Complete Me (Stark Trilogy, #3)(90)

“Gorgeous, isn’t he? But I suppose you know that. Go on, then. Pull them all out.”

My hands are shaking, and I realize I’m still holding the envelope and the photo. I flinch, then drop them as quickly as if they had burned me.

The picture falls image-side up, and though I try not to look, there is no erasing from my mind what I have already seen. Damien. Maybe eleven or twelve. And a girl, her face hidden, who I am guessing is younger. There is more, but I don’t want to think of it. It is bad enough to have the image of these children in my head, their bodies joined in some perversion of an adult act. I do not want to think of the other things I saw in the bed with them. Toys and leather and gadgets that no child needs to know exists, much less have experience using.

And I don’t want to think about the mirror that hung in place of a headboard, reflecting back the image of the man behind the camera—an adult man, naked and with a hard-on, one hand on his penis and the other holding the camera. Richter.

“I said pull them all out.” Her voice is cold and seems to come from a very long way away. Somehow, I realize I am in shock. But I don’t know what to do about that.

When I don’t move, she reaches for the envelope and dumps at least twelve photos out onto my desk. “There’s a tape, too. But we won’t worry about that now.”

I try not to look, but I can’t help but see that these photos are more of the same, though each one seems more depraved than the one before.

She leans across the desk and taps the pile of images. “He’s mine,” she says. “He has always been mine.”

“Yours,” I repeat stupidly as I fight my way out of the fog. “You’re Sofia.”

She leans back in her chair and nods approval. “Very good.”

“And this is you in these photos?”

She nods.

Everything seems to be happening in slow motion. I am hyperaware of the air, of my breathing. Of every tiny movement and every small sound. It is all deafening and foreign and I want out of this nightmare.

Damien said he never wanted me to see these, and though my heart breaks for the boy he was and the childhood that was stolen, I cannot help but agree. I do not want these images in my office, much less in my head. “Why are you showing me these?” I demand.

“Because you need to understand that he’s mine. You don’t exist to him at all. Not really. He sacrificed for me. He killed for me.”

I stare at her, confused. “Killed for you?”

She blinks her huge brown eyes. “My father,” she says evenly. “Damien killed him to protect me. Ask him if you don’t believe me. That’s not something you walk away from, Nikki. You’re smart. You should know that.”

“How did you get the first note to me? The one before the trial with the Los Angeles postmark?”

Her smile starts slow, but grows wide. “See? I knew you were smart. I have friends all over the world. I sent something. Asked them to drop it in a mailbox. Easy.”

“That spiel you made about Jamie and The Rooftop bar. Was it true?”

“Other than that I’m one hell of an actress? No. You learn to be patient in the kind of places I’ve lived. I wait and I watch and I plan.” And then, in a what seems like a total shift, she blurts out, “He told me about you, you know.”

I just sit, watching her, trying to think. Trying to figure out how to get out of here before the fuse that has been burning down on this girl reaches the end, and we both get hurt in the explosion.

“Oh, yes he did,” she says without missing a beat. “He came to see me not long ago. All the way to London. He told me he met someone who got through the pain. Who cut and who battled it back. He didn’t tell me he was f*cking her or that it was you, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.”

My mind is moving too slowly. There must be a way out of this, I think, but it’s as if the answer is hidden by some dark, impenetrable mist.

She picks at a hangnail, her mouth turned down into a frown. “I’d already seen you in the tabloids by then, of course, and I was so pissed at him. Another girl in his bed, I’d thought. Another girl, but the one he really wanted was me. Then he told me about the cutting, and that’s when I realized the truth. This time he had a reason for f*cking some woman.” She looks straight at me, her eyes bright. “He was holding you up as an example for me. He thinks I’m all scarred because of what my daddy did, but he’s wrong. I know how to turn it around.” She shrugs. “But that’s all you are to him, you know. Just a stone on the path of my journey. An object lesson for me to follow so that I can get my shit together and be with him. He loves me. He has always loved me. And I was there first. So now you need to move out of the way.”

Move? Her words throw me, and I realize with a start that she isn’t here to hurt me. No, she’s playing a much different game.

“You want me to break up with Damien.” I say the words levelly, but inside I’m cheering. I can work with that. I can pretend to agree. I can get out of here. Away from her and to Stark Tower. He’ll be back from Chicago soon, and he’ll know what to do. How to handle her.

“No,” she says. “You want to break up with Damien. Because you know that if you don’t, what I’ll release to the press will destroy him. And isn’t that what love is all about, Nikki? Isn’t it about protecting the ones you love? Just like the way Damien protected me from my father.”