NATHAN
“Nathan, do sit down. You know I can’t speak with you when you’re pacing about like that.”
Nathan came to a calm standstill in the middle of his mother’s grand living room, nothing but a crystal coffee table—a behemoth one at that—adorned with a vase of pink and red roses, two matching decorative bowls that served absolutely no purpose as far as he’d ever been able to tell, and an array of thick, glossy art books between them. The sparkling chandelier overhead cast both his mother and the pompous décor of the entire room, in all its ‘Ambassadorial Splendour’ glory, in a romantic glow that Nathan was currently finding grotesque.
Guinevere Cromwell looked small and skeletal, despite her flamboyant, feathery hat and crisp Chanel suit, both as rosy as the flowery centerpiece and peachy wallpaper boasting Old World charm all around them. She was challenging him to join her on one of the plush couches, her finely sculpted eyebrows arching questioningly up her brow.
If he obliged, the conversation he was reluctant to participate in would only drag out to torturous lengths so he straightened his spine, broadening the firm wall of his tuxedoed suit, planted his fists in the satiny pockets of his slacks, and gave his mother his full and undivided, albeit displeased, attention.
“You always were a stubborn child, weren’t you?” she scoffed with a dainty snort as she stripped her boney hands free of the white gloves she’d been wearing.
Mother always did like being literal with her idioms, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’d ‘taken her gloves off’ to instill a sense of fear in him. This time, however, the threat didn’t resonate. He wasn’t a young boy anymore. These days when she struck him, it hardly sent him across a room. If anything, it hurt her more than it did him, which was probably why Guinevere remained seated.
“Remember what they say about ‘apples’,” he countered, which amused her even less than his refusal to lower himself to her level, both physically and—whether she knew it or not—morally.
“Cromwell Corp is in trouble,” she launched into the issue at hand and reason she’d summoned him from the masquerade ball that was in full swing on the other side of the estate. “It has been for a long time.”
“You think that’s lost on me?”
A cloud of apprehension darkened her otherwise stark-green eyes. It was what she was known for—large eyes as green as a lagoon. In her heydays of gracing the high-society pages of glossy magazines and the Arts & Culture section of major newspapers, compliments to her beauty always mentioned her enchanting eyes, and even though she was clearly no longer the gorgeous waif she’d once been, at seventy-years one sharp look from those eyes could bring the most powerful men to their knees.
With the exception of Nathan Cromwell, of course. His familiarity with the beast inside the beauty had rendered him thoroughly immune.
But the darkness that had swept over her, the distinct droop of her finely painted lips, was concerning.
“There’s much you do not know,” she warned.
“And you could think of no better time to let me in on the dire straits of our company than during the Winter Ball?”
As soon as he said it, a sheet of icy rain slashed against the eastern windows.
Lifting her chin stoically, she reminded him, “Duke would’ve never denied me.”
Nathan’s late father and the man who had made a widow of Guinevere wouldn’t have denied his wife anything, that was the solid truth. But he’d been six feet under in a coffin made of sandalwood and lined with golden silk for the past thirty years. He’d pulled every trick in the book to be buried with his money. His funeral alone nearly sucked the Cromwell savings dry, leaving a young wife and her twelve-year old son to rebuild a Manhattan empire. Luckily, they hadn’t lost the Long Island estate, and in the interim, had been able to keep up appearances playing ‘Great Gatsby’ by throwing luxurious balls such as the one that Nathan was now very tardy from.
“Then come out with it please,” he prodded his mother as he gave his cufflinks some attention. He’d failed to fasten them properly, but more importantly, it was imperative to demonstrate to his mother that her concerns, whether they affected him or not, pained him or not to see her so disturbed, were of little consequence to him. It was the only way to keep her controlling tendencies at bay. “I haven’t got all night.”
“Of course you don’t,” was her snide retort, but she went on as if she finally understood how valuable this time was. “Years ago, I made a…” she trailed off in order to choose her words carefully, “risky investment.”
“All investments come with risks,” he assured her, reminding her of the same mantra he fed his clients on a daily basis whenever they balked about their unsteady stock portfolios.
“Not like this one.”
It was the tone of her voice that had gripped his attention.
“I used family money to jumpstart the project,” she went on to explain as if this tidbit would somehow exonerate or at least balance out the ‘bad news’ to come. “But after your father’s death…”
…and all the literal fortune that had been pissed away as a result, thought Nathan.
“I had to keep it going with a few Cromwell Corp payments.”
“We can work all of this out later, Mother,” he said impatiently as soon as the muffled sounds of the Winter Ball billowed through the estate. He loved how sound carried, how it seemed to beckon him as if his presence was not only requested, but required, in order for his guests—they numbered in the hundreds—to have a truly magical time.
“We can and we will,” she agreed. “But I need you to know, right away, that we’re under investigation.”
“What?”
“The ‘risk’ I mentioned…?”
“Wasn’t a legal one,” he supplied as he forcefully suppressed the rage that had surged through his chest. “Was it illegal from the start or did it become that way?”
Her lack of a reply told him she’d gone into the deal with lagoon-green, enchanting eyes wide open.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he spat, taking another wide lap around the grand living room. “What did you invest in?”
“It wasn’t just me,” she pleaded. “Duke was on board as well.”
“Blaming a dead man won’t fix this.”
“I’m aware,” she snapped. “It was a military venture.”
“What, investing in arms dealing?” he guessed, his fast working mind already hunting for a positive way to spin this… but to who? “Are we being investigated by the FBI?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted in a small voice as she plucked her designer purse from behind her and presented what appeared to be a bug from inside. The small, round recording device came with a three-inch wire. “I found it in my office at Cromwell Corp, in the back of the lap drawer of my desk. Whoever’s been listening on the other end, they’ve heard not only my telephone conversations, but—”
“The private ones you’ve conducted in your office,” he supplied, “and I assume you’ve had incriminating conversations in both respects.”
She scowled and pointed out, “If I’d had incriminating conversations, I’d be in handcuffs by now.”
This was too big to tackle in the span of what should’ve been a fifteen-minute detour from the Winter Ball. It wasn’t just the ball he was missing, it was her.
Nathan had a secret or two of his own and there was nothing illegal about it… on paper, so long as the wrong minds didn’t pry.
“We’ll discuss this tomorrow,” he informed her, riding another swell of rage that surged thanks to the way she was staring up at him.
It was as if she resented and depended on him at the same time—depended on Nathan to clean up her messes, she was pretty good at making them all on her own. But she’d never stepped in anything that stank this much.
An illegal military venture?
A splitting headache cracked through his skull just thinking about it.
“Tomorrow,” he told her firmly then, having crossed to the stately double-doors, he threw them open and stalked down the long, desolate, marble corridor with nothing but a mysterious woman on his mind, leaving Guinevere to fret in the grotesque darkness of her magnificent home like a fallen queen.
Nathan didn’t have much of a plan for recognizing her. It was, after all, a masquerade ball he’d arranged for her to come to. He’d seen her photo only, never her face in person. But tonight, her corn-fed, mid-western good-looks would be hidden behind a satin mask, only her sky-blue eyes peering out. The Winter Ball was black-tie, but the ladies had been encouraged to wear only white, while the men dressed in traditional tuxedos.
When he reached the long bar that spanned the length of the eastern wall of the grand ballroom, the large, bay windows behind it displaying a breathtaking view of the seaside bathed in moonlight and the strung, white lights of the patio where guests had spilled out to mingle in the freezing cold over brandy and shared cigarettes, he began scanning the ballroom for a purple satin mask and tight white dress. He knew she was blonde, thanks to her picture; knew her legs were long and toned, her lips as plump as her ass, but it still wouldn’t be easy to pick her out in a sea of dancing debauchery.
Behind him, the bartender offered, “Lagavulin 25 on the rocks, Sir.”
It was a two-thousand-dollar bottle of his favorite scotch and though he rarely indulged, after the conversation he’d had with his mother Nathan had no plans of stopping himself from drinking the whole bottle, one smooth glass at a time.
He felt his mouth tug into a wry grin at the thought but only because his imagination had taken over. As he tasted the top-shelf scotch and eyed the gyrating crowd, visions of Portia—the woman he’d bought, sight unseen, for the next year of both their lives—swirled through his domineering mind.
He imagined Portia’s long legs wrapped around his shoulders, the scent of her body filling his nostrils. Would her sweet taste compliment the leathery finish of his single malt? How would her bare, supple breasts feel in his large hands? How would she fare being tied up? Would she resist or surrender? Or would she yield an erotic combination, just the way he liked it, squirming from both pleasure and pain?
The broker at The Infidelity Corporation, a handsome woman by the name of Karen Flores, had assured him that ‘Portia’ would be the best match for his proclivities. She’d talked the young woman up and shown Nathan an array of photographs—some naughty, others nice. He’d been skeptical of those girl-next-door images, even when they’d been dressed up in whips and chains. The eyes never lied. It was a rule he’d lived by his entire life. He had always been able to see the monster in his mother, the beast that lurked behind those lagoon-green eyes. And Portia’s eyes in those glossy prints had been no less revealing. Except they hadn’t revealed an edge of darkness, only a brightness of spirit that Nathan was hesitant to corrupt.
When he’d questioned Karen, however, the broker had convinced him that Portia had a talent for being whoever a man wanted her to be.
Nathan had bought women before, not through Infidelity and not for longer than one night, oftentimes only an hour, and he wasn’t naïve. A woman could boast anything. It wasn’t until you got her into a bedroom that you discovered what she was truly made of.
But he’d tired of prostitutes. They tended to be fragile and fearful, no matter how expensive their price tag. Many had bolted for the door when they’d seen his ‘private playroom’. He was tired of fucking around with so-called pros who, in order to book the job, insisted they could fulfill his needs, but then fell radically short in the moment.
The Infidelity Corporation, or more specifically the discrete service they provided, had sounded like an answer when a business associate of his—a man who had the same proclivities as Nathan, Lennox Demetri—had slipped him the name of the clandestine establishment.
A year was a hell of a long time, though…
…but then again, there were cons to every pro and most by-the-book ‘pros’ tended to be skilled cons themselves…mitigating investment risk was his forte and signing a contract that stated ‘Portia’, no last name, would belong to him for the next twelve months had been the best option on the table.
So, where was she?
As soon as he lifted his eyes, having mulled over the concerning conversation he’d had with his mother and fantasizing about all the ways in which he could erase it from his mind—if only temporarily—by burying himself into the sexual folds of an innocent girl’s untapped body, Nathan saw the purple satin mask, its golden edges and jeweled brow, and the sky-blue eyes behind it.
She was staring right at him from the outskirts of dancing guests.
She lifted her chin confidently, red painted lips parting with recognition, and boldly joined him at the crowded bar, the white dress she wore as slinky as sin and flowing dangerously with her every step.
“Nathan Cromwell,” she smiled, exuding the kind of control and gravity he wouldn’t have expected from the doe-eyed, mid-westerner he’d studied in the photos Karen Flores had provided. “The man without a mask.”
It was the one identifier he’d given—he would be the lone gentleman without a mask at the masquerade—and yet, broadly speaking, she didn’t have the slightest clue as to how wrong that statement was.
Nathan wore many masks…