The plan was simple. Storm the castle, get the princess, and get the fuck out of there, preferably with all their lives intact.
However, if the shit hit the fan, Baker didn’t care who else lived as long as Vikki got free.
He lifted his hand to knock.
‘Don’t bother. Just go in. Believe me, they already know we’re here.’
Baker’s look clearly said, if you’re fucking with me kid, you’re dead but his lips said ‘Stay here.’
‘Forget it. Charlotte’s in there. I’m coming with you.’
He turned the handle.
The door swung open.
The first thing he noticed was the blood covered onyx paperweight, raised above his head.
The second thing was his daughter’s face.
A few hours ago, she had been ravishing; as beautiful as her mother. Now, her face was swollen and covered in dark bruises. Dark gore marred her inflamed lips, boiling Baker’s blood in his veins.
Those bastards. I’ll kill every last one of them.
He reached behind his back, cursing as he remembered Damon had the gun.
‘Vikki?’
‘Get away from me,’ she screamed, returning to the room – to the captors she’d just fled – rather than spend another second in his presence.
He reached a hand towards her, desperate to make her understand. ‘Please Vikki. Let me explain.’
‘Don’t touch me.’ She swung the deadly weapon at his face. He had just enough time to raise his arm, deflecting the blow with his ulna.
She kept swinging. ‘It was you all along,’ she said, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. She was close to hysteria. ‘You told them who I was.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Victoria.’
‘Don’t call me that.’ She swung again, connecting with the side of his face.
It was all he could do to keep his feet underneath him.
‘Stop it, Charlotte,’ Damon said, stepping between them. ‘You have to listen to him. He’s telling the truth.’
She turned the weapon on Damon, taking a good hearty swing at him.
It didn’t matter that Damon was on his side. Baker couldn’t help but be proud of his little girl.
‘Oww, wait, stop it, Charlotte. It’s me. Damon.’
Victoria stared between the two of them, alternating between relief and confusion. ‘How… why… I don’t understand, Damon. Why are you with this monster?’
‘He’s not a monster, Charlotte. You need to trust me. Everything you’ve been told about your father is a lie.’
She seemed utterly defeated, as if she lacked the strength to fight anymore. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I can’t Damon.’
‘Sweetheart, you’ve got to trust me,’ he said, taking her into his arms, holding her tight against his chest.
Vikki’s whole body shuddered as she gave in to the emotion she’d been holding at bay.
‘He’s not the bad guy you think he is. I promise.’
It was obvious she didn’t know what to believe.
‘Where’s my dad?’
‘He left. Your grandfather called.’
‘And BJ?’
Charlotte smiled, the action re-splitting her lip. ‘I knocked him out.’
Damon kissed the top of her head. ‘Good. Did he do this to you?’
She nodded, her eyes conveying all the horror she’d been subjected to, breaking Baker’s heart into a trillion pieces.
‘You need to get out of here. Both of you. Paul, take her. Call the police.’
‘What about you? Aren’t you coming?’
Victoria clung to Harvey.
‘I will. But first, I want a moment alone with my brother.’
The cold fury in Damon’s eyes spoke volumes.
The pacifist was dead. The fighter had been reborn.
Bill stood in the doorway, his finger ramming into his father’s bony chest like a jackhammer drilling through tarmac.
‘What the fuck is this bullshit about your disinheriting me?’
‘Come in, son.’ William sighed, trudging up the stairs as if Bill didn’t exist, as if he were just greeting a troublesome salesman on the doorstep. A salesman he now wanted to leave.
What the fuck?
‘Come back. Don’t turn your back on me.’ Bill darted up the stairs after his father, following him into a book-lined study that looked out across the Pacific Ocean.
‘Sit down, Bill,’ he said, sinking into a leather office chair on the other side of the desk.
‘I’d rather not.’ Bill was too angry to sit. And to make matters worse, his dad was treating him like a fucking client.
‘Suit yourself. Would you like a glass of water?’
‘No I don’t want a fucking glass of water. I want answers. I want to know what the fuck you think you’re fucking doing.’
‘Calm down Bill. There is no need for anger. Let’s just talk.’
‘What fucking game are you playing?’ Bill had always been naturally suspicious. It was what had kept him from getting caught out – never trust anyone and then they can’t double cross you.
‘No game. I just wanted to talk. Thought we had some things we needed to discuss.’
Where’s the camera? Is he filming this? Is there someone else here?
The only possessions on the desk, besides a jug and two glasses, were an antique globe and a photo frame with some strange family.
‘Do you remember how this all started?’
‘Of course I remember. You started it. You set the ball rolling. Or did you forget that in your dementia?’
Dementia? That’s it. The old man’s crazy. The signs all fit. Why didn’t I think of it before?
Crazy was good. Crazy meant the old man didn’t have to die. The courts would never uphold the change to the will. Life could go back to normal.
‘Son, I don’t have dementia. I haven’t forgotten. I know I’m responsible for many things. Involving you and BJ was one of the worst. But when we started out, the only laws we broke were ethical ones.’
‘Pfft, ethics. That’s all you scientists ever think about. Let’s not forget that ethics is what got you thrown out of academia in the first place.’
William turned and looked out the window.
Was he seeing the view or reminiscing about the past?
‘I could have been brilliant.’
The latter.
‘You were brilliant, Dad.’
For the first time since his father disappeared in London, Bill hoped that things might be salvageable. The last thing he wanted was to fall out with his father. They were close. They had shared so much.
‘Who else could have turned a few pounds into a global empire?’
‘I’m not blaming you, Bill. Not entirely. It was my fault too,’ the old man said, his eyes clouded with regrets and memories of what used to be.
‘Nobody is blaming anyone. I just need to know that you’re still with me. Are you?’
‘No.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I can no longer be party to the things you are doing?’
‘What we’re doing?’ Rage exploded inside him. ‘Haven’t we just agreed that I did it all for you?’
His father shrugged. ‘You’re right son. I am to blame. It was my pass code that allowed Paul Baker access to the basement. I agreed to frame him. When you came to me with your plans for Helen Baker and Scott Critchlow, I sanctioned their deaths. I thought they would ruin us, and I believed that the deaths of a few people… I don’t know what I thought but I can’t deny I did that. I’m not denying I did that.’
‘Is this still about Anita? Dad, she would have blown us out of the water. We would have lost all that we had worked hard to protect.’
‘What have we really achieved, Bill? Think about it. I have created one of the largest and wealthiest family businesses the world has ever known. And my family hate me for it.’
‘Shit. Who cares if they hate you, or if they ha
te me for that matter? I’m not particularly fond of them either.’
‘So I’ve seen.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You had your wife murdered. The woman who shared your bed every night, who bore you five children. That was bad enough but your own daughter? Anita is your flesh and blood, Bill. Most animals don’t even sink that low.’
‘She knew. That Miranda bitch told her everything and Anita put it all together. Would you rather me gone or her?’
William shook his head. ‘Don’t you understand yet, Bill? You are responsible, not Anita. You killed her mother.’
‘Why are you doing this? What will it solve? I can’t bring back the dead any more than you can. Unless you feel like travelling back in time. Frankly, I can’t understand why you never did that before. If you’d just done that after Baker got into your basement, none of this would have happened.’
‘We agreed at the time that we couldn’t risk using the machine anymore. I explained the time/space continuum to you. That we had already changed too much. One more trip back could have had disastrous results for all of us.’
‘And this wasn’t disastrous? You blame me for these deaths, yet it was your fault they came about. Baker stumbled into the basement after YOU. Jacqueline overheard a conversation I had with YOU.’
‘I must live and die with my regrets, son. You need to come to terms with yours. What I’m saying, it doesn’t absolve me. Nothing can. Believe me, Bill. I’m not saying this to hurt you. I want to help you. I want to help BJ. The path you are on -’
‘What fucking path? You make it sound like I say a few Hail Marys and this all goes away.’
‘I wish it were that simple. Look I wasn’t joking when I said I had disinherited you and BJ -’
‘What?’
‘It’s already done, I’m sorry. You have one choice now, Bill. Turn yourself in and face the consequences.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘Smile for the camera, Bill.’
The old man’s finger pointed to a tiny, concealed camera in the antique globe – much like the ones that Bill had installed and used against the journalists.
Reaching across the desk, Bill threw the globe across the room, tearing at the tiny wires that ran beneath its base and into a laptop computer below the desk.
‘Where… is… that… going?’ Bill’s hand gripped tightly around his father’s wrinkled throat.
‘Charlotte.’
Bill’s hands squeezed and snapped his thin, bony neck.
‘Get up,’ Damon said, the toe of his shoe digging into his twin’s ribs.
BJ groaned, his hand moving to the back of his head, his fingers bloody as he pulled them away from the wound Charlotte had left.
Good. The bastard deserved that and more.
BJ opened his eyes, looking up at his younger brother. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
Damon had never wanted to hurt anything in his life but he wanted to hurt BJ so much, he could taste the desire. Wanted to make him pay for the horror he’d inflicted on Charlotte.
He slapped BJ hard across the side of the head. It was the kind of slap that makes your ears ring for weeks, the kind of slap his father gave out as punishment when they were kids.
‘You want to beat people around, why don’t you try it with someone who can fight back?’
‘You’re a fucking dead man, Damon. You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.’
Damon ignored the barb. He was used to BJ’s threats. They never amounted to much. ‘Where’s our father?’
Nothing.
‘I’ll ask one more time. Where is he?’
‘One more time,’ BJ said, his tone mocking. ‘And then what? You’ll bitch slap me again? No wonder she had to come to me for excitement.’
Anger exploded in his brain, and Damon hauled BJ to his feet, lifting him clean off the ground. ‘You sick fuck. You think that’s excitement?’
‘She was wild. Begged me for it.’
Blood pulsed through Damon’s head, sending shock waves of fiery lava spreading through his brain.
He stuck the gun in his brother’s face, his finger itching to pull the trigger.
It took every ounce of his being not to do it.
‘You’re not worth it. You can rot in jail for what you’ve done.’ He pushed his twin out the hall towards the elevator, using the gun to keep him in line.
‘Tell me, Damon, have you ever had a woman that didn’t end up in my bed?’
He squared his jaw, determined to ignore the taunting. ‘Tell your story walking, champ,’ he said as the elevator doors opened on the ground floor.
And then the final insult.
‘I fucked her pussy so hard she moaned like a whore -’
Damon could not allow the arrogance and ugliness of his comments to go unpunished though he would hate himself forever for allowing BJ’s pathetic taunts to goad him into acting.
‘You fucking weak bastard.’
He shoved the gun back in BJ’s face, his fingers shaking as he removed the safety catch like Paul had shown him.
He pressed the barrel hard against BJ’s quivering chin.
Pull the trigger. Do it. He deserves to die.
It would be justice.
For Charlotte, for Miranda and Anita. For his mother.
‘No, Damon. He’s not worth it,’ Charlotte said as she and her father raced to stop him
Time moved like cold molasses off a warm spoon. He saw BJ’s head come rushing at him but he didn’t have enough time to move out of the way.
Solid bone shattered the weaker cartilage, spraying a fountain of blood into the air.
Pure instinct drove Damon’s hands to protect his face.
Unfortunately, it was just what BJ had anticipated.
BJ grabbed the gun out of blood slick hands and a second later, acrid cordite filled the air as the pistol boomed to life.
Chapter Fifty-Four:
‘No!’
The scream reverberated through the lobby.
It took an eternity for Charlotte to realise the sound was coming from her mouth, that she was standing over her father’s fallen body.
Dropping to her knees she lifted his head into her lap. ‘Daddy, no.’
‘Are you hurt, Victoria?’ His voice held the cold finality of the grave.
Black blood bubbled from his lips. It was a bad sign. The bullet had entered his lung.
My heart is breaking. Does that count?
She shook her head, pressing a hand to the wound. ‘I’m okay,’ she said, trying to stem the flow.
But there was so much blood.
Too much blood.
It seeped between her fingers and stained the front of her dress, pooling on the floor beneath them.
He closed his eyes and for a second, she thought he was gone.
Panic clawed at her insides. It wasn’t fair.
Ten minutes ago she would have gladly put a bullet in her father’s chest.
But now she knew the truth. Knew he was as much a victim of Bill’s cold machinations as she was.
‘Somebody please help me.’ She pulled her father closer, pressing her cheek to his bloody lips.
He was still breathing – just. ‘Hold on, Daddy. Please don’t die.’
Three metres away lay her blood spattered laptop case, discarded on the floor, forgotten now, despite her stubborn need to retrieve it.
Returning to her room had cost them precious time – time that would have had them safely out of harm’s way.
‘What were you thinking?’ she said, her lips trembling with fear.
‘What I’ve always been thinking about - you.’
‘It should have been me.’ It would have been too but her father had stepped in front, shielding her from the bullet.
Salty tears dripped down her nose, landing with a splash on his cheeks.
He gazed up at her, smiling through the pain. ‘I love you, Victoria.’
Don’t do it. D
on’t give up. Don’t leave me again.
But instead she said, ‘I love you too, Daddy.’
And then he was gone.
The police swarmed through the lobby, some rushing past her to where Damon had finally subdued BJ, others prying her away from her father’s body, still more taking the elevator to the stairs, where they would find the last few remaining journalists.
And then Damon’s arms were around her, drawing her to him like a lifeline.
Frank Campagni had one last order to fulfil; an order Bill had given just seconds before the police stormed the beachfront property and arrested him for murder.
The murder of William Sydney Harvey.
Retrieve the laptop then kill the girl and her father.
Thanks to BJ, the last part was no longer an issue.
Paul Baker was dead.
All that remained of his brief was to take out the girl and extricate the laptop from police custody.
Neither task was beyond his ability.
Of course she was surrounded by a dozen armed policemen. Even the reporters had arrived, shoving cameras in her face, vying for her attention.
It would make his task more difficult but Frank had overcome greater odds before.
There was just one problem.
The girl herself.
The last time Frank had seen her, she was just a child.
He had never expected her to grow into the mirror image of her dead mother. Never expected that the two of them were cut from the same bolt of cloth.
Frank had stared into the face of a ghost - the ghost who had haunted him for half a lifetime.
‘Promise me you won’t hurt my daughter,’ the ghost shouted down the years and it was all Frank could do not to run from the room screaming.
Worse still, the girl recognised him. She was just a baby but she remembered him being in that room.
Frank fingered the gun on his lap.
Take the shot. You’ll be gone before she hits the ground.
Yesterday that’s exactly what he would have done.
If only it were still yesterday.
So much had changed.
William Harvey was dead. Bill and BJ were both in police custody.