Cradling the warm porcelain between her fingers, Eunice waited. Nelson would tell her everything. He always did. It was his way of trying to be special to her. After the divorce from Witt, all the children suffered and she felt an incredible sense of guilt for their pain. She’d never wanted to hurt the children—they were her most precious possessions. Never would she intentionally wound any of them. It had been Witt she had hoped to cripple, but he seemed to have survived the divorce, even thrived as a businessman, and had taken that slut of a young girl for his second wife. Suddenly her special blend of French roast seemed to curdle in her stomach.
Nelson scraped his chair back and stood near the windows. Throwing out a hip, he gazed through the glass. Though he’d called her, begged to come by and unburden himself, she sensed that he regretted his decision to open up to her. He’d always been volatile—not so openly hostile as Zach had been—but energized by a pent-up anger just under the surface, a blasting cap primed to explode. She wondered if he even had a clue about how he’d been conceived, but held her tongue.
Nelson was the child who should never have been born. She and Witt were estranged when she’d gotten pregnant. Witt had finally found out about her affair with Anthony Polidori and all hell had broken loose.
“You stupid, stupid bitch!” Witt had roared when he’d discovered the truth. He’d sensed that Anthony had been in his house, his room, his bed, though Anthony had slipped away minutes before.
Witt had slapped her so hard her head had snapped back on her neck and she’d stumbled to fall back on her bed. He was on her in an instant, pinning her to the mattress with his enormous bulk. “How could you?” he’d yelled, straddling her and crushing her face between his meaty hands. She was a big woman, a strong woman, but no match for him. “You lying, cheating bitch, how could you?”
She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and through his fingers, and she knew that he might kill her. His palms squashed her cheeks and she stared up at eyes bright with rage and hatred. Saliva collected in the corners of his mouth and his lips were pulled into a snarl of malice.
“I…It just happened,” she’d choked out.
“Like hell! You’re my wife, Eunice, my wife! The wife of Witt Danvers. Do you know what that means?” He gave her head a little shake and she mewled a protest. She could barely breathe. “You may not like me—”
“I detest you!” she spat.
“So you go crawling to Polidori. Taking off your panties and spreading your legs and screwing his brains out. Why? To get back at me?”
“Yes!” she screamed, not daring to utter that she loved Anthony as she’d never loved Witt and the hands around her face pushed harder. Pain jolted through her brain.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“At least he’s a man, Witt! He knows how to satisfy a woman!”
He roared back and this time the hand that came down against her cheek landed so hard she heard bones crack. A moan escaped her throat.
“A man, eh?” Witt thundered. “I’ll show you a man.”
She’d shivered as he’d held her down with one hand and undid his belt with the other. He’d never beaten her before, but now she was certain he was going to flay her until her skin was raw. Swallowing all of her pride, she whispered, “Don’t, Witt…please…”
“You deserve it.”
“No.” She got one hand free and held it up to protect her face. “Don’t—”
He hesitated, his shirt undone, his breathing hard and fast.
“You’re a whore, Eunice.”
“No—”
“And you deserve to be treated like one.”
Still straddling her, he took her hand and guided it to his fly. “Undo it.”
“No, I—” She withdrew her hand and then held back a little scream as she saw his muscles flex beneath his shirt. He slid his leather belt out of the loops and for a second she saw the flash of a silver buckle—a running horse with sharp little hooves, made of metal that could cut and scar. Oh, God. Pain jolted through her body. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.
“Take the zipper down.”
“Witt, no—”
“Just do it, Eunice. You’re still my wife.”
“Please, Witt, don’t make me do this,” she whispered and watched as his nostrils flared and his eyes bulged. How had they ever come to this? How had she ever thought she loved him.
“Now!”
Her hands were shaking and she felt revulsion when she noticed the bulge beneath his fly. He was enjoying torturing her and had become hard, after months of impotence, months of silent fury. He’d blame the business, then her, and now he was wreaking his vengeance.
The zipper slid down with a sickening hiss.
“You know what to do. Do for me what you do for Polidori. Show me what it takes to make that filthy bastard come.”
“Witt, no, I don’t want—” He grabbed her by her hair and his eyes glowed with evil rancor. Thick fingers knotted in her French braid as it fell loose.
“We’re going to do what I want, Eunice. You’re going to make me feel good, Eunice, no matter what it takes, no matter how it hurts.” The fingers pulled hard on her hair. “And when I’m finished with you, you’ll never run back to that bastard again!”
Sick to her stomach, she had closed her eyes and given herself up to her husband and all his perversity.
“Mom?” Nelson’s voice broke into her painful reverie.
Startled, she cleared her throat and quickly reached for her napkin to dab at her eyes.
Nelson was staring at her. Her baby. The last of her children. The boy conceived during that night of hell. Never once had there been any question of Nelson’s paternity. Even now, staring at her, his carved features set with worry, he was the spitting image of his father as a young man, a man Eunice had thought she’d loved, a man she could barely remember. Witt Danvers with all his energy, his ambitions, his vision for Portland had seemed the perfect match. Though she wasn’t a dainty woman, he hadn’t minded, probably because she was from the “right” family, had a small fortune of her own, and he felt that she would help and support him.
“It will be ours one day,” he’d said, smiling from a penthouse apartment and looking down at the city. “Every block will have a building with the Danvers name!” She’d believed in him then, trusted him. Until the other women. And the fact that after two children his sex drive at home had dwindled.
Anthony had been the balm for her ego and she’d stupidly fallen in love with him.
“Are you all right?” Nelson asked, snapping her back to the present. His handsome face was etched in concern, his blond brows beetling to form one line. So like Witt. Poor child. Despite the rough, humiliating way Nelson had been conceived, Eunice had loved him, as she’d loved all her children.
“I’m fine,” she lied, forcing a smile. As she stared up at her son now, she thought all the agony and humiliation had been worth it. Clearing her throat, she took her boy’s hand. “Now, tell me what you know about this girl—the one who claims she’s London.”
“There’s not much to say. No one knows anything, except what we heard last night.”
Eunice stirred her coffee as Nelson unburdened himself and she heard the sketchy details of the woman pretending to be London Danvers. Nelson was worried, but that was nothing new; he’d been born worried. As a child he’d had a wild imagination, dreamed of fantasy worlds, and as an adult he was always trying to prove himself—as if he silently knew that he hadn’t been wanted, that he’d been created during an act of violence. His job with the public defender’s office was just to show the populace that although he had been born with a silver spoon wedged firmly between his Danvers gums, he still cared about the little people.