Author: Tiffany Reisz

Griffin slid Michael his phone. Michael picked it up and studied the screen. It took a minute to wrap his mind around what he was looking at.

Michael breathed one word in response.

“Fuck.”

14

Suzanne wandered around Father Stearns’s living room while he excused himself to change. Such a beautiful home…a stone fireplace, hundreds of leather-bound books and the most beautiful grand piano she’d ever seen. On top of the piano sat a book of John Donne poetry. Opening the book to a page marked by an ancient embroidered bookmark, she read:

Enter these armes, for since thou thoughtst it best,

Not to dreame all my dreame, let’s do the rest.

“I’m allowed to read John Donne,” came Father Stearns’s voice from behind her. “He was a priest.”

“An Anglican priest who wrote anti-Catholic screeds,” she reminded him.

“I don’t take it personally.”

Suzanne smiled nervously as Father Stearns took the book from her and sat it back on top of the piano. He’d showered, obviously—his blond hair looked darker wet—and wore his clericals once more. Damn. She really liked looking at his throat.

“You play?” She pointed at the piano.

“I could play piano before I even learned English. My mother taught me. “

“Your Danish mother?”

Father Stearns gestured to an armchair and he took one opposite her. The sun had set and only one small lamp cast its low light around the room.

“My mother was eighteen years old when she came to the United States. A music scholarship to a conservatory in New Hampshire. The scholarship only covered tuition. So she took a position as a nanny in my father’s house. His wife had just given birth to a daughter.”

“Your sister Elizabeth, right?”

“Yes. My father’s wife had a difficult pregnancy, a difficult birth. After Elizabeth, she could have no more children. During her recovery, my mother became a mother to Elizabeth.”

“And caught your father’s eye?” Suzanne asked, smiling. She could see where this was going.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Father Stearns did not smile.

Suzanne’s smile died as the subtle inflection on the word unfortunately told her all.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“My father was a monster. I don’t use the word lightly. His anger over his wife’s inability to give him more children…he took it out on my mother. He raped her repeatedly until she conceived. She lived as a hostage as he threatened to hurt Elizabeth if she told anyone or ran away.”

Suzanne covered her mouth with her hand.

“I was born ten months after she came to live with my father. The doctor who delivered me told me years later he’d never seen anything like it…a young woman in agony giving birth in utter silence. She didn’t want to scream. My father would have enjoyed that too much.”

“He was a sadist?”

Slowly Father Stearns nodded.

“I was born shortly after midnight on December 21st. She named me Søren after her grandfather. The doctor wrote that on the original birth certificate that he hid from my father. The official birth certificate reads Marcus Lennox Stearns. Marcus was my father’s name. That is why I far prefer to be called anything but that.”

Suzanne said nothing at first.

“December 21st,” she repeated. “The longest night of the year.”

“It was the longest night of my mother’s life, she once confessed to me. Although I was a child of rape, she loved me. She remained in the home of her rapist to care for me. My father wanted to raise me as his child, his and his wife’s. He might never have another son to inherit the family name and wealth. When he deemed me old enough, he sent me to school in England. She returned to Denmark and spent years trying to find me. My father had amassed incredible wealth and power by then. She told no one of what happened to her.”

Suzanne stood up and walked over to the cold fireplace. Told no one…

“My brother Adam,” she began and took a deep breath. “He loved the Church. Altar boy at age ten…he’d already decided he wanted to be a priest.”

She turned back and met Father Stearns’s eyes. He said nothing, only nodded for her to go on.

“We found out after he shot himself in the head at age twenty-eight…the note said he’d been raped by our priest. Repeatedly, for years. The Catholic Church had amassed such wealth and power…” she quoted Father Stearns. “He told no one, either.”

Father Stearns came to her. He laid his hand gently on her face and she saw her tear trickle over his fingers.

“Because he committed suicide, the church denied him Catholic burial. Fucking Catholic Church,” she said, swallowing what felt like a rock.

“Suzanne, I’m so sorry.” Father Stearns gently stroked her cheek with his thumb.

“You just called me Suzanne, not Ms. Kanter.”

He smiled.

“I did.”

“What do I call you then?”

“The children at church have called me Father S for years. Less intimidating than Father Stearns, I suppose. Those closest to me, those who truly know me, call me Søren.”

“I’d like to know you…Søren.”

“You’re starting to,” he said, moving away and sitting in the chair again.

“Can I ask what Nora Sutherlin calls you?” She sat back down and pulled her legs in. She stared at him from over her knee.

“Eleanor calls me every name in the book,” he said and they both laughed. “But mostly Søren. She says my name is appropriately pretentious.”

“I can’t believe she said that to you. Seriously, I’ve met four-star generals and they’ve got nothing on you for intimidation.”

“Eleanor is a fearless woman, always has been.”

“You speak of her very fondly. Don’t tell me you’re not close.”

“We are close. She had a nasty run-in with the law at age fifteen. The judge had me supervise her community service. Her parents had little to do with her after that. I suppose you could say I had to become her father.”

“Are you proud of the way she’s turned out?” Suzanne asked, certain of the answer. Erotica writer, dominatrix…all-around bad girl.

“I couldn’t begin to be more proud of her. Her joie de vivre, her intelligence, her strength…we should all turn out as well as she.”

“Strong, is she?” Suzanne had seen pictures of Nora Sutherlin—little slip of a thing.

“Strong enough even I can be weak around her.”

Suzanne grinned.

“You weak? I think I’d like to see that.”

Søren turned his eyes to her and gave her the coldest, hardest, steeliest stare she’d ever seen. Her blood went cold, her hands went numb, her heart fluttered.

“I assure you,” he said with quiet menace, “you would not.”

Suzanne wanted to flinch, to hide, to turn away, to run…but something held her there, something kept her from running. Yes, he intimidated the hell out of her. But beyond that stone wall that was Father Stearns, she caught a glimpse of something else, someone else that lived behind that pristine collar. She had to see him, had to know him.

“Tell me more about Eleanor,” she said, somehow intuiting that to know her would be to know him. “Nothing secret. Nothing personal. Just about her. What’s she like?”

“What is Eleanor like?” He nearly laughed the question. “You might as well ask me what God is like. She’s not God, but she’s nearly as difficult to explain. It could take all night.”

Suzanne sat back in the chair and studied him…his aquiline nose, his strong masculine jaw, those strangely sculpted lips. Her eyes moved to his hands. A pianist’s hands, graceful, agile, precise. What would they feel like on her…in her? She did want to see him weak. She wanted to see him any way she could.

“I have all night.”

* * *

Outside of Sin Tax, Nora grabbed a cab and gave the driver an address in Manhattan.

“You sure about that?” the driver asked. “That’s no—”

“Just go,” Nora ordered and the driver promptly shut up. In a few minutes they pulled up to a black-and-white three-story town house. Nora threw money into the front of the cab and got out without a word. She raced up the front steps and through the doors. At once four rottweilers charged at her. “Shh…down, kids.”

All four dogs whimpered and sat on their hind legs at her words. Usually she took the time to play with the dogs, who had a fearsome reputation but a deep love of affection. Nora headed up to the third floor and down the hallway. At the end of the hall she opened the door to Kingsley’s private office.

Files…she needed files. Nora scanned the office. So many filing cabinets. She hardly knew where to begin.

She opened the top drawer of the first cabinet and found rows of files neatly labeled with names—last name, comma, first name and a number. In the third cabinet in the second drawer from the bottom, she found Railey, Wesley (John), 1312. Nora flipped the folder open.

“God fucking dammit.” She closed the folder, slammed the drawer and leaned against the heavy ebony wood of the cabinet. She’d forgotten Kingsley encoded all his files. No, she corrected, Kingsley and Juliette encoded his files. And Juliette, Kingsley’s beautiful Haitian secretary, loved doing anything she could to piss her boss off. That would certainly include helping Nora decode one of the files. Flipping open the file again, Nora counted the pages—four. Surely Juliette could…

“Chérie? What are you doing here?”

Nora didn’t even glance up.

“It’s midnight, King. Isn’t Juliette going to get cold without you on top of her?”

“She’ll survive a few moments without me. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“Needed some light reading.” She flipped again through the file, hoping to make some sense of it. “How did you know I was here?”

“I alarmed the office.”

Nora looked up sharply at Kingsley. Alarm? Kingsley never even locked the doors at the town house, much less alarmed it. He loved flaunting his sense of security. All of New York, at least the criminal element, knew better than to cross Kingsley Edge.

“Whoever stole my file…you’re scared of him, aren’t you?” Nora asked.

“Oui. And that means you should be scared too. That means you shouldn’t be in town without your master’s permission.”

Kingsley stood directly in front of Nora. Over the top of the file she saw Kingsley’s bare chest—olive-skinned, handsomely muscled and riddled with old wounds, inside and out. Kingsley took the file from her hands, and Nora reluctantly met his eyes.

“Why are you here?” Kingsley asked, his voice soft but not unthreatening.

Nora said nothing at first.

“Answer me,” Kingsley said. Nora glared at him. She took orders from Søren these days and no one else. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be upstate with Griffin. Not in my office in the middle of the night.”

Nora said nothing. Kingsley, wearing nothing but dark gray trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt, glanced down at the label.

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “I see. Your pet…you miss him.”

“Wesley was my best friend and my roommate and my intern. Not my pet. And tonight we saw a pony show and I started talking about horses and Wesley and Kentucky and Griffin—”

“And Griffin knows. And now you do too.”

“Tell me who my intern is,” Nora demanded. “Griffin showed me a picture of him. He was at the Kentucky Derby talking to Prince Harry. The Prince Harry. And the caption on the photo said—”