The Love She Destroyed

Three years ago I erased my identity without telling anyone and left Harbor City. I ran into Stella Shaw at St. Auden's. She'd brought her foster brother to the evening service. I was there to light a candle for my mother. Stepping over the threshold, I tripped. She caught me fast, and there was irritation in her voice. "Do you not watch where you're walking?" She didn't recognize me. Leo, at her side, smiled. "Sorry about that. My sister just worries about me. She thought you might knock into me. "There's a service this evening. Are you here for it too?" I paused, and found myself glancing at Stella, whose lips were pressed into a line. "It's the anniversary of my mother's death. I came to light a candle for her. "There's an old injury in my leg. I lost my footing for a second. Sorry." Leo looked at my bad leg and shook his head, sorry for me. "Poor guy." My chest seized. I pulled the mask tighter over my face without thinking and walked away fast. Three years ago, at a banquet, I was drugged and lost consciousness, and woke up lying next to a homeless man. Overnight my photos were on every screen in the country, and I was the degenerate the whole city lined up to condemn. And the drink that put me under, Stella had handed me herself. Chapter 1 I ran to find Stella and demand the truth. But just as I reached her office door, I heard her assistant, Dana Whitmore, speaking inside. "Ms. Shaw, the photos have been running on every outlet in Harbor City all day. "Can we take them down now?" "Yes." Stella turned slightly and lit a cigar. Smoke curled around her face. Her expression stayed cold. "And the homeless man?" Dana nodded. "Handled. He took the money and boarded a boat for South America. "He won't be back." She sounded impressed with her own work. "That was a masterstroke, Ms. Shaw. "The moment the story broke, Noah Lane was finished. He lost the Best Actor nomination and turned into the most hated man in the city. "Let's see how he competes with Leo now." The words hit me like thunder. Then Dana pulled out another document. "The breach penalty is written exactly as you asked. Two hundred and ninety million dollars. "Repayment due within three months. "Please confirm." Stella tapped the contract with one finger. "Add one more condition. "He can't hand back jewelry or gifts to offset it. Cash only." Dana had legal on the phone inside a minute. "You think of everything, Ms. Shaw. "You've given Noah a fortune over the years. He could have sold it all and covered a good part of this. "Now he's carrying two hundred and ninety million and can't liquidate a thing. He'll never be able to touch Leo again." I started shaking. My fingers dug into the wall. So all of it — every bit of it — had been for Leo Vance. Stella's foster brother. A month earlier she'd forced him into my film as the lead and demoted me to the servant at his side. During the shoot he had the director add a scene where he slapped me. He did it more than twenty times. Stella saw my face afterward, swollen and split open. All she said was, "He's young. Let him have his temper." She'd forgotten that when I was a kid, people called me a live wire. That night Leo pulled back his blanket and found the bed crawling with venomous insects. He screamed himself hoarse. Stella slapped me for it. I answered with a blade and took off half her eyebrow. I can still see the look she gave me then. It goes through me even now. Inside the office, she spoke again. "Keep an eye on Noah for the next few days. Don't let him stir anything up. "Best Actor is Leo's dream. I won't have anyone ruin that ceremony." I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, then turned and fled. My phone rang. Lucas's voice came through, furious. "Noah, what are these photos online? My brother would never do something like that. "Tell me who did this to you. I'll make them pay." At the sound of his voice, everything in me finally gave. "Lucas. "I want to leave Harbor City. "I don't love her anymore." Chapter 2 After I hung up I walked out of the building in a daze and went to file the paperwork to erase my identity. They told me it would take three days. So I tried to book a flight for three days out. Every card in my name had been frozen. I went through a dozen of them. Not one worked. I took a slow breath, swallowed the pressure sitting in my chest, and called Lucas to book the ticket for me. Then I drove to Shaw Group and pushed open the door to Stella's office. Before I could get a word out, she threw the breach agreement at me. "Three months to pay it off. Otherwise Starline files a lawsuit." The papers caught me across the face. Something in my chest went cold and stayed cold. I made myself speak anyway. "What gives you the right to freeze my accounts? Every dollar in them is money I earned. You don't get to touch it." Stella looked up. Her eyes were ice. "Without the agency I built for you, would you be standing where you are? "Don't forget it, Noah. Everything you have, I gave you." I stared at her. When she walked away from the criminal world to start something clean, she didn't have a dollar to her name. I'm the one who earned it. Background parts. Playing corpses. Smiling at people who didn't deserve it for a two-hundred-dollar day rate, when I'd never flattered anyone in my life. Letting directors and producers pour drinks down me because we needed the money. Later Shaw Group went public, and she founded Starline for me. One agency, one artist. I was the face of every Shaw product. They financed nothing I wasn't in. Everyone in Harbor City knew it. Noah Lane had all of Shaw behind him. Now she'd pulled every bit of it back and handed it to someone else. And she still wanted to strip me to the bone and burn down everything I'd built. I tore the agreement in half, then in half again, and threw the pieces in her face. "Stella. That drink I had that night. You put something in it yourself, didn't you? "You were willing to destroy me just to clear a path for Leo. That's it, isn't it?" She paused. Then her lips parted, and what came out of them was pure poison. "You already know. Why ask?" I'd known the answer going in. Hearing her say it still broke something. "For one trophy you stood there and let the whole city tear me apart? Let them call me filth?" She was quiet for a moment. "Once the ceremony's over, I'll clear your name. "Leo only wants his dream. Pity him. Step aside, just this once." I looked at how easily she said it, and I laughed. I'd heard that line enough times. From the day she brought him home I'd been stepping aside. My room became his. My roles became his. Now my whole life was supposed to move out of his way. I pulled the watch off my wrist and threw it in her face. "Take it back. "I'm giving you to him too." Stella saw what it was, and her fingers tightened on the folder. That watch was worth nothing. She'd washed dishes at a diner for three months to buy it, back when we had nothing at all. She swore to me then that she'd give me the best life in the world. These days a watch I throw on for an event runs eight figures. That one cost less than a thousand dollars, and it was the most valuable thing I owned. Not anymore. Chapter 3 I went back to the villa where Stella and I had lived for ten years, moving like something already dead. Leo was sprawled across the couch. He looked up at me with open challenge and hit the remote. Every station was running the hotel footage. Reporters crowding me in that room, catching me in the act, as they kept putting it. "Mr. Lane, that's quite an appetite you've got." "Look at the great Noah Lane. Not so particular when the cameras are off, is he?" "Have some shame, would you?" I threw my hands over my face, and it didn't stop a single lens. It didn't matter what I said. Nobody believed a word of it. One of them finally lost patience. "Caught in the act and you still want to explain? Just admit it. You're nothing but a man who only thinks with his lower half." They filmed every humiliating second of it and put it everywhere. All of it on Stella's orders. Leo came toward me looking pleased with himself, expensive shoes clicking across the floor. "Noah. You looked disgusting last night." I stared at that smile and couldn't hold it in any longer. I hit him once, hard. He shrieked and grabbed his face. Then something slammed into me from behind and put me on the floor. My back hit first. Pain went through every joint I had. I looked up into Stella's eyes. "You actually raised a hand to him. Clearly I haven't punished you enough." Leo latched onto her arm, biting his lip, the picture of injury. "Stella, I was only trying to comfort him. I told him not to read too much into it." I clenched my teeth and forced the crack out of my voice. "He provoked me first." "Enough." Stella's face was dark. She tilted her head, just slightly. The guard read it and drove his boot into the back of my knee. My leg folded and I went down. She looked at how pale I'd gone. "You put a spider in Leo's bed. Now it's your turn." Then they pulled a sack over my head. I'll set down what followed plainly and leave it there. They used a baton. When I opened my mouth to scream I coughed blood instead, and the pain went everywhere at once, until every bone I owned was shouting. Before I could get any air they opened the sack just enough to tip something in, and I felt them moving over my arms and my throat. Cold, and sliding. Snakes. The one thing in the world I've always been afraid of. The fear closed over my head. My eyes were open and I couldn't make a sound. My heart felt like a fist had shut around it. It was only when the sack had been quiet for a long while that Stella told them to open it. I was soaked through with cold sweat. I tried to stand, and the room went black. When I woke I was in my own bed. Stella saw my eyes open and held out a glass of water, her face empty. I turned my head away. I didn't want to look at her again. She set the glass down hard. "You're awake. Learn from it. Behave yourself and stop hurting Leo. "Rosie died so I could live. I owe her that for the rest of my life, and that means I owe him." She slammed the door on her way out. I watched her go and laughed under my breath. She owed Leo. What did she owe me? My hand went to the scar at my waist. Seven years ago she'd gone up against an old enemy and come out of it with a kidney cut open and not much time left. Not one of the people who called her family stepped up. I told the surgeon to take mine. When she came around afterward she held onto me with red eyes and swore she'd never let me down. I believed her. Seven years out of that life, and she'd forgotten the road that brought her here, and every promise she made on it. Chapter 4 The next morning I started packing, moving on autopilot. I'd barely got a few things into the case when Leo burst in and kicked it over. "Stella says everything in this room is mine. You don't take one piece of it. "That. That. All of it, out." He directed the staff to carry off my jewelry and my custom pieces. I gave him a cold smile. "You really do love picking up other people's secondhand things." His face darkened and his jaw set. "Everyone in Harbor City knows exactly what you are now. You can wear whatever you like and they'll still laugh at you. "You're a filthy man who'd put his hands on a beggar. Stella says she's sickened just looking at you." He raised a hand and the guards came through the door and shoved me aside. They stripped the room like bailiffs. My lower back caught the corner of a table. I couldn't straighten up for a while. Stella came in and didn't so much as glance at me. She put an arm around Leo and steered him out. "Come on. I got you the cake you like." I watched her tap his nose, fond as anything, and laughed at myself. I was leaving anyway. None of it was coming with me. I lay in bed watching a cold moon and fell asleep exhausted. I don't know how long I was out before somebody dragged me off the mattress. Stella's hand locked around my throat. She roared at me like something maddened. "I warned you and warned you not to touch Leo. "You paid off a driver. You cut his brake lines. He nearly died out there." I was too dazed with pain to follow any of it. "What are you talking about? I didn't —" She wasn't listening. She hauled me to the stairs. I hit every step on the way down. By the bottom it felt like my bones had come apart. Before I could get any air she put a boot in my back and flattened me against the cold floor. "Apologize to him." Leo sat on the couch with a faintly swollen ankle and eyes he'd cried red. "Noah, I never wanted to compete with you. Why won't you let me be?" He looked so pitiful that it only made her angrier. She took a fistful of my hair and pulled my head up. She stood over me with her face like stone. "You're going to learn something tonight." The guards dragged me outside and chained me to the front of a car. Then it started moving, straight at the wall. The first impact drove me into the brickwork. Something tore loose inside me and I brought up a mouthful of blood. There wasn't a trace of pity in Stella's face. She only put a hand over Leo's eyes. "Don't look. He's filthy." I was shaking so hard I couldn't control it, and somewhere in the middle of it I remembered her fastening that watch around my wrist and kissing my forehead. "Noah. You're the only light in my life. I'll protect you as long as I live." The second impact. Something gave in my ribs and my mouth filled with iron. I remembered the year her enemies cornered us in an alley and she wrapped herself around me and wouldn't let go, even after they split her skull open. The third. My chest felt like it caved in. Blood blurred everything. I remembered the year I won Best Newcomer, and she hired ninety-nine boats along the waterfront and burned fireworks all night. She held me in all that light and made a wish out loud, gently, like she meant it forever. "Noah. Let's grow old together. Let's never be apart." Again. And again. By the end my white shirt had gone red all the way through, and everything I felt for her had been ground down into ash. On the tenth, my leg broke. So did the last thread of anything I still wanted from her. I lay there with almost nothing left. Stella crouched and tried to gather me up. I used the last of what I had to shove her off. "Stella. You and I are finished." She met my eyes and froze where she was. Behind her Leo started sobbing, and she turned and went straight back inside to soothe him. I watched them hold each other, and one tear went down the side of my face. The last one I'd ever spend on her. The guards dumped me on the bed like a rag and shut the door. Then my phone rang. I pressed answer with shaking fingers. "Noah. I'm coming to get you."