Beth Kery - Because We Belong

He didn’t want to miss even a fraction of a second of Francesca’s surrender.

* * *

She fell limp on the mattress, her knees curling up in a fetal position, panting, her damp fingers clutching at the sheet. It came upon her in a rush, as she knew it would. It always did following climax by her own hand, now that Ian was gone. Tonight her disgust at her weakness was sharper than usual, lying in his bed, replaying memories she knew she should let go. Her misery choked at her throat, seeming to rattle her heart in her chest, pierce the very core of her bones.

How could he do this to me? She hated him for it.

He’d awakened nerve, flesh, and soul, made her feel more alive than she’d ever been in her life, only to leave her alone, a human conflagration cursed to burn incessantly, without purpose . . . without any hope of peace.

Ian shoved aside a chifforobe, the action causing a leg to fall off the ancient piece of furniture. It heaved to the floor at an awkward angle. The back panel fell off with a subsequent crash. He coughed as he inhaled the dust that flew up from the floor like a miniature mushroom cloud.

Bloody attic was a menace, he thought furiously, blinking dirt out of his eyes. All of the attics were. They were six that he’d counted so far in the gothic Aurore Manor, each at the top of various towers and turrets. This place was a veritable warren of hidey-holes, of dust and forgotten things, of workshops filled with Gaines’s oddities and fascinating, patented inventions . . . of occasional perversities that screamed of Gaines’s depravity.

A house filled with secrets. Trevor Gaines’s lair. Gaines: wealthy aristocrat, brilliant inventor of quirky machines and timepieces, convicted rapist and serial reproductionist. A sick pervert who got his jollies out of having sex with and impregnating as many woman as he could, whether by manipulative seduction or rape.

Trevor Gaines, Ian’s father.

He knew from his research into Gaines’s history that the police had carted away relevant evidence during a search after Gaines had been arrested for the rape of a woman named Charity Holland some twenty years ago. That’s when they’d found two videos Gaines had secretly made of himself raping two women, one of them being Holland. The police hadn’t taken all the incriminating evidence, though. Ian was convinced they’d barely scratched the surface of the proof of Gaines’s crimes. It had been cleverly hidden from eyes less determined than Ian’s. Like the evidence he’d discovered yesterday, for instance.

In a hidden compartment in Gaines’s antique rolltop desk, Ian had unearthed neatly maintained journal calendars. Inside the leather-bound calendars, in Gaines’s neat, methodical handwriting, had been a list of women and dates that stretched from when Gaines was sixteen years of age to the last entry, when he was thirty-five. Hundreds of women’s names had been listed in that journal over the decades. As time went on, the entries became more and more concise and detailed. At first, Ian had thought the dates referred to times he’d seen or possibly had sex with the various women. It took him longer to decipher the markings on the calendars with X’s or circles. Eventually, he noticed the common rhythm and came to the sickening realization that Gaines was keeping track of each woman’s menstrual and ovulation cycles. Ian had discovered Gaines’s plan book for optimizing impregnation.

He hadn’t been able to eat for the rest of the day after making that bitter realization.

What could possibly drive a man to such ends? Ian became consumed by the question.

His hopes for the attic today had been minimally fulfilled thus far. Perhaps the most significant thing he’d found were some letters sent from Louisa Aurore to her son at ages eight, nine, and sixteen years old, respectively—letters she’d sent to Trevor Gaines.

He’d only found those three letters—the sum total of missives that Trevor Gaines had either saved in memory from his mother, or the entire collection that Louisa had ever penned to her son. Ian tended to believe in the latter theory versus the former. From what he’d learned about his paternal grandmother thus far in his obsessive search, she was a cold, heartless bitch. She’d sent Trevor away to boarding school when he was seven after she’d married a new husband. Ian got the impression from a couple of letters Gaines had written to friends that he wasn’t unhappy about being sent away. He hated his new stepfather, Alfred Aurore, it seemed, and was highly resentful of his garnering all his mother’s attention. As far as Ian could determine, Louisa had ordered away her only child and promptly attempted to forget he existed for ten years. If Trevor had ever experienced any anguish over his mother’s abandonment, he’d channeled all of it into his studies, becoming well-known as a gifted student of mathematics, physics, and engineering. He showed a particular proclivity for computerized mechanical objects, patenting his first invention—a clock component—at the age of eighteen. It only increased Ian’s bitterness to acknowledge it, but apparently he owed some of his mathematical and business acumen, and almost all of his talent for programming and mechanical ability, to his godforsaken father.

He’d have gladly sacrificed all of it to have an even vaguely normal father. He’d have forsaken all of it to be clean of Trevor Gaines.

After Louisa’s second husband died of a heart attack at age forty-nine, Louisa had inherited his entire estate. She was already the heir to the fortune of Ian’s paternal grandfather, a man by the name of Elijah Gaines. Her second husband’s death was what had precipitated that last and third letter when Trevor was sixteen. If you have nothing better to do, you may see your way clear of spending Christmas at Aurore. We are in a state of deep mourning here, of course, but that brings little to bear. As you know, I’ve never given much thought or care to the holidays. You would undoubtedly be happier spending your Christmas as you usually do, in the company of your headmaster’s family, fiddling with your silly sprockets and machines.

Charming, cuddly woman, Ian thought, scowling as he aggressively kicked aside the moldering remains of the shattered chifforobe. Not that he was feeling sorry for Gaines. Not in a million years. Gaines’s mother may have been partially responsible for creating a sick psychopathic rapist who clearly hated women as much as he was obsessed with them, but Gaines’s crimes far extended past the feeble excuse of a selfish mother.

He scowled, noticing that the collapsing piece of furniture had broken a plank in the flooring. Kneeling, he shoved aside debris with vicious disregard, feeling much of it crumble beneath his harsh hand.

He reached beneath the shattered floorboard and wrenched up on it, the breaking wood sounding like a shot going off in the still attic. He spied something pale in the dim evening light streaming through the dusty windows, his searching fingers settling on elasticized material. From the compartment beneath the floor, he withdrew a holey brassiere, and then a handful of several crumpled pairs of moth-eaten women’s panties. He started when a cockroach scurried out of one of the holes, tossing the rotting garments on top of the rubbish heap with a sound of disgust.

A loud, harsh laugh pierced his focus. Ian stood rapidly, taking a defensive stance without thought.

“He liked to take a piece of all of them—all of his ladies,” the bearded, hulking man jeered.

“Get out of here, you tramp. How many times do I have to throw you out of this place? I bought this house. It’s mine, now. You can’t just wander in and out of here like you used to do,” Ian said ferociously, charging across the creaky floorboards. He’d like nothing better than to sink his fist into flesh at that moment. It’d be a damn sight better outlet for all of his fury and depression than sorting through the filth Trevor Gaines had left behind from his worthless life. He grabbed the front of the man’s dirty overcoat and shoved his large, solid body against the wall next to the staircase, causing air to whoosh out of the other man’s lungs. He pressed the ridge of his forearm against the derelict’s throat, bloodlust making his heart pound in his ears. Despite the harsh treatment, Reardon managed a rough laugh, his wild amusement sending Ian into a higher pitch of fury.

“Maybe, maybe,” Reardon’s eyes moved across Ian’s contorted face. “Maybe this is your home. Maybe you do belong here. I know what you are.”

Outside the realms of his fury, Ian felt surprise. They spoke English to one another instead of the local French, and while Reardon’s voice was rough, his speech was quite refined. The townspeople thereabouts were wary of Ian, but a few newcomers to the area had told him the name of the local outcast who lived illegally somewhere in the Aurore Woods on the manor’s property. Ian had chased Kam Reardon out of the country house on two other occasions. At first he’d thought the tramp was stealing from his food stores, but soon realized his supplies hadn’t been touched. In time, he’d begun to suspect that Reardon was pilfering electronic equipment and materials from Trevor Gaines’s workshop. Ian hadn’t realized until now, however, that Reardon could string more than two curses and a grunt together.

“I know what you are, too,” Ian grated out, jerking his forearm so that the other man gagged and his head clunked against the wall. “You’re a thief and a poacher and a waste of space upon this earth.”

“Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all his nasty leavings, no better than those rotten panties you just found? Just think,” Reardon said in choked voice, his eyes gleaming with malicious merriment. “Some of those pretty little things might have been your mother’s.”

A white-hot fury pulsed through every fiber of Ian’s being. He pulled back his fist to strike, but unintentionally met the vagrant’s stare. Piercing light gray eyes speared through a slightly grimy, heavily bearded face. Lucien’s eyes—

It was as if a pitcher of ice water had been thrown in his face.

He started back, horror seizing him. “Get the hell out of here,” he rasped. “Now, before I bury you with all of this other trash and burn the heap around you.”

Reardon’s teeth flashed surprisingly white and straight in his swarthy countenance. “Fitting, wouldn’t it be? Brother.”

Ian winced, realizing he’d betrayed the truth of what he’d seen with his display of acute revulsion. Reardon straightened and brushed off his jacket, as regal and disdainful as an offended prince who wore the finest of coats instead of something that looked like it’d been salvaged from the trash. His mouth curling, eyes burning, he leaned forward. “You should watch out,” Reardon breathed softly. “You look an awful lot like him, wandering around this place. People will start to swear that dear old daddy’s ghost is haunting this garbage dump.”

Ian closed his eyes at the sound of Reardon’s heavy boots on the stairs, fighting down the bitter taste at the back of his throat.

* * *

Later that evening, he shoved aside an uneaten dinner that had mostly come from a can. He stood to remove the meal from the quarters where he’d been staying and noticed his reflection in the mirror. After a strained moment, he set down the plate and glass on the dusty bureau, his mission forgotten. He peered closer at his image.

When had his two– and then three-day overgrowth become a full-blown beard? When had he gotten that feral look in his eyes? When had he started to resemble Kam Reardon?

Resemble worse than Reardon?

You’re starting to look like him. People will start to swear that dear old daddy’s ghost is haunting this garbage dump.

He hissed, smashing his fist into the bureau and sending the china plate crashing to the wood floor, where it shattered jarringly.

Stupid fuck. Ian was nothing like Trevor Gaines. His entire reason for buying this godforsaken house, for sifting through every item in its rat-warren rooms, was to purge that criminal from his mind and body. It was an exorcism of sorts.

He’s in your very blood, a nasty voice in his head reminded him. You’ll never be free of the taint of him.

His other life—the once methodical, organized, sterile one that had recently been transformed by Francesca, blessed by light and laughter and love—was starting to feel like a dream to him, an elusive memory that he couldn’t quite grasp with his clutching fingers. His world was starting to become a watered-down nightmare—not terrifying, necessarily, but dirty and gray, vague and pointless. A personalized version of hell.