Page 22 of Save Us

“Oh, no reason,” he replies jovially while plastering on a fake professional smile. “She was very beautiful indeed. I can see why Oliver was so obsessed with her. However, your picture clearly shows who her heart belonged to.”

“Thank you,” I mutter, though I’m not sure his comment is something to be thanking him for.

My anger begins to subside, but I still make a mental note to not fall for this guy’s charm and to keep him at arm’s length, especially when it comes to my family. Unfortunately, he does seem to be the key to Oliver’s undoing. If he is, I will have to work with him, one way or another.

Chapter 9

Beth

Three days after my dream about Xander and I’m lost in a fog of guilt. I’m still hating myself for letting my body get any pleasure from being with Oliver, a man who I despise more than anyone else in my existence. Even Leo has grown tired of my monosyllabic conversation. Though he takes it with good grace, he cannot stop himself from sighing every now and then when I refuse to say much more than yes or no. However, on today’s walk around the park, he appears to be exercising extra patience with my sullen mood, which eventually forces me to soften a little.

The descending sun is shining brightly, but the usual crowds of mothers with their young children are absent, which puts me more at ease. I don’t consciously avoid them, but it does stick the knife in a little whenever I see a mother kissing her child, smiling with them, or playing with them. It forces me to remember the fact that I never got to have those experiences with my own daughter. It’s hard to face the reality of her living far away, living a life without me.

“Beth?” Leo crackles the air with his baritone, gruff, tone of voice. It’s the only one that manages to soothe me when I am low, especially like I am today.

When I finally look up into his brown papa bear eyes, I try to offer him some semblance of a smile.

“Come over here a moment…but act natural!” he mumbles through the side of his mouth.

At first, his strange behavior renders me speechless, so all I offer is a frown while waiting for some sort of explanation. With only a nod back to me, I do as he says, for in the end, I trust Leo with my life, and more importantly, with my secrets. Taking my silence as the go ahead to do whatever it is he has planned, he leads me over to a quiet bench that is set back amongst some of the bushes. They look sad and lacking in any kind of life during these winter months but manage to keep me well camouflaged.

“What’s going on?” I hiss with nervousness when he begins to back away, leaving me alone while he returns to the path to keep looking out for anyone who may wish to spy on whatever the hell this is.

“Patience, Beth,” he says through his thinly parted lips again, only to then turn his back to me. He’s obviously keeping his eyes well trained on the path to both sides of us.

“Hey, English Rose,” a familiar voice surprises me.

Upon hearing my old friend, I can’t help but dart my eyes straight over to where he is now sitting beside me with a beautiful smile upon his face. I grin at him, almost getting up to hug him with everything I have, but then I remember it’s not safe. That if anyone was watching us and saw me being intimate with another man, I would be in serious trouble with my husband.

“Kai, what the hell are you doing here?” I ask quietly, keeping my eyes rigidly fixed on the path out in front of us.

“Things are going to happen, Beth, life-changing things,” he explains with a serious edge to his voice. “I’ve left a burner phone behind that loose brick over there.”

I surreptitiously side-eye him to see his chin jutting out toward a shabby-looking brick amongst the others in the wall, just a few feet away from where we’re sitting. It’s obvious to pick up on the one he’s talking about, so should we come back at a later time, it would take us mere seconds to find it again.

“Your boy can collect it later,” he says before I look over at Leo, who nods his head ever so subtly while keeping his eyes out in front. “I’m gonna need you to keep me posted as to yours and Oliver’s whereabouts.”

“Kai, please don’t do anything stupid!” I whisper shout with my heart already hammering away just over the idea of something bad happening to him. The thought alone has me taking a moment to bend down to the ground where my bag is perched, pretending to route around for something, so if anyone is watching, they will see me behaving in a completely normal fashion. Five years of being a prisoner to Oliver and all that is Mayfield has conditioned me to do such things in order to protect myself.

“Trust me, Beth, this has long been in the pipeline; way longer than before I met you the other day.” His words hit a chord, and neither of us seems able to help but look at one another for a dangerous moment or two.

“Remember the woman my father was sleeping with?” he asks with a shudder in his voice. “Remember what she was?”

“Yes,” I reply, remembering the awful day we had stopped by his father’s office, only to find a blood bath had been left behind, along with a corpse that was Kai’s father.

“I didn’t tell you, Beth, but Roman told me that only elite members can agree to such an execution. I guess one such elite member felt it necessary to extinguish not only him, but her too. ‘Suicide’ was noted as the cause of death for the dude’s wife, whereas ‘Armed Robbery’ was eventually recorded as the cause for Dad’s attack.”

“And the elite member? It was him, wasn’t it? It was Oliver,” I ask tentatively. When he looks back at me, my heart breaks for him all over again. He eventually turns away in anguish, and I have to release a tear or two for yet another victim of my husband’s evil and psychotic flair for punishment. “I’m so sorry, Kai.”

“Hey, don’t apologize for that piece of shit,” he forces through his clenched teeth. “He may have ordered the hit on my father for messing around with a Mayfield wife, but you are completely innocent in all of this. You, my English Rose, have been one of his biggest victims, and for that, I’m sorry, Beth.”

We sit silently for a few moments, not knowing how to make sense of anything but all the sadness around us. When I look at him, I notice him holding onto a pendent that hangs between his collar bones. It seems to give him peace; a peace I used to hope the necklace I had gifted Xander would give to him in the early days after my fake death. It’s been five years; he’s bound to have moved on. I hope he has moved on, don’t I? Truth be told, I have often thought about asking Leo to find out for me. I never have, though. I’m not sure of which answer I would be hoping for.

“Tell me about him,” I ask cautiously, “tell me about Roman and what happened to him, Kai.”

“Roman was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met,” he says with a far-off smile. “He had this cat called Rufus. This hairball was my only competition for Roman’s affection. Anyway, one night, I walked into see him beating the shit out of some guy, a Mayfield asshole who had raped one of our boy’s little sisters. Not once, but frequently. She had felt so ashamed; she kept the fact that he would track her down on a weekly basis to attack her.”

“Oh my God!” I gasp, to which he looks back at me with wide eyes, as if to say he knows how shockingly awful that is.