WORTHY, Part 3 (The Worthy Series) Read online

  “Don’t be scared,” she said as those gorgeous curls ignited. I kept screaming as the right side of her face started to melt away. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  I woke up with a long gasp, the echo in my loft telling me that I’d been screaming just as loudly in the real world as I had in my dream. Coughing heavily, my damaged vocal cords protesting my rough treatment of them, I switched on the bedside lamp and got a swig of water from the glass I kept there.

  I’d gone for so long without nightmares that it was almost like welcoming an old acquaintance back into my life after a long absence.

  It had been about the wreck that had killed my parents. That much was certain. One of my biggest regrets had been the fact that I’d been a brat at the time of their deaths. I tried to comfort myself sometimes with the idea that maybe they liked my spunkiness or my pluck, but I was being bothersome. Maybe if I hadn’t been so snippy and persistent, we wouldn’t have been talking at all and my father would’ve had his complete attention on the road.

  Maybe he would’ve seen the drunken driver crossing the centerline in time to veer away, in time to save all of us.

  Instead, I’d stubbornly balked at accepting my parents’ company’s scholarship. I was so certain that I wanted to make my own way through life that I was willing to turn my back on whatever help they had to give me.

  It had made me seem ungrateful, which hurt worst of all. I was so grateful for all the love that my parents had raised me with. I knew that I was lucky and blessed. I knew they would do anything for me.

  I just never knew how hard it would be to go on without them. Just like wearing my scar without getting it fixed had become a sort of punishment for my behavior at the time of my parents’ deaths, so too was my abhorrence of their money. I could’ve had access to millions of dollars if I’d just gone to the family lawyer to work everything out, to hash out the estate. I would’ve been set for life. Instead, I’d fled to the cottage, running away from people and my problems and the world.

  I’d seen how well that had turned out, though.

  I frowned as I remembered perhaps the most troubling part of the nightmare I’d just endured. That little girl, the one who’d been sitting on my lap, definitely didn’t belong in my dream. She was an outsider, someone who hadn’t been there at that time. She hadn’t even been a thought at the time of the wreck that had changed everything.

  That little girl was the daughter I lost. I knew she was. She’d looked like the perfect blend between Jonathan and me. She was perfect.

  But then, the fire had taken her, scarred her just where I’d been scarred, and all the while, the child had assured me that it didn’t hurt.

  That I shouldn’t be scared.

  All of this shit scared me. All of it. I got out of bed, giving up on sleep for the rest of the night, and padded around the loft. Everything was new and impersonal. I didn’t know what I was looking for. All of my personal effects were either at the Wharton compound or out at the cottage, and I could go to neither.

  I would be a stranger at the Wharton compound, which gave me a small degree of comfort. Without my scar, none of them would know me. They wouldn’t believe me if I attempted to tell them the truth, and that was a bigger relief than I cared to admit.

  The bulk of the things that actually mattered to me were back at the cottage, and that was a place that I could never return to. Even if it had been my home for years after my parents had died, there were far too many ghosts there for me to cope with. It was where I’d met and fallen in love with Jonathan, after all, where he’d asked me to marry him and where I’d said yes, of course, nothing else makes better sense than that.

  But now, the cottage was a tomb, a mausoleum to my failed marriage and its hateful end, and the site of the accident where I’d lost my unborn child and nearly my life. I didn’t want to go back there, not even for the goat I’d purchased and named George, not even for the chickens that I was sure were already fodder for some of the predators that slunk through the woods. If I went back there, I’d find a porch full of deliveries, cardboard boxes stuffed with books and onesies and bottles I’d been stockpiling for my baby.

  That cottage was a graveyard, never mind a haunted house. My dreams had died there, and I could never return.

  After about twenty minutes of aimless shuffling around, after touching the laptop and the phone and the television remote, I discovered that I needed a drink. The bottle of vodka in the freezer ended up being the answer, after all, and I splashed it over ice, eager to cool the burning I’d distinctly felt while dreaming. I wrote it off as bed warmth, dismissing the idea that I’d actually been back in the backseat of my parents’ car, holding my deceased child.

  The vodka went down smooth, letting me know that I was getting better at this drinking thing. I’d vowed to never imbibe again after that horrible night with Jane and Brock, the night that had made Jonathan doubt me forever. Brock had definitely taken advantage of me, snapping suggestive photos while I was blacked out drunk. But I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t.

  Now, though, vodka was becoming my only friend, besides Ash Martin, and I had to embrace that. It was good to have friends, good to have a purpose in life.

  I poured another couple of fingers and thought about Lucy, a single cog in the machine that made up the Wharton family staff. She’d been my friend, once, but that hadn’t lasted. We ended up being from two different worlds, way too different to ever have anything genuine.

  There was no one for me.

  I carried my vodka into the bathroom and nearly dropped the heavy glass at my reflection. My own smooth face was now a source of terror, too, apparently. I had trouble recognizing the latest incarnation of myself. The woman who peered back from the reflection looked like she should be proud and brave and strong, like she shouldn’t take shit from anybody, least of all bad dreams or exes. She should have lots and lots of friends, people dying to hang out with her no matter what the hour.

  She should have purpose.

  I thought back to the day I left the hospital, the day I’d been so clear about my future and the path I would take to get myself there and stop dwelling in all of this excruciating past. All I’d done was move into my new loft. Everything else had been put on hold for … nothing. I was just in limbo here, unsure of whether I was ready to move on.

  Fuck being ready to move on. I needed to just get the lead out and go. Limbo was no place to stick around. It was time to build a new life for myself.

  I found a pair of scissors and tested them, gnashing the blades together. They’d do just fine. Then, I took a lock of my long, curly, blond hair and snipped it off.

  Snip. Just like that.

  It spiraled down through the air and burst into hundreds of different strands in the sink. I stared at it for a long time. My parents had never allowed me to do anything fun with my hair, and by the time I was alone, I honored their memory by never changing anything. But now I needed more than change. I needed a complete transformation in order to leave behind this old life and step into my new one.

  I needed my parents gone, and I needed Jonathan gone.

  Most of all, I needed the child I’d lost gone. I couldn’t abide the ghostly movements I felt inside of myself sometimes. And I also hated the way I’d sometimes forget myself and talk to it.

  There wasn’t even an “it” anymore. That train had left the station in a bloody mess.

  I took another curl and snipped it, then another. I made a snip to represent each and every thing I needed gone, every portion of my past that caused me pain, that I needed to jettison, to swim away from. I cut so harshly that I lost all semblance of curls at all, and gazed at myself with straight hair — without using an iron — for a long time.

  Was this really me? At the exact same moment I wondered that, I realized there wasn’t a “me” anymore. I couldn’t ever hope to be myself — the person I was before I lost everything — ever again.

  I’d learned this lesson before, I knew, whe
n my parents had died. I knew that it would be ludicrous to believe that there was ever any chance to go back to any semblance of normality. I’d made peace in the woods, living at the cottage, with the fact that I’d caused my parents’ deaths.

  Maybe peace was a bit of a strong word.

  I’d accepted that there wouldn’t be any going back. There, that was better. I’d understood that there wasn’t anywhere I could go to that constituted “back.” People didn’t come back from the dead, and unless I was going to join them sometime soon, I simply had to cope with the fact that it would be a long time before I saw my parents again — if ever, depending on my religious views of the moment.

  But as much as I tried to tell myself the same things now, that there was never any way for my life as Michelle Wharton to just pick up and resume, it was difficult to believe. I’d never seen my daughter, the baby I’d lost inside my body. And Jonathan, the man responsible for that truth, was still alive. As big a city as Chicago was, I was in danger of running into him completely randomly. I still couldn’t forget the time I’d first consulted with Ash about fixing my face and then promptly saw Jonathan outside the doctor’s office.

  Only this time, maybe Jonathan would walk right past me after seeing me, without realizing that he actually knew me.

  If I colored my hair, maybe, if I altered the way I wore makeup and dressed, the illusion would be even more perfect. I’d never been particularly bulky, but I’d lost a lot of weight during my stint at the hospital. I needed practically a whole new wardrobe.

  Of course, there was the pesky problem of my name — Michelle Wharton. Even if I decided to go back to Michelle Smith, it would still probably raise red flags. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Jonathan or his family.

  Now, if I went by April, my middle name …

  I bit my lip and continued to study my reflection in the bathroom mirror, taking another long sip of my drink. April Smith. She could be anything she needed to be. She could be a strong woman, a businesswoman, a woman who understood power and mobility and drive.

  I could be April Smith as a camouflage until I was ready to exact revenge.

  Blinking a couple of times, I stared into my own eyes. Exact revenge? Where did that come from?

  Wondering if I was drink-addled or nightmare-addled, I searched my thoughts and feelings. Revenge? What could that even hope to accomplish? When I lost my baby and my marriage in one fell swoop, that was everything. I’d had everything taken away from me. How could there ever be a way to get back at anyone on that scale?

  Unless…

  Unless I took away from Jonathan and his family the thing they valued the most: the Wharton Group. Their livelihood. Their pride.

  The thought was interesting enough for me to want to sleep on it, but I was too afraid of my dreams to want to try. Instead, I drained my drink and poured another, waited for the sun to come up, made appointments with salons and spas and boutiques, tried to eat breakfast and gave up, poured another drink.

  By evening, I was April Smith, waxed and primped and with a dark brown pixie cut that was apparently all the rage and suited my new angular cheek bones and sharp chin. April Smith wore Louboutin and Dior and Jimmy Choo. She had a closet full of designer labels. She wore her makeup like it was war paint and belonged to the city’s most luxurious gym. She’d inherited a hell of a lot of money from her parents’ deaths, but she was about to earn even more as soon as she assumed their old roles at their advocacy firm.

  April Smith was absolutely nothing like Michelle Wharton. The only thing they had in common was that April Smith was going to bring the family that had destroyed Michelle Wharton’s life to justice.

  If I’d ever realized how easy it was to hide in plain sight, to construct an entirely different identity for myself, maybe I wouldn’t have hidden out at the cottage for so long after my parents died. Of course, it was easier, now that I didn’t have the scar —easier than I would’ve ever imagined. It didn’t matter that I didn’t recognize my own reflection in a mirror. What mattered was what people saw: beauty and power.

  By the next day, I was ready to begin everything. I was ready to take back what had been lost — or, at the very least, make certain people realize just how much they could lose.

  Chapter Three

  “Michelle Smith. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  I folded my hands in front of me and smiled blandly at the two men sitting across from me.

  The one on my left was Felix Blomfeld, a chair member of my parents’ advocacy firm, the one that had made them their fortune — and, by extension, mine. Felix was a dour-looking fellow with thinning hair and wrinkles who looked like he rarely even thought about smiling. He looked the same way as I remembered him from when I was younger — like a mean old man. The years that had passed between then and now hadn’t been kind to him. The responsibility of shouldering the firm looked like it wore on him, making him haggard.

  “It’s April Smith now,” I informed him, then turned my attention to the man sitting across the table to my right. He was young, perhaps only a few years older than me, and had cinnamon colored skin. His head was shaved and gleamed in the lighting of the boardroom. His eyes, if I wasn’t above paying attention to those kinds of things, were an arresting shade of green, as if they were a sample of some tropical sea somewhere.

  He smiled politely at me and I lowered my eyes, aware that I was probably staring.

  “April, then,” Felix sighed. “This is Milo Singh. He’s one of the firm’s many lawyers. They’re a dime a dozen, really.”

  I looked back at Milo to see how he’d take this slight, but he only shook his head and frowned in a way that looked slightly mocking.

  “Be nice, old man,” he chided, and Felix huffed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, April.”

  Milo held out his hand, and I leaned forward to shake it. I was surprised by how firm his handshake was. Most of the people at the firm I’d been meeting seemed to think my hand was made out of glass. The more accurate assumption was that they were equal parts terrified, fascinated, and curious about just what I was doing back at the firm. Felix’s face was one of the only ones I recognized anymore, and I wondered what my parents would think about all the changes in personnel.

  Maybe they’d been the only reason a lot of the old employees were there in the first place.

  Advocacy wasn’t glamorous, but it was rewarding. I remembered my parents taking on anyone and everything, even if the issues in question didn’t fall in their areas of expertise. All they ever wanted to do was the right thing, whether it was raking someone over the coals for misdeeds, exposing waste and fraud, or any number of injustices.

  “So, you’re back,” Felix said, leveling a no-nonsense look at me. I recalled an event when his bluntness — there wasn’t a frill on the man — made me cry when I was young, and my parents telling me that he had a heart of gold. I always imagined him as a gnarled tree with something beautiful inside him after that — if only to comfort myself from his gruffness.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Birthright, and all of that.”

  “You weren’t doing very well the last time I saw you,” he said, studying my face thoughtfully.

  Without thinking, I ducked to the right — my old tick for protecting myself from strangers gazing upon my scar. I straightened again and smiled. Scar? What scar? My face was fixed, and I was marching forward with a new look, new identity, and new lease on life.

  “You saw me right after the accident,” I said. “I only barely remember seeing you in the hospital.”

  The old man had been shooed out of the room after he’d tried to broach legal topics with me while I was hazy on pain medication and still unable to grasp the full extent of my loss. I’d been of age — eighteen — when my parents had died, but I hadn’t been able to make the decisions required of me. Would I helm my parents’ firm? Would I assume their roles in the cases that were still open under their names? Would I take on the mantle that they had a
lways wanted for me, that had been mine for the taking after college? What were my plans?

  At that point, I had just wanted to sleep. When I had my fill of slumber and learned that my parents were dead and gone and my face was ravaged by fire, all I wanted to do was disappear, not ascend to my birthright to wield justice for the oppressed.

  “Accident?” Milo repeated. “Hospital?”

  “Come on, kid,” Felix groaned. “April here is the heir apparent to this firm. Tell me you read the docket I gave you.”

  “I skimmed it,” he said, his face darkening in a very attractive flush. I frowned inwardly and banished whatever fluttering feeling was happening inside of me. I’d be a fool to deny that the lawyer was sexy, but I was here for an entirely different purpose: to give my life meaning.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ve been floating along for a while now, and I figured it was time for me to take a little responsibility in this place.”

  “I’ve gone over your parents’ will,” Milo said, sounding more confident. “The firm is yours to do with as you wish, as are all of their assets. A house — and a summer cottage? — are also yours. I have a listing here for you.”

  He made a move to push it toward me, but I held my hand up. “Liquidate it all,” I said, then something inside of me pulled terribly, so painfully that I winced.

  “Ms. Smith?” Milo leaned forward, concerned, and took my hand. “Are you all right?”

  I withdrew my hand from his as if I’d been burned and shook my head. “Just a cramp,” I said, glancing at Felix. The old man looked unconvinced. “Liquidate all of it except for the cottage. I spent quite a few years out there. I’m living in the city in a loft now, but I’d like to keep the cottage for nostalgia, if anything.”

  I wasn’t convinced that I could ever go back to the cottage, but something in me wouldn’t let it go. It would always be there, the scene of the happiest and most devastating moments of my life, like two sides to a coin. It was a coin I couldn’t flip away.