CHAPTER 49
WOUNDED HANDS
+
Nova barged in through the door and confronted the man preoccupied with a woman sitting on his desk, baring her breasts in front of him. She recoiled slightly at the sight of his shameless hands groping her body, but she tried to mask her revulsion, aware that she had been in the woman's position before, hardly a saint herself.
Ralph Prudence, as ironic as his name was to his real profession, actually had the tactfulness to stop his salacious activity and straightened his suit when he regarded her with a displeased look. He waved a hand to the woman that had been the center of his attention and she skittered away immediately, "What are you doing here?"
Footsteps clambering behind her with a tardiness in its haste. "Sorry, boss, I tried to get her away, but she wouldn't leave."
"I told you I've terminated all our contracts, you're free to go," he addressed Nova and beckoned a finger for his security to get rid of her.
A hand attempted to seize her arm but she fended it away by advancing to the stocky coxcomb. "I'm just really curious, Ralph, three months ago you literally said that I won't be able to escape you, and now you're just letting me go?"
"What? Do you want to go back? You should've been grateful that I would even let you out," he declared, emphasizing his hubris when he stared at her from head to toe in blatant debauchery in his eyes.
She crossed her arms over her chest as she paced in front of him. "You know it got me thinking, how coincidental was your abrupt news of my lay off with my involvement in the Clementine Spencer case that had made national headlines."
His expression grew stiffening. He beckoned a finger to the security that was lurking around to leave them alone and he closed the door behind them. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
She confronted him, placing her hands on top of the table as she leaned in and hovered above his face, her voice holding a dangerous edge on it. She was going out on a limb, but there was no other speculation more warranted than this. "So, how much did they pay you, huh? To tell them I was in Seattle? I know someone came in here to ask you about me. You know something about those fucking bastards that watched her rape and auction, don't you? At least you must have heard of it, you and your sicko for friends. Does the name Adam Murray sound familiar to you?"
He narrowed his eyes, his face distorted into something cunning and it was all that she needed to see to know that she was right. "What are you gonna do, huh, Nova? If I said yes they came here and gave me a hundred thousand to tell them about your relationship with Cameron Crane and that you've been flying in and out of Seattle without me knowing where you were going? Oh, and yes, I've heard of Adam Murray."
Nova sneered at him, grateful for his big mouth at the moment. "Then you've made a mistake."
His own lips curled into a mocking smile. "How so?"
"Because Nicholas Crane wouldn't like that," she whispered to him with a menacing tone.
The complacency in his expression crumbled almost immediately upon hearing his name. Trepidation and nerves replaced it as he stood up to his feet and pulled out his drawer, whipping out a gun on her face. "You wouldn't dare!"
Nova shook her head as she retreated, laughing at him in a taunting manner. She was putting herself in peril's way, but this time she was more confident in her safety. "My expectation of you were low, but wow, I didn't realize that you were this stupid. Really, if you're going to shoot me now or even put one finger on me, it's only going to speed up your doom when Nicholas comes for you. I'm invaluable to him, Ralph. Oh, and did you forget the part where I and his younger brother were literally almost killed because of you? Forget about me, do you know to what length he will go to protect his family?"
"So it was him who gave you the money for your bond?"
"Maybe." She shrugged with an exaggerated self-assuredness.
"Get the fuck away from my office!" he shouted again, his stance trembling.
She flashed him a triumphant smile as she turned around slowly. "Gladly. Better be careful who you got yourself mixed with, Ralph."
"You should watch your back!" he shouted in indignation to her as she turned around and exited the premise.
Nova's hypothesis was such that they knew that Clementine was now free and lived with her brother, Cameron, in South Dakota. They must have been wary about her divulging the whole odious ordeal about her past and made it their mission to prevent her from doing so. However, the biggest obstacle was this: there was the powerful Nicholas Crane who would stop at nothing to retaliate if his brothers were hurt, so they needed to find a more furtive way, which was through the people who could get near Cameron and Clementine, and one of them was Nova. It was easy from then on; she didn't have protection, she was a weak link.
Ralph's men who he dispatched to discover where she had received the money that she posted for her bond found out that she had been making precipitous trips to Seattle and when they came here asking about her, the suspicion was set on her. So they took up the lead and sent those goons to follow her that day with Victor, listening to their quarrel about the presence of the USB drive and the rest was what had unfolded.
Now that supposition was confirmed and she grew even more apprehensive at the thought that they, whoever they were, had the sovereign power in their possession to undertake such an attempt and it wasn't going to be their final one.
She shuddered once she was out of the godforsaken casino palace that also acted as an exterior to the hub for the prostitution ring that she was tangled in for almost five years now. She wanted to call herself a free woman, but the terrifying awareness that settled in within her knew that she was stepping out of this cage just to be ensnared into a bigger one.
Her mind recalled the face of the woman who had been present at Ralph's office upon her unbidden entrance and then she also began to think of Clementine. The vision of them made her stand still on the sidewalk as she whispered a prayer for their security and welfare, her voice drowned out among the bustling city.
Just as she pulled her faux fur coat around herself and began her walk under the flashing lights of Las Vegas' night, she sensed the vibration of her phone inside her purse, uncovering it to find that it was a phone call from the one and only, Nicholas Crane.
She didn't waste a second to press answer. "Hello."
"I need you to meet me at Iris." His masculine voice had never been more than welcome to her ear.
She flitted her gaze around the boisterous streets as if she could spot him somewhere. "When? I'm literally in Vegas right now."
"Then come at once," he instructed and hung up the phone on her.
She pursed her lips at his peremptoriness but heeded his demand as she hailed for a taxi.
+
Iris was packed with people and a copious amount of alcohol when she entered the place. It was odd to think about it, how insensitive the fact that it was being opened knowing the condition of everything, but Nova saw it that Nicholas decided to do it because he needed a decoy. In a way, it kept the insolent narrative that surrounded him running, positioning him at the center of attention of those deleterious magazines and newspapers that fed on the destruction of his family. He rather had them write about the contemptuousness of his person instead.
She managed to avoid having to jostle around among the crowd when she mentioned her identity to the bouncer at the entrance who escorted her straight to the boss' quarter on the second floor. It was quieter up above but as equally as bewildering with the purple lights dazzling against the backdrop of deliberate darkness.
She entered his private chamber without bothering to knock, earning a cautious glare from the bouncer as she opened the door to find the man himself, hovering in front of his desk, his broad back taut, his posture tall and ominous. The light was brighter and stable in this area but somehow, with him being present, the ambience became anomalously darker.
He turned towards her, leaning his body against the edge of the table and she had never wanted to embrace a man as strongly as she wished to slap him. He was clearly drunk if the empty bottles on his desk weren't proof enough, and the bleary eyes, and the disarray of blond hair that he tied haphazardly behind his neck, and the shambles of his white shirt that was unfastened on his chest. How long had he been holed up in here?
"Where have you been?" she asked as she kept watchful eyes on his movement.
He didn't answer her question but veered it somewhere else. "I... I just... how is Cam?"
"He wouldn't eat but he's been working on his appetite," she said, with an intentional emphasis that made her tone sound vexed. "What about you?"
"Can you tell Vic to not worry about me? I'll be back soon." He avoided the question directed to him again.
"And when is that?" she didn't mean to be so abrasive towards him. She understood that there was always a sorrowful chance that he might never be able to recover, but she also couldn't see him like this, abandoning care, plunging into a deep isolation, poisoning his insides.
He dropped his eyes and picked up one of the small containers of pills among several on the desk that Nova only noticed just now. He dangled it up for her to see better before throwing it back down carelessly, tottering forward to the plush, dark blue sofa that was placed in the middle of the room.
She strutted towards the pills and plucked them for her to inspect. Almost all of them were half-empty. "Nicholas, what is this?"
"Some drugs to fix me," he garbled as he launched himself into the lounge with a sigh, his eyes hazy and half shut. He fixed his position as he stretched his legs out, sprawling over the expanse of the seat and placing his head on the armrest. "I'm a model patient now. I'd do anything the doctor asks."
Nova didn't know what to say, words escaped her as she bit her lips to study his slumped figure. She placed the tube back on the table along with her purse and coat.
"She said she might try an electrocompulsive therapy on me, but she needs to consult some other fucking doctors. I don't fucking care, I would let her drill a hole to my brain if she wants to."
"What is it?" she slowly approached him, reaching out her hand to his arm and sank on the edge of the seat beside his torso.
He brought his hand up to his face and covered his eyes. The lights must be agitating him or it was sadness and frustration and dejection. "I couldn't fucking remember, Nova."
She trailed, "remem-remember what happened to her?"
"Yes," he confirmed brokenly.
He jerked his hand down, revealing his red-rimmed eyes. "Yeah, no matter how hard I tried, there's nothing."
"Maybe it's the trauma..."
"Trauma." He snorted bitterly. "How pathetic—"
She brought her hand to cup one of his cheeks, his skin feverish under her touch, the stubble on his jaw pricked her palm. "No, you are not pathetic for having trauma, Nicholas. Victor has it and do you think he's weak?"
He averted his gaze away from her but allowed her thumb to stroke his cheek tenderly. "No..."
"Right? It could turn people into a lot of things, but it's never weak."
He shook his head wistfully as his eyes wandered into the ceiling. "But I could never be of use to her."
"I believe she would never hold you accountable for that," she said in circumspection but he couldn't find consolation in her words as he sat up straight and dropped his head on his hands.
"No, there has to be something. Something that my fucking dad did to me." He scrambled to get on his feet but Nova attempted to hold him down. "And my mom. To think that she was... I always thought that she was a fucking angel."
"Where are you going?"
He swayed on his feet, laden in the influence of stupor and frenzy. "I wanna see her. I wanna see my sister. I wanna save her."
She shook her head as she grabbed his arm again. "No, you don't want to see her right now. You will only break her heart if you show up like this. You won't be able to save her."
He whipped to her suddenly and became the one who captured her by the shoulders. His eyes were wild, tear-streaked, fractured. "Then tell me! Tell me how I can do it! How can I live, Nova? My whole life I wished that she's dead! I wanted to kill her myself! I held a fucking gun to her head the first time I went to Cam's house! How can I fucking live knowing that I fantasized about blowing her brains out when all she has ever done is trying to protect me?! Protect Cam and Vic?! I will die... if she is going away now I will..."
Words evaporated from his mouth without him ever being able to give it a voice. He trailed, nonplussed, like a child who was left behind and couldn't recite the address to his home and forgot his parents' telephone number. All that he knew was the name of his sister that had accidentally let go of his hand among the crowd, but who would have known her?
Nova lifted her hands and encircled it around his neck, wrapping his trembling body towards her. "We'll find a way."
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as he declared, "I'm going to hunt down those people that hurt her."
She wouldn't deny him her approval. She would never. "Yes, and I can help you. I know where to begin."
+
"So, doctor, you have no idea at all of the background of Clementine before all of this?" the prosecutor commenced.
"No," Dr. Singh said briefly, wary of saying too much or too little.
"Only the murders she committed? Not even the rape case?"
"Only the murders," she confirmed as she glanced at Clementine's direction. She was still unable to figure out her own sentiment regarding the turn of events that had unfolded. Had she failed Clementine in all of this? Was she blameworthy for this incident?
"Why is that?"
"It is not very uncommon for patients to have obscure backgrounds, some of them remain in the system for decades that it would be hard to trace back their origin, add that to the fact that they might not have any relatives that would acknowledge them," she explained, recalling the many faces under her care in the hospital that had practically became ghosts to society.
"And when did this rape case begin to make its presence?" the prosecutor inquired, there was skepticism in her tone that rubbed the doctor in the wrong way.
"I got a call from Cameron who informed me that something had happened to Clementine that upon being sedated, she fought and screamed, then a word "dad" slipped out of her."
"But when she was asked to explain, was she able to?"
"No." The pressure sank on her, knowing that this prosecutor would take this one detail to her advantage.
"And did Mr. Cameron Crane or his two other brothers knew of any rape case before all of this?"
"No, but they could recall some details that are precarious. As a child they might not be able to understand the implications behind them, but now that they are older, they found it odd that Clementine would often be secluded in their parents' bedroom with her father and another man, while their mother was outside keeping the boys away from her."
"Yet Mr. Cameron Crane had clearly stated that he understood those occasions as Clementine's therapy sessions and those men were doctors," she argued.
Dr. Singh found herself leaning back slightly. "It would be so easy to lie to a child."
+
Clementine admired the fact that Nova appeared to be most noteworthy and salient among all in the courtroom, and the attendance of her in the witness stand just pronounced it even more. She wore an unimposing all-white suit but her flaming red hair that was braided to one side was conspicuous, and when the forceful prosecutor confronted her, she held her chin high.
"Please, state your name."
"My name is Hae-Won Kim."
"Ms. Kim, how did you come about knowing Clementine Spencer's identity?"
"Nicholas wanted me to find out about his business," she responded.
"What is your relationship with Mr. Nicholas Crane?"
"Objection!" Shawn suddenly interrupted by standing up, causing Clementine to flinch on her seat beside him. "Relevance."
"I have to determine her motive in uncovering this supposed rape case," she argued as she turned halfway to face the judge and the defendant's attorney.
The white-haired judge appeared thoughtful for a few seconds, before he nodded in resolve. "Overruled."
Shawn sighed and sat back as the prosecutor held a triumphant look on her face.
"Ms. Kim?" she refocused on Nova who looked like she was trying so hard not to roll her eyes at her.
"We're friends," she answered, her eyes skimming through the room as if to locate the man in question who was never there, before it fell to Cameron, and her gaze promptly softened, but he only had his eyes fixated on Clementine after her surprised wince.
"Friends? Are you also friends with Mr. Cameron Crane?"
"Yes."
"How did you, as a friend, expect to gain anything from Mr. Cameron Crane when he didn't even confide anything to his brothers about his undertaking in his sister's guardianship? How does this dynamic work between you?"
She pursed her lips and inhaled a deep breath in an attempt to keep her composure. "Like I said, we're friends."
"So, by the time that you found out about Ms. Spencer's presence and you revealed it to Nicholas and Victor, you had crossed Cameron as your friend, and is that when you began to come up with her supposed rape case? Was it your way of making things right with him? Mr. Cameron Crane is certainly a valuable friend to have."
"Objection." Shawn stood up again, this time with apparent exasperation. "Leading."
"Sustained," the judge assented. "Mrs. Eames, please choose your words carefully."
She nodded in obligation, although her expression remained complacent. "So, Ms. Kim, you decided to dig deep into Clementine's background without any of her brothers knowing?"
Nova didn't try to hide her own annoyance as she answered brusquely. "At the time, yes."
"Did someone ask you to do it like how Mr. Nicholas Crane had done before?"
"No."
"So it was all out of your goodwill?"
"Objection," Shawn drawled without even bothering to get up this time.
"Mrs. Eames," the judge warned sternly, without having to add more elaboration at the seemingly apparent offense.
"Yes, because I can't just stay silent when I'm aware of something as horrific as that!" Nova still asserted, even though she had the right not to answer, having had enough of the prosecutor's relentless barraging.
"How come it only surfaced when you began to involve yourself in their family history then? Are you sure you're not making it up for attention?"
Nova couldn't believe her ears. "What kind of attention would you think I would gain from this?! People thinking that I am a liar and a fame chaser?!"
"But—" The prosecutor wanted to remonstrate again, but Shawn beat her into it.
"Oh, come on! What is this?!" he protested, standing up into his full height and lifted his hands, unaccepting of the offense and affront.
"Mrs. Eames, this is a final warning!" the judge admonished sternly.
The prosecutor nodded in compliance, but still, her face was unrepentant as she said, "Understood. No more questions."
+
"Speak to me in a language I can hear.
Humor me before I have to go.
Deep in thought I forgive everyone,
As the cluttered street greets me once again.
I know I'll make it.
Love can last forever.
- The Smashing Pumpkins