____________

Drake

 

 

 

Guilt was a permanent fixture in my chest. It had taken up root, piercing its blackened thorny branches into every inch of my soul. I clenched and unclenched my hand, the one I found wrapped around her wrist. How could I have done that to her?

How?

Because as hard as you try not to be, you are just like him.

It was late at night. I sat in an armchair in the den on the first floor, a masculine room of deep green and wood, and rubbed my face. It’d been a day since I attacked her in the dining room and I hadn’t seen Noriko. Truth was, I was hiding from her. I returned home long after she’d finished dinner and had slept in one of the guest rooms last night so I didn’t have to walk past her door.

I should go to her. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I was terrified of what I would find. That any affection for me was gone. That all that was left was the rubble of the happiness I destroyed.

My eyes came to rest upon the framed picture—my only framed picture—on the mantle. She was smiling, almost laughing. I had taken that picture in Giverny in Monet’s garden. She had been lost in her painting, her features relaxed, her wrist flicking, sometimes wildly, other times moving as gracefully as if she was dancing. I felt invisible and yet honored to witness such an intimate thing. She had been completely immersed—God, and so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself—she hadn’t noticed when I slid my camera out of the bag I brought and took a candid shot.

I’d brought my old camera with me that day, one I hadn’t used in years. I was surprised when it still worked. I used to carry it around with me like a breastplate when I was a teenager.

The world looked simple through the lens of a camera. If I could fit everything into an ordered rectangle, I could somehow make sense of it.

That day in Monet’s garden, the world made sense.

Now…

Someone knocked on my door. Noriko. She’d found me. Twin vines of hope and fear wound around my chest. Did she miss me? Did she crave me like I did her? Is she here to pull me into my bed and into her body? Had she forgiven me?

I cleared my throat and called out for her to come in.

It was Loretta instead. My shoulders deflated and I turned back to the picture of my beautiful wife, distant now, like a dream.

“You don’t look very happy,” Loretta said. It was such an obvious statement I would have laughed if I’d had the energy.

“Didn’t sleep well.” I was lying to no one. Both Loretta and I knew the real reason behind my morose mood. The walls of the dining room weren’t that thick. My staff here weren’t stupid.

“I’m afraid I only bring more…difficult news.”

My eyes snapped to hers. There was worry in her gray, wrinkled eyes. Worry and…pity. My stomach tightened. What now?

She reached into the front pocket of her apron. “I found the empty packet in her trash can when I was emptying it earlier today. She tried to hide it under used tissues…” Loretta gingerly placed an empty plastic strip on my desk. “I’m sorry, Drake.”

Birth control pills.

I was going to be sick.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. Her voice had gone all fuzzy in my ears as my mind wrapped around this latest development.

The “unproductive wife” clause. The one my lawyer insisted we put into the marriage contract to protect me. How ironic. Noriko was using it to make sure she got out of our marriage scot-free at the end of the year.

She didn’t want to stay with me.

She was never going to stay with me. No matter what I did.

“Get out.”

Loretta’s eyes widened. “Drake, please, think about what you’re going to do before you do it.”

My eyes snapped up to hers, my vision bleeding red on the edges. If she didn’t get out right now… “Get. The fuck. Out.”

Loretta nodded and rushed out of the den.

I stood, my legs wobbling like I was drunk. I turned to the blank wall beside me, the empty wall mocking me, a mirror of my wretched heart.

I thought she…

I just wanted…

But we…

My fist slammed into the wall. I punched it again and again, warm blood coating my knuckles as the skin split, plaster cracking in a shower of dust. The pain in my knuckles was lost under the roaring pain of my rage.

Why was I cursed? Why was I still alone?

I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Business School. I had an MBA from Yale. I turned my father’s million-dollar company into a billion dollar one. I was the third richest man in America, for fuck’s sake. I had enough power and reach to affect this country’s economy. To affect its policies. I was envied by millions. Millions more wanted to be me.

But it wasn’t enough for her.

I wasn’t enough.

Why was it never enough?

Why was I never enough?

A glaring ring cried out, cutting through my rage. I spun, glaring at the offending phone, blood dripping from my knuckles. It was my cell phone, not the office phone, vibrating across the side table. I frowned.

A private number.

It must be work. Work I could deal with. Work would be a temporary reprieve from my wreck of a marriage and my sham of a wife.

I wiped the back of my hand against my pants and snatched up the phone. “What?”

“Mr. Blackwell.” The unfamiliar accented voice made me frown. Was this another goddamn reporter? How did he get this number? I took pains to ensure only a select few had it.

“Who is this?”

“You asked me to call you if there was any news…from Japan.”

My skin prickled. This was the private investigator, local to Shibetsu, Noriko’s home town. “I did.”

“I’m afraid the news is not good…”