Chapter Twenty Five

Two weeks later, Harrison came to the jail to have a word with his brother. He sat at a little desk with a low-tech camera pointed at his face. After a couple of minutes, Armand came into the room and sat on a folding chair opposite him. Another camera popped out of the desk and bobbed up and down, following Armand with its lens.

Armand’s hair looked shaggy and his face was horribly lined compared to the teenager Harrison remembered. His prison uniform was a grey wife-beater with navy scrubs. The only thing that set it apart from what Harrison wore when he played grease monkey was the bracelet around his brother’s wrist. Harrison did a double-take when he saw Armand casually throw his hand on the table in front of him. It looked like Paige’s, except it wasn’t pink.

“How goes it?” Armand asked, grimly reefing on a cigarette.

“Pink as a peach,” Harrison smirked. “How’s prison?”

Armand picked something out of his teeth. “You might be surprised to hear it, but it’s a hell of a lot better than working for Zaphier.”

“That rings true,” Harrison readily agreed. A moment passed and Armand didn’t elaborate, so Harrison asked him, “Does that mean that you wanted me to catch you?”

Armand shrugged his bare shoulders. “I dunno. I’m tired.”

“What do they think the sentence will be?”

“I don’t know that either. I’ve seen the list of charges. It’s not so bad. I notice you and Paige didn’t report any additional charges.”

Because of the cameras recording their conversation, he did not specify that he was referring to wiping Paige’s memory, but Harrison knew what he was getting at.

“Care to explain that?” Armand continued.

Harrison rolled his eyes slowly. “Of course, I can still report it.”

“Really?” Armand sucked on the end of his cigarette. “Why don’t you?”

“I want to ask you something. Was I right about that box breaking? Is that why our mother got infected?”

Harrison felt like he had to wait forever before Armand finally said something. “Sort of,” he said dreadfully. “A box did fall at her feet during a fight, but I didn’t know it had broken. Dad told me afterward he found a crack in it, and then he told me she was diagnosed.”

Then their mother’s illness had been a result of that fight. It had been an accident, but it had been a careless place to have a fight. Armand should have known better and he knew it. He hated himself.

Harrison couldn’t find the words to say that what happened didn’t matter anymore. It did matter. The whole incident sounded so senseless that it made Harrison twitchy. If he wanted to be a rat, he could chalk it up to manslaughter and get the police to charge Armand for the death of their mother and maybe their father too. Harrison swallowed the disgust that welled up in his throat and said, “Thanks for not letting Zaphier murder Paige. I owe you one. Do you know if he’s going to be charged?”

“I have no clue, but Harrison, don’t be surprised if he somehow manages to get off scot-free. Elizabella and her family will probably help him get acquitted.”

“Those little…” He left the thought unanswered and took a deep breath. “I don’t understand royalty.”

“You don’t have to.”

A few minutes passed in unequaled silence. Harrison was uncomfortable, but it was obvious Armand was even more so. Harrison tried to fill it by talking about what had happened to him since their standoff.

“You know, I haven’t been able to go home since we handed you over to the police. The house and hangar have been sealed off for M.T.N. testing. So far, no one has been diagnosed, but we had to trace every single person who stayed there overnight this summer and have them tested. There’s been a lot of testing going on and it turns out that all the cows in our neighborhood have M.T.N. They just have high enough doses of Ql in their system to keep the virus in check. It’s pretty amazing. Paige helped a sick cow on the road that had a cut on its leg. Apparently, she cleaned her hands properly, because she didn’t get it. Lucky girl, huh? They found out that Elizabella got it from eating raw steaks. You know, the ones with the blood oozing out onto the plate.”

Armand looked bored. Maybe he hadn’t eaten any of their steaks, no matter how many times he ate at their table. Had he known better?

“I don’t know if my business will ever rise again, we’ve had so much press, and town is quieter than ever,” Harrison continued. “I’ve been thinking that it might be time to think of a new career, but I can’t think of anything”

Armand gave him a look. He didn’t want to hear about what Harrison planned to do with the rest of his life. Armand’s future was like a ripcord behind him.

Harrison hesitated.

Armand had taken all he could take, he smiled wanly and said, “I know all this, but you may as well say everything you want to.”

“Why?” Harrison asked suspiciously.

The older brother threw away his cigarette. “Paige.”

“Paige?”

“Yes. I heard from Osric that you’re going to marry her.”

Harrison nodded.

“I don’t want her as my sister-in-law. After today, I never want to see your face again. Are you done?”

Harrison nodded. It made sense if his brother was sore over losing her, but Harrison desperately wanted to tell his brother one last thing. Armand got up from his chair and the moment was slipping, and at the last moment, Harrison figured out what he wanted to say. “I’ll forgive you.”

“You’ll forgive me?” Armand snorted.

“Yeah. Some day.”

“Great,” he huffed bleakly. “I will never forgive you. It was never Zaphier who was trying to get you to sell her back to Sleeping Beauty Inc. I was trying to buy her. I was going to buy her.”

“What are you talking about? If she was left in cryostasis for another three weeks, she could have become the property of the company!”

“And I would have been able to buy her for half the price! You don’t get it! She was my loose end. I was the one who asked Zaphier to buy her in the first place. It was my money he gave her when he offered her that obscene amount of money! I was her owner. The paperwork was never even in Zaphier’s name. That was why I was able to remove her bracelet whenever I wanted. And she never knew that she didn’t have a choice about whether or not she should be with me. It was an excellent plan. She had this ridiculous crush on Zaphier. I knew working with Zaphier for a few months would clean that out of her system. It worked beautifully. He ran her ragged by keeping her up all night doing stupid tasks, complaining about everything, and screaming at her.”

“She says he hit her,” Harrison pointed out.

“Of course, he hit her. Zaphier hits anyone who can’t hit harder than him when he’s blocked. That was the plan. He made me look good to her. After only having spent a few hours with me… she was in love. She was wildly in love… with me.”

Harrison grimaced. Armand had clearly been working with a younger version of Paige than he had. “Then what happened?”

“Our time expired. Zaphier had given her too much of my money and I couldn’t afford to renew her contract at that price. I needed her to come to me and tell me that she loved me.”

“Did she come?” Harrison asked.

Armand shook his head. “She called, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted her to come… begging. She did come.”

“But it didn’t work out?”

“No. There had been some drama on the news outlets about her and Zaphier and people thinking there was more to their relationship. It was hot gossip and Zaphier was angry because the whole thing had been nothing more than a favor to me. She met us on the tarmac of New Hawking's airfield at the same time as a horde of reporters and if I hadn’t ordered her from the place, I would have been fired and prosecuted. I tried to get in contact with her, but I wasn’t fast enough. She had her little interview with Zaphier on the cliff face before I could straighten things out with her.”

“How do you explain what happened afterward? You took all her money, sold her, and wiped her memory?”

“Yeah. I would have offered Zaphier much more to save her life. It was obvious that Paige thought I was selling her out. She didn’t realize that she was the bank for all the money I had in the world. That's what I offered Zaphier to keep her alive—all her money and all of my money.”

“Weren’t you worried someone else would buy her for a lifetime contract during the three years that she was in cryostasis at Sleeping Beauty Inc.?”

Armand choked. “I was banking on them not finding out that she’d had her memory wiped.”

“For how damaged she was? Everyone could see it,” Harrison reminded Armand hotly.

“I was going to give her her memory back.”

“When?”

“As soon as I could buy her!”

“Would you have set her free?”

Armand looked at Harrison like he was stupid. “Why would I have done that?”

“Didn’t you say something earlier about how you needed to keep it a secret from her that you were her owner so that you knew when she came to you for love, it was sincere?”

He shrugged his shoulders casually. “She only had to do it twice: once when she came to me the first time and then again when she came after me bringing all my money back to me. She meant to give me what I wanted. It was just bad luck that she didn’t catch me at a better time.”

“Luck…” Harrison said slowly. “I guess it was luck that took her away from you and brought her to me.”

Armand didn’t answer. He had been talking, explaining his tactics, and the game he had been playing, but at that moment, he realized who he was talking to. At that moment, Harrison stopped being his brother and became the man who stole his woman from him. He would probably never be anything else.

Armand sneered and barked for the guard.