billion book
Chapter 8
For Amelia, the lazy downshift into autumn felt like emerging from a beautiful dream. Warm, sunbaked months had drifted by in an enchanted haze with Philip. Their connection only blossomed richer and deeper with each passing week.
Gone were the days of pinching pennies for ramen noodles and thrift store excursions. Philip lavished his new muse with indulgences and experiences she could scarcely comprehend – helicopter rides to private vineyard tours, luxurious spa weekends at secluded resorts, the entire kaleidoscope of opulence.
Even more precious than the material spoils were the intimate moments Philip carved out for just the two of them. Dimly lit poetry readings where they huddled together, hands intertwined. Spontaneous dancing amid living room furniture pushed aside for their amusement. Lingering kisses that gradually banished the world beyond their private bubble.
Philip proved to be an insatiable pupil, devouring Amelia’s freshest artworks and perspective on the world like a man wandering from darkness into brilliant light. She quickly discovered his father’s ultimatum looming over them mattered little – the lucrative family business could burn for all Philip seemed to care in her presence.
“When I’m with you, nothing else holds importance,” he whispered fervently into the curve of her neck one evening, bodies intertwined on his palatial bed. “You make living feel vivid and charged in a way I didn’t know was possible before.”
Rather than dismissing such grandiose declarations as empty flattery, Amelia sensed the raw sincerity behind Philip’s words. Just as she opened his eyes to the poetry of everyday beauty, he awoke foreign hungers within her own guarded soul – to embrace life’s fleeting ecstasy without overthinking, to submerge herself in passions without restraint.
In Philip’s heated gaze, Amelia saw kaleidoscopic reflections of her own metamorphosis from timid dreamer into rapturous hedonist. She blossomed brighter and bolder with each achingly romantic date night, wading into new artistic depths with Philip’s doting encouragement.
Their bond transcended physical desire, graduning from lustful trysts into an entire language of devotion articulated through sculpted lines and emotive brush strokes. Amelia welcomed her generous benefactor inside her world just as he beckoned her into his glittering sphere. Two souls speaking without filters, boundaries blurring with each day that slipped into night into luminous dawn once more.
However, not everyone basked in the couple’s effervescent joy…
Cambel watched the glossy tabloids with shrewd speculation, stone visage carved from displeasure. Blurry paparazzi images captured Philip and his new paramour at gallery openings, concerts in the park, even jetting off to Miami on one lavish resort weekend.
With silent menace, her gaze pierced the nectared haze surrounding her stepson and this unconventional interloper seducing him down primrose paths. No true Waller scion should succumb to such blatant infatuation. Pragmatic matches cemented power, while romantic indiscretions only dissolved legacies.
But simply airing her displeasure would provoke Philip further into defiance out of spite. Cambel required a more subtle fulcrum to pry this bohemian hanger-on from her son’s rapt orbit. Indulgences bought temporary companionship. Only family bonds and duty endured.
Her gaze sharpened to diamond focus while scanning the background intel her hired private eye had already gathered on this Amelia Monroe. The pieces gradually slid together into an intriguing mosaic…
With a few commands barked to her assistant, Cambel orchestrated a series of rumblings in the right whisper circles. The dry kindling was laid for an inferno to ignite. All it required was one well-positioned spark at the optimal moment. Her hand hovered over the physics, patient as a viper awaiting its opportune strike.
The occasion manifested the day before Philip’s 31st birthday gala. Amelia was headed to pick up dry cleaning while Philip finalized bash preparations. Always conscientious, she removed her over-sized shades and pulled her mane of tangled curls into a simple bun before dashing into the laundromat.
Hence, the aspiring artist had no obstructions shielding her as the paparazzo Cambel’s money retained ambushed Amelia on the sidewalk outside twenty minutes later. Camera flashes detonated in rapid succession while the seasoned muckraker barked invasive queries about her sordid juvenile record from over a decade ago.
“Ms. Monroe! Is it true you have a sealed criminal history from your mid-teens? Care to comment on the circumstances? Are rumors accurate about your time in juvie for theft?”
Yanked violently from her chore daze, Amelia gaped and spluttered at the barrage. Her wide hazel eyes whipped about, frantically searching for an exit strategy from the attack. Only hustled crowds brushed past, faces averted to avoid a metastasizing scene.
“I… hey, what are you talking about?” she finally rallied in a flustered outburst. “You’ve got no right accosting people on the street like this! That’s private information…”
The seasoned tabloid hound cut her off ruthlessly, sensing blood in the proverbial waters. “So you admit there was an arrest record expunged after your 18th birthday? Potential jail time in a juvenile facility? Don’t the Wallers deserve to know about your companion’s checkered background before fully integrating you into their inner circle?”
Clutching the dry cleaning to her chest like a shield, Amelia could only gape in stunned horror. That long-buried chapter from her untethered adolescence had repeatedly threatened resurfacing to sour her budding art career or relationships over the years. But she’d worked tirelessly to put it behind her through sheer perseverance and atonement.
Until now. One shadowy leak from the past abruptly transformed her greatest joy into a point of vulnerability, leaving her flailing off balance.
The photographer pressed his attack, practically salivating for details. “We’ve got copies of the court-sealed records already in our possession, Ms. Monroe. You can either confirm the alleged stint at Metropolitan Juvenile for us, or we’ll proceed Publishing the redacted incident reports ourselves, no filter. Choice is yours.”
Cornered, Amelia floundered for a lifeline. Philip was already making her head swim considering their future. How could she blindside him now with these ancient demons crawling back through the muck?
Cambel’s calculated trap snapped shut with perfect precision. One delicate scandal lever activated to inject instability into Philip’s bliss through the most ruthless manner – humiliating his lover into retreat before airing the family’s soiled linens in public. Mortification and isolation would drive the final wedges surer than any coercion or threats.
All Amelia could choke out in reply was an anguished, “No… no further comment.”
With her panicked escape down the sidewalk, the flashes erupted with renewed vigor. The hounds now possessed the first drops of blood initiating a brutal feeding frenzy. It would take great force of will and loyalty to withstand the merciless scrutiny about to engulf this young woman’s shattered peace until Cambel’s victory was absolute.
No one defied the Waller family matriarch for long without severe repercussions. But perhaps this warning shot would discipline Philip back into wary obedience before all was lost.
After all, possessing power and status always required sacrifices of those who wandered too far outside their proper stations. That was the unbreakable law Cambel enforced to preserve their dynasty.
Now the dance had begun, whether Amelia or Philip embraced the choreography or not yet…
Philip would be awaiting his lover’s return from errands with celebration champagne chilling, utterly oblivious to the turmoil already massing on their doorstep like an oncoming hurricane. He’d have scant time to appreciate their tranquil Eye before the brutal winds of exposure scattered all into disarray.
And then came the hardest choice of all for Amelia – risk being swept away by those tempests and shadows of her own making…
… or find the inner courage and conviction to stand resolute with Philip when the first deluge hit. Whatever the unforeseen consequences of honesty, she could no longer hide behind false purity. Not from phantoms of the past raised to destroy the future she now cherished.
Their fledgling romance and devotion hung suspended in uneasy purgatory. At any moment, the first powerful gale announcing Amelia’s reckoning could shatter their bond into fractured shards. Or quite possibly fortify them together into unbreakable diamond forever.
All rested on one burning question as dusk settled over the city – would she bear her scarred truth to Philip first, or let the deception’s fangs strike him just as lethally as Cambel intended?
The die had been cast. Only Amelia’s next fateful choice would determine if love conquered all… or abandoned them both to the howling abyss her past’s phantoms beckoned.
The fresh fall breeze conveyed a touch of progress in the air as Philip paced the length of his penthouse suite, mind dashing.
Amelia would be here any moment, and he was unable to shake the inclination that their relationship was roosted on a cliff. Since those condemning paparazzi photographs surfaced, bringing up Amelia’s disturbed past, an undetectable fracture had framed between them.
The shadows of her high school careless activities cast a pall over their once-delighted sentiment. Soon after that snare, Amelia had withdrawn into a shell of irritable quiet, declining to trust the full story.
Philip comprehended her requirement for protection in the wake of being so profoundly abused, yet it tormented him to see the standard flash diminished in her hazel eyes. More terrible, he was unable to disperse the annoying sense that more foreboding shadows lingered in their sights, unfavorable and premonition.
Just merciless genuineness could clear the fierce air between them now before it was past the point of no return. Which was the reason, this evening, Philip promised to rip off the Bandage unequivocally.
The delicate rap of knuckles against his front entryway snapped Philip from his restless dream. He fixed his naval force sweater and smoothed his disheveled chestnut locks prior to pulling the entryway open.