CHAPTER 3: The Ghost of a Secret
1737 Words
Melina's POV
Every head at the board members’ table turned toward Preston and I held my breath with my lungs burning as if I were the one who had just been accused of murder.
My hand, still poised over the divorce papers began to tremble as I looked at Arthur.
He looked frantic with his eyes bloodshot and his tie crooked.
Then, the silence broke with Preston's laughter.
He leaned back in his chair, tapping a finger against the table.
“Arthur, Arthur.” Preston sighed, shaking his head with mock pity. “I knew the transition was hard on the legacy staff but I didn't realize you’d turned to the bottle for comfort this early in the evening.”
“I’m sober as a judge!”
Arthur roared with his face turning a dangerous shade of purple as he turned to me with his voice cracking.
“Melina, look at me. Don't sign that. He’s a monster. He squeezed your father out and when Thomas wouldn't budge, it's a 'heart attack'? Thomas was a marathon runner, Melina! He had the heart of an ox!”
My heart staggered. My father had been healthy. But the doctors... the lawyers...
“That’s enough.” Preston’s voice dropped an octave with the silkiness replaced by steel.
“Is it?” Arthur turned to the other three men at the end of the table... men who had served my father for decades. “Tell her! Come on back me up.. Speak up!”
The three men suddenly found their steak dinners very interesting. One wouldn't even look up and the other cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, staring at the tablecloth.
“Cowards!” Arthur screamed. “You’re all letting him do it! He murdered the man who built your careers and now he’s tossing his daughter out like yesterday’s trash!”
Preston didn't even look annoyed anymore. He looked bored as he raised a hand and two security guards appeared..
“Arthur is clearly having a mental break.” Preston said smoothly to the room. “Escort him out. And see to it that his severance is canceled. We don’t subsidize slander. Consider yourself fired, Arthur. Effective immediately.”
“You'll go to hell for this, Preston!” Arthur was being dragged backward with his heels scuffing the floor. “Melina! Don't sign! Search the files! Look at the...”
The doors swung shut, cutting off his voice and the room returned to a uncomfortable murmur.
I looked at Preston and my mouth felt like it was full of cotton.
“Preston? What did he mean? He said you threatened him. People don't just say things like...”
Preston leaned in and the smell of his cologne hit me with a scent that usually meant a slap was coming later.
He didn't look at the board.. he looked only at me as his hand slid under the table, gripping my thigh. His fingers dug into my skin, right on the spot where a bruise was still fading from last week.
“Listen to me very carefully.” he whispered, his voice a low vibration near my ear. “You are going to pick up that pen. You are going to sign your name. Or I will make the last two years look like a honeymoon. Do you understand me?”
I looked into his eyes and they were cold, empty blue pools. Safe to say there was no soul in there..
“Look me in the eye and tell me you think I’m joking.” he hissed.
I knew he wasn't. Preston Kincaid didn't do 'jokes.' He did leverage.. he did pain.
My hand moved as if it belonged to someone else and I felt like a ghost watching my own life crumble.
The pen felt like it weighed fifty pounds.
Scritch. Scritch.
My signature looked shaky like a rough line that signaled the end of the Ellington legacy.
Five percent.. that's all I had left.. a measly five percent of my father’s life’s work.
Preston snatched the paper away before the ink was even dry and flashed a brilliant smile at the board.
“The transition is complete. To new beginnings.”
He didn't even look at me as he stood up to greet a donor. I was a 'placeholder.' He’d said it himself.. a seat-warmer.
I stood up with my knees feeling like jelly. I didn't say goodbye and I didn't look at Sienna, who was smirking at me from across the room.
I walked out of the ballroom, out of the hotel and into the cool, indifferent night air of Los Angeles.
On the taxi ride back to the Kincaid mansion, my brain was like a hamster on a wheel.
Cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest.
That’s what the medical examiner said. But the medical examiner was a friend of Aunt Margot’s.. and the family lawyer, the one who 'found' the will that left everything to Preston? He’d just moved into a five-million-dollar villa in Malibu.
God, I’m an idiot.. I thought, leaning my head against the cold window. I was so busy trying to survive the slaps and the insults that I forgot to look at the wreckage.
The taxi pulled up to the massive iron gates of the Kincaid estate. I paid the driver and stepped out.
The house sat on the hill like a tomb, glowing under the security floodlights.
I started up the long driveway and suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the side of the gatehouse.
I gasped, clutching my chest.
“Jesus!”
“Calm down.” a low gravelly voice said. “Just me.”
It was Declan.
He was wearing a dark hoodie with the hood pulled down, showing his sharp shadowed jawline. He looked like he’d been waiting for a long time.
“You scared the hell out of me.” I gasped, trying to calm my racing heart.
“You're late.” he said as he stepped into the light. His eyes were intense and searching my face with a focus that made me feel like I was under an electron microscope. “You signed them, didn't you?”
“I didn't have much of a choice, Declan.”
He walked closer and didn't stop until he was inches away.
Declan was a 'mistake' in this family but standing next to him, he felt more real than any of them.
“There's always a choice, Melina.” he said softly and his voice lacked the practiced polish of Preston’s. “But I saw your face at the party tonight. Before I left. You looked like you were going to the gallows.”
I looked down at my shoes.
“Arthur said... he said Preston killed my father.”
The silence between us stretched. A cricket chirped somewhere in the manicured bushes but Declan just watched me.
“And you're wondering if the old man was crazy.” Declan said. It wasn't a question.
“Was he?” I looked up at him with my eyes stinging. “Declan, please. Everyone treats me like a servant or a nuisance. Just... tell me the truth for once.”
Declan reached out and for a second, I flinched... a reflex two years of marriage had beaten into me.
He saw it and his jaw tightened with a muscle leaping in his cheek. He slowed his movement with his fingers gently brushing a stray hair away from my forehead.
His touch was warm.. dangerously warm.
“You've suffered enough in that house, Melina.” he whispered.
It was weird the way he looked at my mouth.. the way he stepped into my personal space, shielding me from the wind.
He was the 'scary' brother, the one I was supposed to avoid but right now, he was the only thing making me feel like I wasn't invisible.
“I have to go in.” I whispered, though I didn't move. “If Preston finds out I’m talking to you...”
“Preston doesn't own the air you breathe.” Declan said.
He leaned in suddenly but slowly, giving me every chance to run.
I should have run.. I should have bolted. But his eyes were like magnets, drawing out a part of me I thought had died years ago.
His face was inches from mine and I could feel the heat radiating off him. My heart was thumping and just as his lips were about to touch mine, a flash of fear struck me... a vision of Preston’s face, of the spit on my cheek.
“I can't.” I gasped, stepping back abruptly.
I turned and ran and I didn't look back. I heard him call my name but I didn't stop until I had hit the front door, punched in the code and scrambled inside.
What the hell was that? I leaned against the door with my breath coming in gulps. Declan? The 'mistake'? The one who never says a word?
I hurried up the stairs to my 'room'... a small, converted nursery at the end of the hall, far away from Preston’s master suite.
I didn't even turn on the lights. I just collapsed onto the bed, still in my dress and fell into a heavy dreamless sleep of exhaustion.
***
The next morning, I was woken up not by by the sensation of something being ripped out of my skull.
“Get up!”
A scream died in my throat as I was jerked off the bed.
Preston’s hand was tangled in my hair, pulling my head back at an agonizing angle. My eyes snapped open, blurring with tears from the pain.
“Preston! Stop! You’re hurting me!”
“Hurting you?” He sneered, shoving me back against the wall. He looked like a madman. His tie was undone, his shirt wrinkled and he’d clearly been up all night. “You think this is hurt?”
He lunged forward, thrusting his iPad inches from my face.
“Explain this.” he hissed with his voice vibrating with a murderous rage I’d never seen before. “Explain this right now or I swear to God you won't walk out of this house today. You won't walk at all.”
My eyes struggled to focus on the screen and my heart bottomed out.
The color drained from my face,l and a cold sick feeling washed over me…
- Writer
