The Mistress and the Mouse Read online

  Still, she shook her head. “Just let me rest, baby. Getting out of bed this morning was more than I had strength for.”

  Rage churned in the pit of his stomach like acid eating away the porcelain finish on dinnerware. This can’t happen anymore, was all he could think. It won’t happen any more, even as his fingers softly stroked her cheek. “Mom, you need help,” he pleaded.

  But she only smiled a little and nodded. “I’m happy to see you.”

  Filled with adrenaline, his muscles quivered uncontrollably. He shook like the tender leaves of spring against an approaching storm. Drained of reason by the hopelessness of this continuous abuse, he launched off the bed, pushed past the woman at the door and flew down the stairs.

  * * * *

  Lying comfortably in her bed surrounded by her servants, Cheryl Abernathy smiled. Without will, a sarcastic laugh echoed out of her chest. Brian was enraged. Brian was on his way to see his father. This could keep Brian and her husband apart for another ten years.

  She smiled.

  * * * *

  You motherfucker, Brian thought as he revved the engine and tore out of the driveway. “This ain’t happening no more, Old Man.” The exhaust from his truck blackened the air behind him and he sped down the hill at bat-out-of-hell speed to make his first trip in a decade to the Abernathy Tower quite memorable. “Jesus, how can you do this?” His stomach cramped to see the hue of blue around his mother’s eyes in his mind. “What the hell has she ever done to you?”

  The traffic was beginning to thicken with the evening rush. Dear Lord, how did it ever come to this? It was true. His father wasn’t always a wife-beater, not at least as long as his grandfather lived. Yeah, that’s when it started. After Grandpa died. That’s when everything went to hell. There was no one around to make his father behave.

  A crush of employees was draining the parking garage just as Brian arrived. He snaked through, knowing he had already been spotted on camera. Without hesitation, he pulled into his father’s parking place and went to the private elevator. He stabbed at the keypad, but obviously the code had been changed.

  Through the diaphanous exhaust fumes creating the feeling of a mirage, he peered to search out the security team. He drove a profiled vehicle, one that could easily be stocked with explosives and he knew they were coming for him. Quickly, he slipped into the stairwell and went to the second floor to catch the elevator there.

  Quietly, the doors slid closed and the elevator started upwards. The canned music, 60’s and 70’s pop hits played by orchestras for mass consumption was the ultimate hypocrisy just then. He watched the numbers go by swiftly, 30, 31, 32, and then the elevator slowed to a stop. The elevator began to descend.

  Fuckers, he thought, still watching the numbers go by: 28, 27, 26 and he would end up in the soundproofed basement where anyone could be shot and hauled out with the trash the next day. Seething, he simply leaned against the wall, his hip cocked, his arms folded over his broad chest.

  Slowly, the doors slid opened and the vision of a concrete wall greeted him. But rather than meet them head on, he waited. Waited until one had the courage to face him with a gun pointed at him.

  “C’mon outta there, boy,” the man said confidently aiming a nine millimeter Glock at Brian’s chest.

  “I don’t think so,” Brian said as finally he moved only to retrieve a cigarette.

  “Don’t give me any shit, boy.” Other guards joined the assault and crowded around the door. “You’re not going anywhere because this elevator is locked now. So I suggest you come with me.”

  “Look at me,” Brian commanded. “Don’t I look the least little bit familiar to you? To any of you?”

  Carefully, they studied him, the soft brown hair falling over his shoulders in unruly waves. The deep set brown eyes, the nose that matched his father’s. Lips that curved perpetually up, giving him an air of innocence. The hint of a beard around the jawline and a thinly filled mustache.

  “Oh, fuck,” one of the older ones cried out. “That’s Brian Abernathy.”

  “How ya’ doing, Stefan?” Brian snarled sarcastically. “I suggest you release the elevator...NOW.”

  “Yes, Sir, Mr. Abernathy.” He pulled out a key to do just that. “Forgive us, please. We had no way of knowing it was you.”

  Rather than forgive them Brian hit 49, his blatant stare trained on the lot of them.

  Once again he rose in a highspeed elevator that wouldn’t stop until he arrived. The sight of his mother burned into his psyche. He could see his father punching her, her bone thin arm in his grasp and then let go of her at the top of the stairs.

  His breath came in uneven gasps. Ten years since he had seen this place and smelled the stench that still lingered. Ten years since he had seen his father, since he had walked out on his father because he refused to lie still while others died. Once upon a fairy tale he had loved his father like never before a son loved anyone. Ah, but that came to an end...finally...that day.

  The elevator doors opened on the same expanse filled with the color of money as always it was. The eighteen-carat gilt frames of portraits of past CEOs glimmered at the insistence of recessed lighting while the very men trapped in the oils seemed to snarl at him.

  “You can’t go in there!” a woman shouted.

  Brian huffed. And then he threw open the door of his father’s office.

  Ah, how nothing ever changes. His father’s executives huddled around the big man, the smoke of their cigars and the scent of only the best scotch infecting the very air. The mood was joyous and full of mirth. Perhaps someone else had died to pave the way for the Abernathy steamroller. They were congratulating each other on a job well done.

  From behind him Brian heard, “Mr. Abernathy, I’m sorry...” A puddle of secretaries, one of whom should have locked the door before he simply walked in, shook like feathers on storm beaten birds.

  Slowly, the joyous blabbering dwindled to silence as the crowd parted to reveal his father propped against the desk. His father was definitely older and looking very tired. He should have been tired. That kind of rage takes a lot out of a man. But the expression was pure astonishment as he cried with wonder, “Brian.”

  Brian’s lips never moved. His voice wasn’t his own. It seemed he stared through someone else’s eyes as he rasped without emotion, “How ya’ been?”

  Jerry Abernathy quivered with this strange turn of events. How dearly he loved his son. How desperately he wanted his son back. That Brian was here, after a ten-year absence caused him to stutter. “I...I’m really happy to see you.”

  Brian’s face creased to hear those words. Slowly Brian crossed the thirty feet that divided them as a lioness stalks the prey. “You gonna be happy to see me when I’m testifying for the prosecution against you?”

  Gasps filled the room with panic. The flanks tightened around Jerry as his shock dwindled to horror. “What are you talking about?”

  “If you ever hurt my mother again, I’m gonna kill you. She’s lying in bed with broken bones,” he screamed. Quickly, he retrieved his wallet and pulled out a business card. “You got exactly ten days to get some help, or I’ll make an appointment with the prosecutor myself.” Angrily, he threw Morgan’s card to the floor.

  “Brian,” Jerry gasped. “Let me explain.”

  A sarcastic smirk pulled Brian’s upper lip away to expose his teeth. “My way, this time. Ten days,” he snarled. His stare penetrated like a scalpel to soft tissue.

  Jerry’s blood pressure rose; his face reddened with both the embarrassment this caused and the realization that Brian thought of him as nothing less than a monster. “Brian, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand you have it within your power to protect her, but you prefer to kill her. Ten days.” His eyes narrowed to glowering slashes indicating the seriousness of this matter. Coldly, he turned and walked out.

  “BRIAN!” Jerry yelled. Hurriedly, he gave chase but by the time he reached the reception room the elevator doors
had closed. He fell against them and held to his aching chest a moment. Oh, God, I am gonna kill that bitch! If it’s the last fucking thing I do.

  “Jerry!” Bryant Abernathy ran to Jerry, his brother. Seeing the state Jerry had digressed to, Bryant ushered him back to his office. “You’ll have to excuse us now,” he said to the other executives gathered.

  Half-empty glasses were placed on lateral surfaces around the room. Moans and recriminations of, “the little bastard,” “nothing but a brat,” “too damned good to work with us,” hung in the air like clouds filled with acid rain.

  The door closed. Jerry fell to his chair, ready to vomit as Bryant perched on the edge, staring down. “He’s been to see her,” Jerry gasped.

  “Obviously. And she was beat up pretty bad this time, you said?” Bryant asked.

  “Yep,” Jerry nodded sadly. “I had to order a hospital plane to get her in from France.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bryant whispered of the miserable situation Jerry was trapped within. “What can I do?” Jerry was drowning in a quagmire, trapped in quicksand. And if Cheryl should carry out her threat, Abernathy Acquisitions would be in dire straights.

  “I’m so fucking sick of my life I could just about jump out the damned window,” Jerry cried as he peered up at his younger brother.

  “Jer,” Bryant said quickly. “Our best hope is that someone will actually kill her soon. Isn’t that why you have the finest nurses and medical treatment for her? So she can get back to France as soon as possible?”

  Jerry held to his aching heart, a heart that might finally collapse after a violent burst. “That was the plan. But now, don’t you see, Brian will think I set her up. If anything happens to her, he’ll believe I hired it out. Oh shit,” he cried. “I’ll never see him again as long as I live.”

  Filled with sadness, Bryant reached down and took Jerry’s hand. “Then he has to know,” he whispered.

  “No...God, no,” Jerry nearly screamed. “Tell him about all the shit that’s gone on through the years? That his mother is a...”

  “Prostitute,” Bryant yelled back because Jerry needed to hear it. Jerry needed to accept it, finally. “A prostitute, Jerry.”

  Gravel collected in Jerry’s throat and the reply was nothing but a growl. “What the hell’s that on the floor?”

  Bryant crossed the expanse of hunter green carpet, picked up the card and broke into a confused smile. “This has to be a joke. Morgan McFaye, Sex Therapist?” It was rather amusing.

  “Sex therapist?” Jerry snatched the card from Bryant’s grasp. “Sex therapist?” He studied the tangle of vines around the border and noted the license number. His lips stretched into a small grin. “Morgan McFaye? A licensed sex therapist. Check it out.”

  Bryant crouched beside Jerry and stabbed at the keyboard to go to Morgan’s website. A grainy picture cleared to reveal a headshot of her, a shiver of bronze falling over her shoulders. Her voice was clear but low and seductive as she sought to lecture on the benefits of sexual gratification and the things she had to teach.

  “A hooker?” Bryant screeched.

  Jerry’s fingers scraped at the bristle on his face. “Check it out,” he ordered. Bryant reached for the phone to put the investigators on it immediately. Yet together they stared, almost drooled to watch a gorgeous sylph speak of the wonders, the satisfaction, the miracle of sexual expression. To hear the strength in the dulcet tones of the voice.

  “This has to be a joke!” Bryant exclaimed. “A hooker with the selfsame name as the witch of your fantasies! Brian’s making this up.”

  Unable to tear his eyes from the screen, the hint of a smile moved Jerry’s lips. It was obvious Brian didn’t want his father beating his mother anymore. Exactly three times he lost control with her, but that was years ago. When it happened, he hated himself more than he hated her. But Brian didn’t know that. Brian was trying to protect his mother. And Brian was sending him someone he could work out his frustration with and upon. Maybe...maybe this meant Brian was coming home.

  Jerry’s thoughts and fixed stare were interrupted only by the ringing phone. “Send it to Jerry’s terminal,” Bryant ordered of the little information they had about this Morgan at the moment.

  The screen flashed. “I’ll be damned,” Jerry exclaimed as a copy of her birth certificate popped up. “She really is Morgan McFaye.” Filled with wonder, his sight traveled across the room to a painting of the mythical Morgan le Fey, a witch of impeccable craft.

  Her flawless credit record replaced her birth certificate. A deed to three hundred acres in Alexandria, Ohio. A liquor and hotel license for said property. Another deed to a condo across the street from the Tower popped up, a once very posh hotel gone condo with all the services a five star hotel offers.

  “Clever,” Bryant laughed. “Calling her little brothel a bed and breakfast.”

  Jerry smiled as the screen rolled. No criminal record. No strikes against her therapist’s license. No complaints. “Interesting. If she paid taxes on over a million dollars, how much did she take in under the table?” He flipped through the attachments and found she wrote off everything from satin sheets to arrangements of roses.

  “I think I’ll have a piece of this one,” Bryant said in a swoon.

  Easily Jerry’s expression broke into a smile. “Could be interesting.”

  The information the investigators had at the moment ended there and the screen returned to Morgan’s website.

  “Sexual dysfunction, huh?” Bryant commented as he rubbed at himself.

  “If that’s what they’re calling it these days, who gives a shit?” Jerry retorted.

  “Exactly. You wanna put her on the payroll?”

  Jerry studied the piercing green eyes, the way she held her jaw. “I don’t think this is a woman who works for anyone. Not even an Abernathy. This is a woman who makes up her own rules and you pay to play. I think Brian is trying to divert my attention. I may have to thank him for that.”

  Just then, a young woman wearing a very proper business suit walked in. Neither Jerry nor Bryant noticed that she took off her jacket or slid out of her skirt. They continued to watch the screen even as the bra swirled lazily to the floor and she circled Jerry’s desk to offer those breasts for his satisfaction.

  They noticed her presence only when she gasped, her eyes locked to the screen in fear, it seemed.

  Jerry reached up and grasped a breast, the better to hold his favorite company hooker. “Who is she?”

  The woman shook her head, backed away.

  “Who is she?” Jerry hollered.

  The voice was timid, full of fear. “Mistress Morgan,” the woman cried as she tore away from the screen to look at Jerry.

  “Mistress Morgan?” Jerry said, his smile growing wide.

  The woman’s head shook violently. “Are you thinking of hiring her?”

  Even more curious about that, Jerry said, “I might.”

  “Then you can terminate me,” she pleaded. “I don’t want nothing to do with her.”

  “How do you know her?” Jerry asked.

  “I’ve seen her a few times at an underground club on Front Street.” Easily, she fell to her knees to beg for Jerry’s protection. Her hands slid over her breasts as if to protect them. “Mr. Abernathy,” she gasped, wanting desperately to retain her job, but if it meant working under Morgan, she would happily move on.

  Bryant drooled at the screen as Jerry pulled the woman into his lap and grasped a breast. Easily, Jerry smiled at Bryant. “Stay on it,” Jerry ordered as he placed the woman over his desk, her ass the perfect height to be taken. “I’ve got some things to take care of. Have at it, my brother.” Inside the elevator he turned to see Bryant’s organ already driven deep into the woman as Bryant studied the screen.

  * * * *

  Still shaken, Brian pulled into the garage of his home in Alexandria and slammed the door of his truck. He stomped into the house only to find their pretty little maid, Kitty, at work in the kitchen. “W
here’s Morgan?”

  “She called and said she’d be late tonight. Said she’s making a little progress with that guy you fucked last week. Mouse, what’s the matter?” Kitty cried, terribly concerned to see him in such a terrible state.

  He held out his arms and she flew into them, wrapping herself tightly around him. Her naked breasts flattened against his hard chest. He laid his cheek on the top of her head, adorned by the fine strands of black floral-scented silk, and his hands slid down her back, feeling the softness of baby-fine skin.

  “Mouse, what’s the matter?” Kitty choked, never having seen him so undone.

  He backed away. “I’m alright,” he whispered, and went to the refrigerator for beer.

  “You wanna eat now?”

  He only shook his head and started toward the staircase.

  Quietly, she watched. His usual exuberance was dampened as if a heavy wet blanket were thrown over him. Slowly, he ascended the staircase as if the burden of the weight he carried was impossible to lift.

  Fearing a little, she turned back to the stove to stir the potatoes. “Uhhhohhh,” she whispered, wondering what the hell it could be.

  * * * *

  Jerry’s limo moved effortlessly up Hideaway Hill Drive toward the Abernathy Mansion he called home. What he was feeling was impossible to decide. A scathing anger at his wife for letting his son believe he had created the wounds she currently suffered. A certain shock and heavy disappointment that Brian would be so bold as to storm the bastion of his office and offer an ultimatum such as that. But that was moderated by the excitement of Brian’s obvious concern. That Brian offered an outlet for Jerry’s rage spoke of unmistakable love. That that love might come from someone who was incredulously named Morgan made him swell.

  He entered the house through the rear gardens and unhesitatingly went upstairs only to find his wife’s door locked. He knocked and found a male nurse on duty now.