BILLIONAIRE Island: Idyllic Mischief (3 page)

Blood was still dripping heavily, all over her best Hotel Collection linen and Brad yanked the sheet untucked and pressed it hard to his wrist to staunch the flow. Holding the Egyptian cotton tight, he kicked off his shoes furiously.

“There is no way I am sleeping in this bed beside you tonight,” Indie said, coldly, in a white hot fury at my impotence in this partnership.

“Good then get out. Why don't you get out of my fucking house and fucking life completely?”

“Fine. But tonight, you aren't sleeping here,” Indie shot back.

Brad's eyes narrowed to slits as he momentarily ran through his options for vengeance.

He grabbed her arm and yanked it so it popped in pain and she was sure it had emerged from its socket when she could get no purchase to push herself up. Pulling her body by the one loosened limb, he dragged her off the bed and she stumbled to one knee, trying to find a footing as he pulled her half on her knees, half stumbling along on her crooked feet back through the bedroom door. Across the hall, he shoved the bathroom door open and yanked her through, bashing her head into the door jamb and grazing her back across the sharp wood.

With one hand he pushed her hard into the basin, pushing her head down and holding her body still with the force of his drink-sodden body against her, grinding her stomach into the edge of the china bowl. With the other hand he opened the cabinet and yanked something out. The sound of squirting from a can, he pushed her pajama bottoms down and the squirting sound again mixed with the cold dispersal of crème into her crack.

In one move, Bradley unzipped his pants and rammed into her. She reached out both arms screaming no, then just screaming as the pain in her shoulder seared through her. He was panting and groaning and he shoved his cock in and out of her dry cavern. Then he pulled it all the way out and she bent further with relief that it was done. Then she realized, and the scream was soul-piercing as he rammed into her asshole. He had missed that tightly puckered entrance with the crème and spritzed most of it into her pussy. The pain of those walls collapsing was unbearable. He rammed into her until he finally groaned with relief, pulled out and zipped himself back up.

He lifted his wife like a doll, gouging at her torso with his raging fingers, every bit of burning anger channeling through those angry prods, he mangled her over the edge of the tub to crash down on the solid iron, banging her head and hip joint as she landed on the bottom.

Brad stood over her, eyes blazing as though what had happened was entirely her fault, then turned and left the small room, slamming the door closed with a final statement. The noise of him adjusting a chair or some other device in the handle to barricade her in the bathroom was the last thing she heard before everything went silent.

Chapter Three

The searing pain through her stomach was such that she had never experienced. The cut of a knife from deep within and the agony of life wrenching away from its support system. She didn't think that much blood could have been held inside a uterus, but it came pouring out in great gashes with each mind-blowing contraction of agony in her core. Every time she thought it was finally over and collapsed curled up in the unforgiving bathtub, the surge of pain welled even more strongly and her body regurgitated another swell of blood and mucus between her legs.

Indie was too weak to even call out for help, although it would have been pointless. Brad would be passed out rock solid for hours, not even New York City sirens stirred him when he was drunk. Certain she was going to die alone in that tub and he'd discover her when he finally came to and remembered to unincarcerate her. At least she wasn't totally alone. She would die along with the baby she'd decided that afternoon to welcome completely into her life, with or without Brad's involvement.

She came around in solid agony down one side, from curling up fetal in the bath and the solid metal had compressed her wrenched muscles and joints into a mass of bruised human remains. Outside, she heard Brad, skulking around the apartment in morning-after silent rage.

“Where are you?” he shouted down the hall. “Answer me. Nowhere to hide. I know you tried to freaking kill me while I slept.”

She gurgled a whisper of ironic laughter. Just who had tried to kill whom? But she had no energy, not one iota of strength would muster in the beaten body, shattered from inside and out. Then to add the ultimate insult to the injuries, her stomach contracted and heaved, with massive effort as though forcing an alien bodysnatcher up through the windpipe, managed to retch a cup of orange green bile into the bath all over her hair and sleepshirt. Her body shook in giant shudders, but she was too heavy to lift her half battered head off the bottom of the bath as she hurled every drop of viscous substance remaining in the digestive tract. What the fuck? Could this life get any worse?

The sound of her puking alerted Brad to her whereabouts and he unhooked the restraint on the door handle.
Please just let us out of this right now before I have to deal with a raging husband.
No luck, he threw back the door with a curse ready on his lips and Indie knew the tub must have looked like attempted double homicide by his reaction.

“Jesus fucking Christ, no, no, Jesus, Indie, India answer me. Oh God, what happened? Did I do this? Did I hurt you, Oh God India please answer me. Don't leave me.”

Indie didn’t know whether this was punishment or a sign from the Universe but she knew right then that was what she had to do.

“Just get me an ambulance,” she croaked. While they waited for emergency services to take their New York sweet time to arrive, contrite instead of silent-rage Brad smoothed her brow with a cold facecloth and fed her ice chips to suck on when she was unable to lift her head enough to drink from a glass. He was throbbing with fear about what would happen to him for his attempted murder, or what he thought was attempted murder as Indie had no strength and less desire to tell him the truth. Even trying to open her mouth hurt like Hades. Brad called his office right there in the bathroom and told the girl he was going to be in late, his wife was not well. Just as he had done a dozen times before, when he woke up too hungover to get to the office in time. His co-workers must have thought she was a major pain-in-the-ass hypochondriac demanding shrew of a wife but Indie no longer cared.

The two paramedics looked like members of the Russian mafia, all shaved heads and neck tattoos, but they shot her full of something that dissipated every tiny prick of pain onto a floating cloud of bliss and she was finally relieved from the pain of being inside her head.

Unfortunately, she eventually came back into that head and found her husband seated beside her in the hospital room. Indie was hooked up to an IV unit and wished there was some button she could press to escape the agony roiling around her body.

“Hey, baby, how are you feeling?” Brad took her wan hand in his. “Indie, I am so, so sorry about the baby, I had no idea, why didn't you tell me?”

“Seriously?” Indie muttered, her mouth too dried up to speak and the words catching in her throat anyways.
He is really going to make this my fault as usual, some excuse to justify his actions.

Over the next two weeks Indie heard every promise she'd ever heard and then some. Brad moved to a hotel, or with a friend, she didn't care. He called constantly saying the last straw had hit the camel's back and all the usual useless words. He was absolutely going to mend his ways and stop letting the drink take him over. Indie didn't even bother to ask what help he would get, because he had to know he couldn’t do it alone by force of will.

She'd lost enough weight and more to go back to work, even if she required a little extra make-up to cover her pallid complexion. Being too thin was as bad as being too fat in her business so Indie took the seldom enjoyed opportunity to eat all the cheesecake and chocolate and ice cream she usually rationed, until she came back up to the correct measurements. It was too late for Paris and Italy, they had replaced her for those shows but for London they hadn't found anyone and she was welcome to make that trip. She toughed out the last two weeks in her marriage with Brad's promises falling on distant ears.

London in the fall was lovely. The shows were held at the exhibition center in Earl's Court, but they stayed in a hotel in the West End, close to the nightlife for entertaining clients they were there to woo. No longer pregnant and still slightly underweight, Indie indulged in all the cocktails she fancied and flirted with every client that came on to her. Her boss, the owner of the line, was well pleased with her dedication to his business and gave her a Burberry handbag from the flagship store on Regent Street.

The day for Sasha's arrival into London came and went and Indie heard nothing from her. Reluctantly, she called her mother, even though Sasha had said she'd stay at The Sanderson rather than at her mother's mansion apartment in Maida Vale.

“Hello Indiana, long time no hear,” Sasha's mother said as greeting. Indie wasn't sure whether she meant her or her daughter and recalled the many times her mother had tagged along with them to nightclubs, wearing a transparent black lace jumpsuit, or other age-inappropriate outfit in an attempt to be one of the girls. “No I don't know where Sasha is. She rarely keeps me informed of her movements anymore.”

Dead end there then, and as the week in London drew to a close, Indie sadly gave up on her friend and considered staying in London trying to model in that city rather than return to New York where it would be tough to finance her own apartment and she'd have to either go back to living with a room mate or engage in an alimony battle with her ex-spouse.

“You have a message, Ms Malone,” the cute receptionist in black shirt open one button too low and snug-fitting black pants smiled at her. Fuck he was hot and he knew it, there was something so decadent about him he managed to make even the plain black leather belt holding up his slim pants seem raunchy.

The message was from Sasha who had called the hotel that afternoon.

Something came up. Can't make it to London. Got you tix to come here Friday. Collect at British Airways office Regent Street. Can you bring my boots, saddle and Dom Perignon.

Indie laughed at the demand for classic French label champagne- only the best would do for our Sash and the excess baggage cost could go suck. It was really sweet of her to make it up to her for not showing for their girly rendezvous by sending a ticket to go down there but she could hardly trip off to some far-flung island. Sheesh, most people had no idea where Mauritius even was. Although Indie had heard of it as a favorite spot for honeymooners, when Sasha first disappeared, she had to look it up on a map to be sure of its exact location and discovered the tiny dot all alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, next closest landfall- Madagascar.

No, she couldn't disappear into the Indian Ocean, or could she? Finished up in London while the rest of the crew continued on into Europe and with no idea where her life was taking her next, what better than two weeks of sand, palm trees and lashings of Dom. The island was as far away from New York as it was possible to get without a spaceship. Maybe it would complete her healing and give her the strength she was going to need to officially separate from Bradley, who was still using any ruse to beg her to come back to him and refusing to agree to divorce.

Indie had to get to the show halls before the British Airways ticket office on Regent Street opened and was still out entertaining long after it had closed. It wasn't until the last day after the clients had returned home satiated from a week of parties, she found time to run around Knightsbridge, picking up the clothes and leather goods Sasha required for her dressage or equipage or whatever horsey activity was keeping her busy. It wasn't until check out that she zoomed up to the airline store and grabbed the ticket. And only in the taxicab on the way to Heathrow that she actually checked it to make sure the date was good for that day. Sasha could be easily distracted at times.

“What??? Holy crap.” The cabbie's eyes darted to the rear view mirror, alert for signs of 'aggro' as the Brits called it. He looked as though he could quell any aggravation in a flash- his neck was wider than Indie's waistline. “Sorry, hi,” she stuttered. “My friend, she sent me tickets to come visit and two weeks has stretched to three months. Have you ever been to Mauritius?”

“Nah, bit swank for me, Mree-Shus, 'tho I reckon the Mississ 'ould like it. Tenerife's our island, same resort every year. All-inclusive, drinks an' all.”

Indie spent the twenty-hour flight riddled with nerves about immigration at the airport when they touched down. Would they allow entry to a lone woman without sufficient income to support her lifestyle on a high-priced luxury island designed for high-flying luxuriant couples in love? As the lights came down on the cabin and the geezer beside her began to snore loudly, mouth hanging open, she felt waves of sadness rush around her. What was she thinking going to the honeymooner's island? Being surrounded by happy loved-ups starting out on their together foreverness full of confidence would only point the cruel finger of failure straight at her. And when she wriggled onto her side, trying to get comfortable in the airline seat, the remnants of bone bruises from the bath tub served to remind her.

She breezed through immigration without a single raised eyebrow, through customs despite being weighed down with a ton of gifts and virtually an entire cellar of Dom Perignon and through the deserted airport out into the paparazzi glare of the sun. A solid wall of Indians pressed at the fence holding them back from the arrivals building- no wonder the airport had been empty inside- and began shouting at her, waving signs. Indie scanned the crowd, through the crushed humanity craning at the fence as though for the last spot on a plane leaving a war zone, looking for her friend who had promised to meet the plane. Nowhere. She couldn't have picked out her own mother in that mess of faces. Now what? She hadn't made a back-up plan of what to do if Sash didn't show and didn't have an address for her. She looked at the crowd hoping for a face with a clue, a sign for a decent hotel.

“Indie, over here, hey girlfriend.” There she was, head and shoulders taller than anyone else as she arrived at the back of the throng, semaphoring her arms above her head.

They fell into each others arms, laughing and excited to see each other after way too long. No phones or net could make up for actually being face to face with your bestie.

“Jesus, it's hot,” Indie said, feeling like an Amish in her fall city clothes beside Sasha who wore a tight black tank top and a tiny short skirt that was barely a swathe of bright printed silk clinging around her tiny hips like a sarong and exposing her dark brown legs as lithe and long as the palm tree trunks all around.

“What do you expect in the tropics? Why the hell are you wearing boots?” She laughed. “No don't tell me, lets get you in the car out of this damn rabble and get some of those clothes off. Did you bring the champagne?”

“Would I dare arrive without it?”

“Good, 'cos I've got my last bottle on ice waiting for us.”

They piled all the luggage into the back of a surprisingly small hatchback and Sasha set off across the island. Sasha chattered about her horse-riding, obviously it had become the latest passion bordering on obsession, while Indie gazed out the window at the passing vista of endless African plains punctuated solely by the odd black tree covered with flame-red blooms. They were called flamboyant, Sasha told her. Perfect description. Gentle bosomy hills rose now and then to alleviate the flatness and a soft warm breeze filled the car with sweetness.

“That's the sugar cane,” Sasha told her when she mentioned the candy drenched air. “You're going to love it here, everything is good enough to eat.” Indie couldn't miss the meaningful look she shot her while trying to keep her eyes focused on the narrow road. Every now and then, an ancient Morris Minor coming the other direction, undercarriage grazing the tarmac from the seventeen Indians hanging from its side by the sheer will of three gripping fingertips. The bottleneck in the road reduced to squirt-size, the battered car swerved at the last moment out of its head on collision with them, back into its own lane.

“Crap, why do they do that?” Indie breathed relief as they hair missed another rusting heap.