Page 34 of Payback

Doors opened and slammed. Mrs. Bourneville leaned over the counter and dabbed at her eyes. I stared down at the powder room’s marble floor tiles and shuffled my feet. Poor Henry. His shitty father seemed to blame him for everything that had happened with Rudolph, even when it was Mr. Bourneville who had angered Rudolph twice.

Henry’s mom placed a comforting hand on my back. “I’ll show you to his room.”

“Thanks.”

She walked me down the hallway, past the room where Mr. Bourneville and his spiteful cousin sniped about Henry’s imagined shortcomings. We stopped at a door close to the end, and Mrs. Bourneville gave it a soft knock.

“What?” he said.

She opened the door a fraction. “Go to him. Maybe you can say something to inspiring. Everything I’ve tried has failed.”

I stepped through into the mingled scents of leather and citrus. The bedroom was a mix of charcoal, brown leather, and ivory sheepskin that reminded me somewhat of Edward’s study at Elder House. Henry sat with his back to the door on a leather ottoman at the end of the bed.

“Henry?”

His shoulders sagged, and his hands clutched the edge of the ottoman. “I can’t believe you heard.”

“Why did you let your father talk to you like that? You’d never put up with that crap at the academy.”

He blew out a long breath through his nostrils. “I don’t know.”

I crossed the room and placed a hand on his bicep. “You just don’t want to admit the reason why.”

“Maybe not.”

A convulsion seized the back of my throat, and I placed a knee on the leather ottoman and wrapped my arms around Henry’s broad shoulders. What on earth had happened between Henry and his father to cause this level of animosity?

“Do you remember when I told you I’d been kidnapped on my way to Mercia Academy?” asked Henry.

A dull thud reverberated through my heart, and cold dread filled my insides. Pushing away speculations of what terrible thing might have happened when he had been abducted as a child, I forced out a long breath. “D-did they hurt you?”

“The kidnappers weren’t too bad. It’s what happened afterward that really stung.” He dipped his head and stared into the sheepskin rug. “They dropped me off on a country road late at night. I wandered around for hours, thinking they had left me in the middle of nowhere to die. By the time the security staff found me, I was inconsolable. Father slapped me and said I was a disgrace to the Bourneville name.”

Bile rose to the back of my throat. “But you were only eleven.”

“Ten.”

“How’s someone that young supposed to protect himself from grown attackers when your driver couldn’t?” I drew back and stared into his mournful, green eyes.

“I’d had self-defense lessons since I was tiny, and he made me study martial arts. I was no good at it. Hated every moment. Father kept telling me he had enemies who would come at him through his weakest link.”

“Why didn’t he assign you bodyguards if he was so worried?”

A huge sigh gusted out of his lungs. He pulled himself off the ottoman, crossed the room, and turned his back to me. “That’s a question he’ll never answer. He just recites the same old crap he did since I was five: I’m weak, useless, a burden.”

I followed after Henry and grabbed his wrist. “But you’re nothing like that.”

“Those voices never go away,” he said, still not looking me in the face.

I wrapped both arms around his broad body and inhaled his mint and citrus scent.

Henry slipped his arm around my waist and kissed the top of my head. “That night in the Peak District when you followed after me, we should have called off the kidnapping.”

I drew back to stare into his eyes and listened. Maybe now, I’d understand more about what had gone through his mind at that time.

He lowered his gaze to my collarbone. “But my mind kept going back to Edward’s father. He was great when we were young, and now he can’t even recognize his own son. I wanted to help, but Father wouldn’t let me access my inheritance early. So, when Paul… When Mr. Frost knocked you out, he wanted to move you to another field even farther away than the night before, but I didn’t want you to get hurt, so I suggested we bring you along.”

I stepped closer and rested my head against his shoulder. This was the longest I had ever heard him speak. “Whose idea was it to inject me?”