Page 11 of Her Submission (Monica & Henry #2)

Daniel

Monica asked Eva to drive. They took no one else and told no one where they were going. The only delay was Monica taking a shower and dolling herself up like a robot discovering a wardrobe and makeup for the first time in its electric existence.

She knew exactly what to wear. After all, people didn’t change that much over the years. She still owned many of the same makeup palettes as back then, and why wouldn’t she? They looked good on her. They complemented her wardrobe of blacks, reds, and browns. Her perfume had changed over the years, but she still had some of the old gardenia and sugar that had been her staple for nearly a decade. Just a spritz of it took her back to those golden times of her college years.

She had looked at the woman in her vanity mirror and refused to see the scared woman that shook in her skin. Instead, it was a warrior. Henry’s queen.

He texted her when she was halfway up a mountain, Eva’s Jaguar hugging curves and both of their ears popping.

“I’ve landed in Nice. My people are ready to meet me, and we will go straight to the Beaumonts’ villa. We’re close, Princess.”

She wished him well and mentioned she was finally taking some medication to get to sleep. In truth, she stared at the drizzle of rain that greeted them when they reached a thousand feet above sea level. Some of it would surely turn to ice as the sun went down. Monica and Eva might be stuck for the entire night.

So be it.

Neither of them announced their arrival. They merely followed Monica’s instructions, since she knew this route like she knew the back of her gloved hand. Every few minutes she checked her appearance, touching up her makeup, her hair, whatever was slightly out of place after centripetal force took her around another sharp curve. She inhaled deep breaths that were meant to calm her heart but only fed her mind more fodder for the hours to come.

Think of Daniel. Think how he survived the lion’s den. That was the last Bible story Abigail had been eager to tell her about learning at Sunday school, although Monica swore she had read those stories to her daughter before. Yet Abigail was chuffed as she produced a drawing of a lion she had done under her grandmother’s watch, accompanied by the verse, My God sent the angels, and it shut the mouths of the lions. Quite chilling written in her daughter’s hand, but now Monica understood. She had been meant to see that verse. She did not consider herself a Christian, but it was a powerful idea.

If there was a God, any God, watching out for her and Abigail, the time was now. The time to pray that the lion’s mouth would remain shut.

“I think we’re here.”

Eva did her best to keep a steady voice as she pulled down a long, dark driveway. The cloud cover and the coming twilight did their best to shield the entrance to the giant manor house from the rest of the world, but Monica knew it well. The gate was the same. The trees were the same. Across the road, a marker depicting the site of a fatal car crash two decades ago was the same. This is it. Eva didn’t need her sister-in-law to tell her. She knew where she was.

Home.

She blinked the tears out of her eyes as she thought of it as such. The twenty-something Monica who first came here thought she had walked into a fairy tale. The pink and purple flowers that grew along the driveway in the spring and summer had beguiled her as much as the stately home that rivaled Warren Manor and the Chateau for signs of long-held prosperity in one family. The Warrens had almost fallen; I bought the Chateau from a fallen family. Yet this one stood, a testament to having a head for money and the charisma to make everyone kiss your ass.

Monica had fallen for it too. For far too long. Until it was too late…

The Jaguar stopped before the locked gate. When a lone guard emerged from a tiny, heated box, Monica kept her eyes straight ahead while Eva said what they had rehearsed.

“We’re here to see the man of the house,”

she casually relayed.

“He is not expecting us, but I don’t doubt that he’s intrigued by our visit. Tell him it’s Evangeline… and Monica Warren.”

The guard peered into the darkened car and shrugged at Monica’s presence. He must be newer. Fine with her.

He went back to his box to radio the house. Waiting for him to return was worse than watching the raindrops slowly meander down the windshield, the wipers lazily brushing them away while Eva attempted to maintain her cool.

“I hate this place,”

she muttered.

“And I’ve never been here before.”

Monica glanced at her.

“Good thing you’re with me, then.”

Eva said nothing. The guard was returning, anyway.

“You may proceed, but you will be met at the door. Do not enter without an escort.”

Has he become more paranoid? Monica kept that thought to herself as the gate slowly creaked open and the Jaguar inched through. Only then did she notice some changes in the past decade. Gone were the hedges that once presented stately division between parts of the large yard. Instead, it was a free layout, with what looked like small patches of wildflowers. Trends changed, didn’t they? Monica had made similar adjustments at the Chateau over the years. Her customers’ tastes demanded it.

They parked in the darkness. Dinnertime, but Monica wasn’t hungry. Nor did she expect they’d be invited to dine with the owner of such a large estate. Family home. Owned for generations. One would never guess that the parents of the current owner had wildly different tastes. Even by the time Monica came to know this place, so much had changed from the photos she had perused in tightly curated albums of decades past.

Nobody came out to greet them, not that Monica expected them to. Yet Eva idled in her quiet car after the engine was cut and the rain continued to patter on the windshield. Monica opened the passenger side door. Soon, Eva took the hint and followed, neither of them with a hood nor an umbrella. They were slightly soggy by the time they reached the front door, which opened to reveal a young woman in a slightly revealing black dress.

He always had a type. Petite. Brunette. Pale. This was one was paler and had darker hair than Monica, but her eyes were completely different. Different in their indifference. This woman had just enough power in the house to receive visitors, but probably not much more than that. She was not paid. She lived here for free, instead.

“May I ask who is…”

Her head slightly tilted when Monica came into the light of the open doorway. She brushed off the sprinkled rain from her travel coat and brushed her fingers through her hair.

“…Calling…”

She knows who I am. It was in the way the woman looked at her, virulently, with just a hint of envy that she would never measure up to Lady Monica Warren.

“Monica Warren, wife of Henry Warren.”

She cleared her throat.

“This is Evangeline Warren, my sister-in-law. We were not expected, but I presume we’ll be accepted. After all, your employer knows why I am here if he does not yet know that we are here.”

The young woman in the black dress turned around.

“I will let the master of the house know. Please, wait here.”

“No need, Paisley.”

That voice curled the hairs on the back of Monica’s neck and took her back to a darker, more sinister time when she was the woman who would answer the door and ask who was calling. I’d see a woman older than me, but not so much older that she could be his mother. That woman was long gone by the time Monica came around. It wasn’t until the Warrens that she discovered what a mother-in-law was.

She forced herself to look up at the railing of the second floor. Coming down the stairs was a man as dapper in his light-colored suit as he always was. Dark blond hair fell across his forehead and threatened to blind one of his eyes, but he always parted the bangs just so that he saw everything, even if Monica couldn’t see the deliciously dark twinkle behind his hair. Never know them. Never care. There was a time when she wanted to know everything – and then a time when she regretted knowing anything at all.

The man who smelled of spices and arsenic strolled confidently forward and only had eyes for Monica. She puffed herself up, remembering her anxiety exercises that told her to keep her breath steady and her eyes level. This man was always watching her. Waiting for her to flinch so he knew he had her.

“Monica.”

There was no love in his voice. Little respect. She felt the same way about him.

“Jackson.”

She was proud of herself, in a way. While the back of her mind screamed the name Abigail, her girl’s name constantly on the tip of her tongue as a heart-tugging reminder of why she was here, Monica still had to come. She still had to show up and say to her former tyrant.

“Yes, I want your help. I need your help. You’re the only one who can help me get my little girl back.”

The traumatized woman who was last in this house couldn’t have done it – or so Monica assumed. For ten years, she never returned. She knew other women had come and gone from this den of debauchery, and Jackson had not peacefully released her into the wind. For months after Monica began dating Henry, her ex-Dom harassed them over mail and phone. The only reason they didn’t tack a restraining order out against Jackson was because they simply wanted him to go away without more public and legal drama. Since Henry’s father owed a ton of debt to Jackson at the time… miracles happened.

Now Monica hoped for another one. This time for her daughter.

“What brings you back here… Mrs. Warren, isn’t it?”

Monica sensed Eva’s increasingly irate presence behind her.

“Right. Ms. Warren. It’s been several years since we last spoke as well.”

Eva kept her mouth shut. Monica was grateful.

“Why don’t you ladies follow me into the study? We have a fire going there and it’s quite cozy on such nights as these. Paisley?”

He turned to the woman in black who had been keeping a close eye on Monica and Eva.

“Bring us some tea. Our guests must be cold from their trip.”

Paisley glared at Monica before heading toward the kitchen. No matter how much you deride me, he’ll never love you.

Monica stood between Jackson and Eva as they took a familiar path to his study, where Jackson often spent his evenings entertaining a guest or reading after dinner. This must be the only room that hasn’t changed. Everything was just as it had been when Monica last served tea and offered a shoulder massage in this room. And the last time he…

She hesitated in the doorway, Eva almost knocking into her. Monica slyly recovered by checking the bottom of her shoe and proceeding to the loveseat with her sister-in-law.

All of Jackson’s favorite classics were on the mahogany shelf behind him. Monica even recognized some of the first editions she had tracked down and found for him as Christmas and birthday gifts over the years. Some, like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, had a note written by her on the front page. He had gently chastised her for ruining the monetary value of the book… before praising her for making i.

“priceless” to him.

She knew it was the same copy because of the slight imperfection on the spine.

“I’d be beside myself from this impromptu visit, Monica,”

Jackson said as he sat in his usual chair.

“but you’ve brought Evangeline. I can only imagine what that means for me.”

“We’ll keep things civil,” Eva said.

“How darling. I do love a good spat, though. Don’t I, Monica?”

She ignored that.

“You’re friends with Jean-Pierre Beaumont, aren’t you?”

Jackson only looked slightly caught off guard.

“Johnny? Oh, it’s been a while since I saw him in the flesh, but we go back. Didn’t you meet him? Suppose not. After he knocked up that woman who became his wife, he was so busy paying penance to his family. Poor bastard.”

Monica preferred to cut to the chase.

“I’m assuming you’re familiar, then, that the Beaumonts and the Warrens go back. Apparently, my mother-in-law Isabella is good friends with Jean-Pierre’s mother.”

“How about that? I may remember something in that regard.”

“Isabella is such good friends with them that she seems to have taken my daughter off to France against anyone’s permission. I want to know what she intends to do once she’s there. And if she and Abigail are no longer there together, where are they?”

Jackson had no tricks to hide up his soft sleeves.

Monica still knew every one of his ticks, his tells, and his other body language as if they were still together after twenty years.

My God… would it have been that long? They had been broken up as long as they had been together.

In that time, she kept tabs on him, much as he had kept tabs on her – but for very different reasons.

He was a pervert who wanted to insert himself into the periphery of Monica’s life, and she needed to know where he was hunkered down at all times.

To protect my sanity. She leveled her gaze on the man she once held a gun to. To protect my daughter.

So when he tugged on his ear and twirled his foot over his crossed knee, she knew what that meant.

He knows something.

But he was not a good man.

He would never tell Monica exactly what she wanted to hear.

Not unless she gave him something first.

“You must be desperate,”

he said over the knuckles brushing against his lips.

“if you’ve come back here to ask for my help.”

Her heart roared with warning. Don’t fall into his trap. The Monica who walked into this house today was desperate, but she was also full of self-confidence and aware of this man’s intentions toward her. She had come prepared to do anything to find Abigail.

Anything.

Even that.

Eva was the only bump in that plan.

Had Monica come alone, though, she might be in genuine danger.

Jackson would never harm Eva, though.

Not only did he have zero interest in her as a woman – and therefore, a potential victim – but she was powerful enough in her own right that she could take him down with all the Warren know-how.

Like Monica had influential and passionate contacts among the wealthy, so did Eva, and hers tended to be women who were willing to assert their money on behalf of feminine fury any day of the week.

To touch Eva was to bring down Jackson’s immediate demise. But he would have no problem defiling the wife of Henry Warren. He would revel in it.

Monica knew that was a weapon in and of itself.

“I must find my daughter,”

Monica said.

“I know what Isabella is capable of.”

“And what is the former Lady Warren capable of? Regale me of your worries, Monica.”

What a bastard. Yet wasn’t this exactly what Monica anticipated?

“We have every reason to believe that she’s kidnapped Abigail without any intent to bring her back to America.

Isabella is brash and bigoted, but she’s not stupid about the way the world works.

Her thinking may be comically old-fashioned, but she virulently believes in her traditionalism, especially at our class level. I believe…”

Monica glanced at Eva, who had remained silently stalwart through this conversation, before continuing.

“I believe that Isabella intends to marry my daughter into the Beaumonts, and is willing to go into hiding until Abigail is legally old enough if that’s what it takes.”

“That’s quite the theory. So, what do I have to do with this?”

Monica was gathering her words when Paisley lightly knocked on the door and helped herself in.

She must have some serious seniority in this house if she’s bold enough to do that.

Which was how Monica figured that Paisley was her latest replacement, the woman who would be strung along with promises of marriage and inheritance as long as she obeyed and made herself beautifully useful.

Yet she had a different fire behind her eyes than Monica did.

If Paisley was a lifestyle submissive, like Jackson preferred, then she wasn’t the servile type like Monica.

She had an air that implied she liked to earn her punishments instead of avoiding them in the name of kink.

Poor thing. He’ll ditch her before long. Servile was exactly Jackson’s type. Not this.

“What is it?”

Jackson snapped, his body tightening in annoyance.

“Just making sure there’s nothing else you need, sir. The kitchen is about to close.”

“We are doing quite fine, thank you.”

He never turned around to properly address her. Which gave Paisley plenty of opportunity to glare at Monica before leaving.

“You must forgive her.”

Jackson resumed his effusively charming persona, the same one that had seduced Monica when she was young. When he love bombs you in the beginning, it’s like you’ve discovered heaven. Everything you could ever dream of is right in front of you. Yet the honeymoon barely lasted before the teeth came out. Jackson’s vampiric kisses had drained the energy from Monica for far too long.

“She’s not as well trained as some of the other women who have lived here.”

Jackson looked right at Monica when he said that. She knew what he meant.

“Where were we? Ah, yes. Your mother-in-law absconding with your young child. How old is dear Abigail again? Five?”

Monica refused to let him see the twitch above her brow. “Seven.”

“Seven.”

He released a low whistle.

“My, time flies. Then again, I forget how quickly you got pregnant after you left.”

Eva cut in with the low voice she used with men she did not like.

“That has nothing to do with what’s happened. Do you know something or not?”

Jackson looked at her as if he had forgotten Eva was there at all. And when he did remember, nothing vexed him more.

“The Beaumonts. Yes, your mother is quite familiar with them. Just as I am. Who do you think introduced your father to me when he needed a generous line of credit to cover all of his gambling debts?”

Jean-Pierre and Lily Beaumont. Isn’t it a small world, Evangeline? Why, even your name… Evangeline is the name of Lily’s sister. Your mother was friends with her as well. Died tragically when they were all young. Who do you think you were named after?”

She did not reveal what she really thought. That was left for Monica to interpret.

“Evangeline…”

Monica pinched her nose.

“And Lily. You must be joking.”

“Ahead of the times. Who do you think the actress was named after? Evangeline and Lily were quite the show-stopping girls in their day. Or so I hear through Jean-Pierre.”

He’s stalling again. Either he wanted an excuse to keep Monica a captive audience here… or he knew something. It was just a matter of getting him to admit it.

“Well! I will be honest with you two,”

he said with suspicious cheeriness.

“I do not know for sure what has happened, as the kidnapping of children from other families is not exactly something Jean-Pierre calls me up to chat about. But I can do you a favor, Monica. I think you know what that is.”

She swallowed.

“If you would kindly call him…”

“Oh, but won’t I have to be sneaky? He knows who I am to you. If I come out swinging, he’ll get spooked. Assuming he knows anything. No, I’ll have to exert some mental energy on this relaxing night to tease information out of him. Get him to open up. Again, assuming he knows anything. You might be all wrong, Monica. And… correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Henry en route to Nice right now?”

“I won’t even ask how you know that.”

“Call it a lucky guess. Anyway, if he’s already on his way there to find your daughter, then why have you come to me? You must suspect something else.”

I cannot stand how he continues to read me so easily. This man was the reason Monica had developed the perfect poker face. For years, she hid her true feelings from him – all to protect what of her soul he had yet to chip away.

“I suspect that Isabella is not an idiot, and would figure that we’re on to her within a few days. She’ll have moved on by the time Henry gets there, and there is no guarantee he will get answers out of the Beaumonts on their turf.”

“Not unless there’s some kind of proof, no. And you can forget extradition. The Beaumonts are very involved with local police and government authorities. It’s often rumored that Evangeline was the mistress of a former prime minister. Oh, she is greatly missed.”

“We’re aware that they have the power to cover up most things in Europe, let alone France,”

the present Evangeline said.

“Which is why we must catch up to where she’s gone.”

“Yes, yes, cut the wolf and cub off at the pass. All right, tell you two what? I shall go into my office and call Jean-Pierre. He won’t expect a thing. And if there’s anything to tell you…”

Monica didn’t want to let on, but she was just a tad suspicious of his generosity.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

With his most conniving smile, Jackson unfolded himself from the couch and went into an adjacent room, where he slid the door shut with a click. Only then did Monica breathe.

“This is good, right?”

Eva asked her with a low voice.

“I mean, this is why we came here. If anyone knows where they went, it’s that douchebag.”

Monica looked away, hoping to God that her sister-in-law didn’t see the worry on her face.

“There’s always a catch with him,”

she said.

“He might ask something of us. Of me. Even if he doesn’t have a satisfying answer, he’ll want something from us. We must be prepared for anything.”

Finally, she turned her attention to Eva.

“Anything.”

“If it’s money he wants, we’ve got plenty between us.”

“He doesn’t care about direct deposits. It will be something that messes with us. Like asking for a stake in one of my businesses. Or requesting that you work for him for a while. Or, heaven forbid, Nadia.”

“I’ll be dead before that happens.”

“You have to promise me,”

Monica said.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to find Abigail. I’m already dreading Henry’s call declaring that they’re no longer in France.”

Eva nodded.

“You’re an excellent bargainer. If anyone can get him to talk, it’s you.”

“Who do you think I learned such bargaining tactics from, dearest sister?”

She finally sensed that Monica was in no mood to be cheered on. Eva remained stoically silent next to her, counting down until Jackson finished his call.

The whole time they waited, someone peered at them through a crack in the door, that fire still burning, ready to waste the entire building if it meant Monica would be gone for good.