’m supposed to present to my father later today, and I’m suddenly wishing I’d made the drive to Gloucester, for the peace and quiet of my office there.
The high-pitched squeal is more than I can take, and I slam my pen onto the desk and push up from my chair. Whatever the hell nanny my mother hired when he was first born must be deaf not to hear those goddamn screams.
“Anna!” I growl, stepping out into the hallway.
A minute later, she still hasn’t appeared, or answered me.
“Anna!”
Still nothing but the incessant wailing from his nursery that, I have no doubt, was intentionally set up in the same hallway, just to piss me off.
I storm down the corridor to the door where the screaming is loudest, and slam through. “Anna!”
Instead of the nanny, I find Amelia sitting in a rocking chair, staring off with her head tipped to the side. She doesn’t make any effort to calm the baby, doesn’t bother to acknowledge me when I enter the room, either.
No sign of the nanny we’ve assuredly paid handsomely to keep this kid quiet. “Where’s Anna?”
At first, I don’t think my voice can reach her over the sound of Roark’s crying, but Amelia lifts her eyes to mine. How much she’s changed over the last few weeks. The bright young girl, once vibrant and witty, now wears the dark circles of depression and misery. Something I refuse to take credit for. “She didn’t come in today. Had some … errand to run.” Every word arrives as if she’s out of breath and weak, hardly audible over those wretched screams.
“Are you going to quiet him, or let him scream all hours of the day and night? I have an important meeting I’m trying to prepare for.”
Her gaze slides toward the cradle, where Roark still hasn’t quieted. Tears fill her eyes as she shakes her head, her bottom lip quivering. “I can’t.”
My mother says it’s post-partum depression, but I can’t stand it, just the same. She does nothing for him. Won’t even hold him. Why she didn’t arrange to have a backup nanny is beyond me.
A screech echoes through the nursery, and Roark almost sounds in pain, his wail shaky and tormented.
Groaning with frustration, I cross the room to his cradle, and find him lying in a pile of blankets, wearing nothing but a diaper. His naked body is red from crying, his face scrunched with agony, as he trembles like he’s been hit with a stun gun.
I’ve not held him once since his birth, mostly because I’m not experienced in holding babies and they tend to make me uncomfortable. But also because a part of me can’t help but think this child was the scheming of both my mother and Amelia. A means of roping me into a relationship with a woman I didn’t love.
Rubbing my hand over my head, I screw my eyes closed, the sound of his screams innervating some part of my brain that makes me want to throttle something. Breathing hard through my nose to calm the rage, I look down at his tiny hand, which shakes with his cries. Before I can stop myself, I reach out to touch it, drawing back my hand on finding him ice cold.
Jesus.
I pull the blanket up around him, covering his hand that remains propped beneath it, and with his shivering, the blanket covers his face. Seconds tick by as I stare down, his cries hysterical now, his small form squirming beneath the blanket. For the briefest moment, I wonder if it’s better to spare this child from a life of parents who didn’t want him. To let him suffocate now, rather than watch him suffer a lifetime of slow and painful asphyxiation.
Instead, I tuck the blanket under his chin, and exhale a breath