my life by far. More than arranging extra security for the more trusting of my siblings. More than running my business. More, even, than fucking with the Constantines. Other than Eva, only one person has witnessed it. People have come close. Once, at one of our regular casino nights, Lucian slung his arm around my shoulders so hard I turned the table over. The single convenience, really, is that this particular pain reads as anger. People see what they expect to see.
Make no mistake, I was fucking furious about it for years. Even the Beast of Bishop’s Landing can’t maintain constant rage, however. Giving myself a stroke wouldn’t help the situation unless it killed me.
The bigger bird follows the smaller one up to the high branch, then both of them take flight. They loop around the branch and sail away.
My courtyard is now as empty as I feel. I’ve spent my entire adult life cultivating my reputation as a fanged beast and exacting revenge. Now I have it. I’m not much for high expectations but I thought there would be more. More triumph. More relief. A full circle is supposed to give you a sense of completion. I don’t sense anything, other than a numb dejection.
Haley didn’t shy away from the pain. The initial sight of my skin shocked her. Of course it did. She’s a good girl, and good girls like Haley don’t live in a world where such fucked-up things happen to people. Her whole heart leaped into her eyes. Not pity. She wanted to understand, and I wanted to let her. I couldn’t do it. Not until the night she sat next to me, her hands so careful not to touch anywhere that might hurt me. Haley. Worried about hurting me.
She’s an impossibility. An oxymoron. A good Constantine shouldn’t exist. A good Constantine who looks at me with anything other than terror in her eyes is practically a mythological creature. She begged me not to leave her in that SUV. Tried to follow me out. Tried to stay with me.
In other words, she’s a miracle. Godsent. I don’t know what joke God thinks he's made, sending her to me. Dangling her in front of me, really, and then snatching her away. I can respect it. It's the kind of cruel bastard thing I would do. Let a person worship at the altar of sweetness, then destroy the altar.
I rub both hands over my face and turn back to the desk. In the most enormous oversight of my life, I didn't make any plans for what I would do after I whipped the haughtiness out of Caroline. There's no to-do list for the aftermath.
Well—there's a short one. I open the wide top drawer of my desk and take out the portfolio that's been resting there since the night Phillip Constantine met me with a heartbreaking hope in his eyes. Inside the portfolio, the contract remains untouched. I take the slim bundle of papers from the inside pocket and flip through them. In a sense, I did the same thing to Phillip Constantine as has happened to me. I teased him with the world and then I took it away.
I lived up to my reputation as a heartless bastard. No one was let down on that account.
The paper goes down without a fight. I tear it into pieces, ripping Phillip's signature in half. This paperwork will never be filed in a way that makes it official or enforceable. I don't do it for Caroline. No. It's Haley's tear-bright eyes I think of. The way she sat up so straight and brave in that empty chair across from me. The way she knew how I was, knew what I could do, and came anyway. She was the virgin sacrifice who offered herself up to the devil. Had she been born in any other time, they would have called her a saint.
Saint Haley would have been the sweetest, filthiest one in history.
I go over to the fire and watch the remains of the contract burn. The corners curl in first, toasting into a pleasant brown before black ash spreads from the center and devours them.
Haley’s gone.
I sent her home.
The house feels like a series of shallow breaths. I don’t keep a large staff. Mrs. Page and Gerard each supervise their own small teams. Hers include the kitchen and housekeeping, and his include security and grounds management. There are rarely more than twelve people, including myself, on the property at any given