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No way in hell was Andrew going to risk it. Not even a hair on her head.
He imagined Whitney, the love of his fucking life, the woman he wanted to marry, and he pictured her in court. Self-defense, his ass. People got sued in this country by thieves who fell inside their fucking homes while trying to steal them blind.
“Whitney,” he said softly, lifting her to her feet. “Close your dress, baby, and go outside with Jerry, he’ll take you to my home. I’m going to pack your things.”
She wanted to protest, shook her head. “I-It w-was n-not m-my f-fault, Andrew.”
“Yes, I understand,” he said. But they might not.
The man had not had a weapon that he could see, but Whitney had used her kitchen knife. It was crazy to think there wouldn’t be repercussions. Whitney would be asked all those questions she dreaded about the rapes, and her soul would be torn apart and inspected. She would be asked about her panic attacks, and how sane she was . . .
“Go now, hurry,” he said, kissing her lips fiercely. “Do it for me.”
She did as he instructed, and he watched as Jerry quickly ushered her into the car and drove off. Andrew had to face the music and plead guilty straight away, if he wanted no investigation. Otherwise they’d search and search . . . see the footprints . . . the blood dripping . . . ask who else had been here. And why.
Andrew got a wet rag and reached under the man’s chest, to the protruding end of the knife, right over his heart. He wiped it as best as he could, then he grabbed the knife in his hand so that every one of his fucking fingerprints was on there.
When he went to wash the rag of blood, he smashed his head into the refrigerator.
By the time the police sirens screamed in the distance, easily ten more minutes later, his face was black and blue from his own beating, and Andrew had already called his father to let him know he’d better start calling the FBI.
He’d just killed a man.
That night, Whitney had been desperate for comfort. Barely eighteen, she was six years younger than Andrew. Still. He was in love with her. And she’d been scared when he’d been detained for questioning for hours.
He’d gotten home almost at midnight, and went straight to his room to bathe and change, his clothes still bloodied and plastered with his own sweat. His gaze snagged on her small figure when he emerged from the bathroom in a towel. She stood in his bedroom door. Naked. Beautifully, perfectly, lusciously naked. Every curve of her up on display for him. The need to possess her knifed through him, his cock swelling up instantly. For months he’d waited for her to come of age, and seeing every luscious inch of her exposed to him wrecked all his control.
He could barely speak, his throat felt so tight. “You don’t need to do this,” he’d said thickly, quickly grabbing a dry towel and throwing it over her shoulders.
“Please, don’t turn me away. Please.” Her voice shook with need as she wound her arms around him, dropping the towel at her feet. “I want you. I need you. What if they . . . because of what I . . . Will we get in trouble?”
“Shh. You were never there, all right? And I’m a Fairchild.” He stroked her jaw with four fingers and then pulled her hard against his diaphragm, the swells of her breasts tight and snug against his body. Her fingers sliding up his throat, into his hair. Killing him. Obliterating any defense he might have against her. Any resistance.
“But it’s my fault, Andrew. I’m the one who did it,” she whispered up at him, tears in her voice.
He hugged her tighter, his wet, semi-naked body feeling e
very inch of her silken nude curves. “Whitney, nothing is your fault. It was his fault. Only his.”
“I’m going to hell,” she said brokenly, sobbing in his arms.
“No, baby, angels belong in heaven.”
Later, she’d cried after he made love to her. She called them tears of joy, but they still got to him. She’d been just a baby. An eighteen-year-old baby. But she was his. And he’d protected her for as long as he could. Their lives transformed when they were together, their love so powerful it consumed them, day and night. It made them strong, it helped them cope, it enabled them to survive. Andrew had to keep her from knowing what had happened in the years that followed.
She’d endured too much, was slowly, slowly, recovering from her past abuse.
She’d never know the deal he and his family had made.
Andrew would never have willingly taken a goddamned plane out of his country, his sole company the air marshal summoned to escort him to the penitentiary. He’d never have left the woman he loved behind, alone and barely learning to make it on her own. But he’d done it for her.
The inside story would run like this: Harry Donahue, divorced brother to Whitney’s father, had entered his niece’s home to attack her. She had just left, but Andrew was there, and the man attacked him, so Andrew killed him in self-defense.
Even with that story, he knew there would be a price to pay for the blood on that floor. But the one to pay would not be Whitney.
Not as long as Andrew still lived.
It took almost a year to discuss the terms with the government, negotiate the Fairchilds’ requests and propositions, until they finally settled on supporting the president’s reelection campaign with a hefty eight-figure sum, with Andrew serving three years in their island penitentiary, one of several which served special purposes like this.
