A foul taste had started at the back of my mouth. “She didn’t want other people to have an effect on her. Unless she chose it.”
He nodded. “She’d been effected, nonstop, by her father since before she could remember. It was the first glimmer I had of the truth, but I was too young to understand. The hell that she went through day in and day out wasn’t something a thirteen-year-old kid from a happy, reasonably well-adjusted family could begin to comprehend. And the thing was, Elizabeth didn’t consider it hell. For her, it was all normal operating procedure. The air she breathed.”
“When did you understand? That her father was abusing her?”
“Not for a long time. Not until after we were married. Elizabeth always avoided the topic of Noah. But he was always there, a brewing storm on the horizon.”
“When we were young, Noah tried to separate us. He’d forbid her from seeing me. I was a thorn in his side, the one thing he couldn’t erase from Elizabeth’s consciousness. Although I’ll bet he tried like hell to do just that with that damn Analyzer of his.
“When I got to high school, Elizabeth and I would be together every chance we got. We used to meet in this old, unused stairway behind the gym. Sometimes, she’d escape out her window at night, and I’d do the same. She’d pick me up in her car, and we’d drive aimlessly. Or park. Anything, as long as we were together.”
He paused here, the silence making me see it all. The beautiful girl and the young boy speeding through a starlit night, their faces alight and alive as they thirstily drank in the rare intoxicant of freedom.
“Because he couldn’t completely control her when it came to seeing me, Madaster eventually sent her away to private school to separate us. But Elizabeth and I managed to remain in contact for years, all through the rest of high school, and then college. When we eventually announced our engagement, when I was twenty-two and she was twenty-four, Noah seemed to resign himself. He welcomed me into the family with open arms.”
“You didn’t believe him, though?”
“I wanted to. But no, I never trusted Noah. He’d made the mistake of showing me his true colors early on. He’d never bothered to charm me, and that was his mistake. To me, he was my enemy from day one. No matter how supportive and benevolent he began to act toward me, I understood on some elemental level that the only thing that mattered to him was Elizabeth, and that he considered me a barrier to her. Or at least a partial one.”
“You didn’t know at that time of the engagement Elizabeth’s father had been… ”
“Abusing her?” Evan asked when I faded off. “It wasn’t a matter of had been, Anna. Elizabeth and Noah never stopped their incestuous relationship. It continued from when she was nine years old to—presumably—just before she died.”
My mouth dropped open. “But how could Noah possibly force her into something like that when she was an adult?”
He shook his head. “Noah didn’t have to force Elizabeth into anything. She went to him willingly. The thing you have to understand is that Elizabeth was Noah’s greatest triumph, on so many levels. But one of the main reasons he coveted and prized her so passionately was that she represented his greatest victory. She was his main test subject for that Analyzer he’d created, the lie detector that was really a means for mental programming. He’d warped her since she was a child, even since before he’d first raped her. When Elizabeth went to him, she genuinely believed she did so of her own free will. Why? Because he’d brainwashed her until she didn’t know the difference anymore between her own desires and his.”
Chapter Seventeen
The surface of my skin seemed to sting, as though I’d received some chemical burn. I noticed Evan’s narrowed eyed gaze on me.
/> “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m sorry to have involved you in something so ugly.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” I hissed, feeling vulnerable from his knowing stare. “I just want the truth.”
He nodded, his face smoothing into a mask. Then he continued with his story, his manner reminding me of a man walking his last steps to the gallows.
“I never fully answered your earlier question, about whether or not I knew when Elizabeth and I got engaged about Noah’s abuse, about the true nature of their relationship. The answer is no. I didn’t know it consciously, anyway. It’s hard to imagine something like that, when you don’t have any prior template into which to shape the thoughts. Over time, the outline became clearer and clearer though, even though it was years before Elizabeth admitted to me that he’d been abusing her—but of course, Elizabeth didn’t couch it in those terms.
“But even before Elizabeth’s admission, there was always a vibe that Noah gave off with Elizabeth that made me highly uneasy. It was proprietorship. I got the message, loud and clear. I may become her husband, but that title was a far second to that of Father. And Elizabeth did her part to fan those flames. She’d be flirtatious and knowing with both of us, in turn. Noah didn’t seem to mind. He saw how much it bothered me, when Elizabeth paid attention solely to him. But why should it bother him if she occasionally made me her sole focus? He was confident about to whom she belonged.”
I looked away, feeling nauseated.
Evan noticed. “It’s not a pleasant story to hear. It certainly wasn’t pleasant living it, either.”
“I’m listening. Go on,” I said, avoiding his stare.
He exhaled heavily.
“Noah offered to assist me in setting up my first fund when I finished college. I had serious doubts about accepting his patronage. I didn’t trust him. But at the same time, I wanted… no, I needed to become established if I wanted to marry Elizabeth. The only thing I had to support us was a very modest trust fund that my parents had given me. It wasn’t enough, not if I wanted to give Elizabeth even a little of the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. So in the end, I agreed to have Noah help me.”
“You wanted Elizabeth that much? That you agreed to work with a man that you claim is right on par with the devil?” I asked, anger in my tone.
His spine stiffened. “I don’t need you to tell me I was stupid, Anna. It didn’t take me long to recognize it would be an epic mistake, aligning myself with him. Not just potentially for my career. For my life. My identity. Noah’s influence was toxic from the outset.
“At one point, he suggested I make a big splash with my first clients, using their money to invest outside the original parameters and specifications of the fund in order to spread the word of the fund’s success. He urged me to invest in a risky hedge fund in order to make enormous profits. I refused, recognizing the danger to my customers’ investments. When I wouldn’t do what he advised, Noah threatened to withdraw all his support. But this time, I managed to avoid the trap. I was adamant. Thankfully, I was able to make the fund a success despite Noah cutting off his patronage and refusing any further support.
“Noah’s aim was to get a hook in me all along. It was a means for blackmail, a standard operating procedure for him. If the hedge fund gamble failed—which there was a high likelihood of it doing—I’d be forced to rely on Noah to cover the losses. Do that, or face financial failure and ruin and possible federal prosecution. If that gamble didn’t fail, then the next one he suggested would have. He had the power of odds on his side. Plus, he had the threat of exposure if I stepped out of line at any time. If I played his first game, that is. When I refused the bait at the outset, he was furious,” Evan said, his speech clipped now. His eyes had gone hard and silvery. I understood that the encounter he described had been a sort of watershed moment for him. At twenty-two, he’d stood up to a formidable, more experienced, and ruthless enemy. And he’d won the battle.