The Woman Trapped in the Dark Read online

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  To Storytellers—

  Keep telling, no matter what.

  Acknowledgments

  It’s hard to say good-bye to characters you’ve fallen in love with. This is the second time I’ve said good-bye to Gatewood, and the last, but regrettably so. I will miss him, because I know that there’s so much more to him than I’ve been able to tell, but sometimes, a writer has to know when to say when. And now is that time, for real.

  Thank you to some amazing folks who’ve helped me, inspired me, and supported me. The funny thing is, I’ve never met most of these people, but we’ve become good friends online, and they are my friends.

  Naleighna Kai, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as exciting, energetic, creative, insightful, and as Superwomanish as you. You’re an incredibly talented author, and one hell of a businesswoman. You have been so very gracious with sharing insight, feedback, time, and space, schooling me on how it “should” be done. You are a superstar in every sense of the word, and thank you for being my friend.

  To the lovely Miss Ella Curry, you are absolutely brilliant, elegant, and one of the most generous people I have ever known. Your efforts are nothing short of amazing, and I am both humbled and thankful for every kindness you have ever shown me.

  Lisa DeNeal, if you aren’t a book doctor, you certainly should be. Your insight, vision, and attention to detail definitely helped me to craft the story I’d hoped this would be, and I am truly grateful for the sacrifice of your time. Thank you so very much and I wish you nothing but the best on your own writing journey.

  Johnathan Royal, maybe you know how you bless me, and maybe you don’t. But let me tell you, your uplifting spirit and endless passion for books is inspiring, and we authors owe so much to you for championing our books the way you do. Thank you for all of your hard work, attention, and love for the stories we tell. And I wish you well, my friend.

  U. M. Hiram, thank you for helping me to pull together this story, and more important, thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey as a new author. You are so talented and I am absolutely looking forward to reading much, much more from you. Keep doing what you’re doing and I have no doubt that all of your dreams will come true.

  Jessica Rickerson, my friend, my breakfast buddy. I can always count on you to meet me someplace pretty damn early on a Saturday or Sunday morning for coffee and good food. I love you so much. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy life to support me while I chase this little dream. I admire you so much more than you know, but if I told you just how much, you’d make a joke out of it and we’d just laugh.

  As always, I’ve got to give a shout-out to my friend and agent, Sara Camilli. You have no idea how much your patience has meant to me all these years. Thank you for supporting every wacky idea I’ve come up with and pretending that they aren’t wacky at all.

  Finally, to my editor, Monique Patterson, it has been my honor working with you, and I will sing your praises to anyone who’ll listen. You gave me a chance when no one else would. I hope to see you on the road somewhere in the coming years, but even if I don’t, I can always stalk you online. Be well, my friend. I wouldn’t trade one single moment of this incredible journey with you. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  Wave My Own Pride

  “BACK THEN, HE WAS AS DUMB as a rock.” Lars Degan laughed. “Young and pretty as a peacock, but stupid. I did like him, though. Truly, I did.”

  His son, Brandon Degan, stared quizzically at his seventy-nine-year-old father, watching fascinated as the man’s expression melted from one of amusement into a genuine fondness at the memory of a young Jordan Gatewood. Once again Brandon was reminded of just how passionately his father’s obsession with Gatewood merged seamlessly from loathing to admiration, and it was that obsession that had tortured Brandon for as long as he could remember.

  “I told you what happened. Didn’t I?” Brandon’s father asked, staring at him as if he suddenly realized that Brandon was still sitting next to him on the deck of Lars’s massive Fort Worth house overlooking the lake.

  Brandon sighed. “You’ve told me several times, Dad.”

  Not that it mattered. Blame it on old age, or just the desperate need to repeat the damn story again, adding fuel to his hatred of Gatewood before that flame burned out, Brandon knew that he was about to sit through the tale again. Sometimes, names would change in the retelling, dates or places, but the heart of the story was always solid.

  “His father, Julian Gatewood, was as sly as a snake,” his father began. “Slippery and aloof. Acted like he was better than the rest of us,” he explained with disdain. “He looked white, you know. Could’ve passed and we wouldn’t have known that he wasn’t until he opened his mouth to say something. That’s when you’d know you were talking to a black man, through and through.”

  Once again, Brandon sarcastically marveled at his father’s mystical abilities. That this man could tell a white man from a black man simply by the sound of his voice when he spoke was nothing short of extraordinary. It took every ounce of Brandon’s restraint not to roll his eyes.

  “We threw a party when we got the news that the sonofabitch was dead.” He chuckled. “Got drunk on whiskey and pussy for two whole days in celebration.”

  Julian Gatewood died thirty years ago. Brandon was only thirteen at the time and was too much into skateboards and soccer to remember much about his passing.

  That forlorn look returned to his father’s light-blue eyes. “I almost felt sorry for that boy when that pretty momma of his planted his narrow behind in his father’s chair. It was much too big for him,” he said sadly. “In more ways than one.”

  That was about the only thing Brandon and Gatewood had in common besides both being in the oil business. Brandon knew all too well that same fear that Gatewood had probably felt that day. The trepidation of being expected to fill your father’s shoes, and to be forced to put aside your own dreams to live those of another man.

  “I knew he’d fail.” Brandon’s father’s face lit up. “Hell, we all did, and we wanted him to. It was imperative that he did.”

  His father stared back at Brandon, waiting for him to ask the same question he always asked at this most poignant point in the story.

  “Why?”

  The gleam in Lars Degan’s eyes expressed his approval that Brandon egged him on. “Because there were egos at stake. An old doctrine in place that didn’t include his kind. We couldn’t do much about the father,” he said, remembering the force that had been Julian Gatewood, “except smile and nod and mutter under our breath when his back was turned. To his credit, he was a keen and astute businessman. We didn’t like him or approve, but there was no denying his prowess. However, Gatewood Industries was an insult to every oilman in Texas.”

  Brandon wanted to say, But Dad. You worked for the man for fifteen years. But he knew better.

  In his
father’s mind and in the minds of relics like him, oil was a white man’s business. They’d built empires on the shit, and damn anybody who didn’t fit the mold and who dared to trespass on those empires. It should’ve been easier being the son of a racist, considering the environment that he’d grown up in, but Brandon hated his father’s attitude toward anybody who didn’t look exactly like him. Of course, he knew to keep his mouth shut.

  “Gullible is what he was,” his father continued thoughtfully, describing Jordan. “He was so eager to learn, and who else did he have to rely on but us?” He stared earnestly at his son. “He trusted us. He had no choice. Hung on every word we said as if we’d dipped them in gold, committing what we told him to memory, taking our advice to heart. He respected us.”

  It was cruel what Brandon’s father and others in the company had done to twenty-year-old Jordan Gatewood. Brandon listened as his father recounted the brutal ways that they conspired against him, setting him up for failure, only to stand him up again long enough to catch his breath, pat him on the back, tell him how good a job he was doing, then pressed down on him again, driving him into catastrophe after catastrophe, subtly blaming him for destroying his father’s business, his legacy.

  “It was a slow but steady dismantling of this boy’s psyche, his spirit. That’s how you do it.” He nodded his affirmation as if Brandon needed or even wanted to know the process for destroying a man from the inside out.

  “A young man’s mind is the easiest to break. It’s fragile and uncertain of itself. He was so afraid of failing, and yet that’s all he ever did. We made sure of it,” he said proudly. “We were patient, Brandon. You see, we didn’t want to crush the business completely, but we were like sharks, taking chunks out of it as we watched it die a slow and agonizing death. We all wanted a piece of it, the choicest pieces, of course. So we had to be careful how we took it from him. We had to be careful to feed that boy just enough advice and encouragement to keep the corporation from going under too quickly, but only barely. And we had to be careful not to tear him down too much. He needed some fight. Not a lot, but enough.”

  It was morbid. Heartless and selfish what they did to him. Physically, of course, they never laid a finger on Jordan Gatewood, but they didn’t need to. They poisoned his mind, his soul. They tortured his self-esteem, devoured his faith, crushed his sense of duty and obligation to the man who had built this unlikely empire, reminding young Jordan day in and day out of how he had failed his father.

  Lars slowly dropped his gaze. “We made him suffer for over a decade. Some might call it abuse, but, no”—he shook his head—“it was a lesson. We were putting him in his place.” His father looked back to Brandon. “All that ego he’d gotten from being touted for his exceptional skills as a college football player, and swooned over for his good looks, born into money, that boy had never known what it was like not to think so highly of himself. But all that arrogance seeped through his pores like sweat as, year after year, he lost millions of his father’s hard-earned money. More than half of his employees had been let go, and Jordan had resorted to liquidating company assets just to keep the lights on. We’d done what we’d set out to do, and we were so damned proud of ourselves for it.”

  * * *

  Lars’s respect for his son was a private point of contention, balancing precariously on a line as thin as a strand of hair. Brandon had always been a simple boy, too eager to please but with no conviction, no spine or balls worth swinging even when he and Lars didn’t see eye to eye. Lars had always resented that about his son. He held Brandon’s gaze with his own, daring that boy to look away or to protest, his disapproval of how Lars had treated young Gatewood. Brandon had his mother’s eyes, expressive and telling. They gave away his secrets.

  “You think I’m silly,” Lars said unexpectedly, catching his son off guard. “A silly old racist? Is that it?”

  Brandon shifted and cleared his throat. “Of course not, Dad.”

  Brandon was a coward. There aren’t too many things that can break a man’s heart more than realizing that his son lacks courage. Jordan Gatewood had always had plenty of it, which, admittedly, was the one thing that Lars had always admired about him.

  “I don’t hate him because he’s black, Brandon, although it doesn’t help,” he said with a smirk.

  Lars thought back to that place in time, ten years after they’d begun the systematic destruction of Jordan Gatewood, when he suddenly realized that instead of breaking him, they’d actually created a monster.

  “We almost had him,” he said, recalling the excitement of victory and satisfaction he’d reveled in back then. But Lars was tired. Tired of plotting and of having to overthink every move, every word, every action and counteraction. Jordan proved to be smarter, more diligent and determined than any of them had expected. His resolve had kept him motivated longer than they had hoped. That pretty boy of Julian Gatewood’s had had more of his father in him than any of them could’ve imagined. Finally, though, it was nearly over and all that was left was to drive the wooden stake into that boy’s fragile heart.

  “He’d made the biggest mistake of his short career,” Lars recalled. “Bought the rights to drill in this section of the Gulf near Louisiana.” Lars frowned. “It was a tricky site. Everyone else who’d tried to drill there had failed, lost millions in equipment and even lives. Jordan had been researching how to dig in a place like that and found a young engineer to build him a special drill bit, and rigged it some kind of crazy way.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t know. But it was expensive. He drained the company’s reserves dry to pay for it.”

  Jordan had taken on this venture all on his own without the advice of Lars and the others. He’d been doing that a lot lately, going off on his own with some harebrained scheme of how to hurry up and recoup millions in losses, failing time and time again.

  “There’s nothing there, son.” Lars sat behind his desk, rubbing frustration and exhaustion from his eyes over yet another disaster this boy had walked this corporation into.

  Lars tossed a binder across his desk to Jordan. “Bone-dry, Jordan,” he said irritably. “Read it. Since you didn’t have the money to pay for it, I paid for the geologist to come out and survey the site my damn self. Ain’t nothing down there, and even if you get lucky and hit pay dirt, it won’t be enough to cover the cost of that fancy equipment you wasted company funds on.”

  “I don’t need your report,” Jordan said indignantly, staring at Lars. “My gut tells me I’m right.”

  Lars sighed irritably. “Your gut’s full of shit, boy. Literally. Face it. You fucked up, Jordan, again. This is it.” He threw his hands up in disgust. “You wanted to bankrupt your father’s corporation, well, pat yourself on the back, son. You’ve certainly done that.”

  There was a time when Jordan would’ve hung his head in shame, but Lars hadn’t seen him do that in years.

  “Mark Waters has made a generous offer,” Lars said calmly. “One you need to consider taking because, frankly, you’re all out of options. He’ll buy that equipment of yours, all your deeds, and anything else you’re willing to sell him at ten percent above value, Jordan. It’s a good deal, son.”

  All Jordan had to do was agree and this long, arduous ordeal would’ve finally been over. “Use your head, Jordan,” he encouraged him. “Take the offer, walk away, and get on with your life.”

  Without saying another word, Jordan stood up and walked out of Lars’s office.

  Lars always got quiet at this point in the story. He’d never been the kind who believed in miracles, until one day Jordan Gatewood showed up and pulled one right out of his ass.

  “Two months later, that bastard found it,” he said dismally. “He found every gotdamned drop.”

  Of course Lars knew. He’d known all along how much oil was there. It was just a matter of getting to it. That’s all. A picture of Jordan, standing tall and proud on that rig, graced the covers of Money, Inc., The New York Times, and World Money magazine
s. He’d not only found one of the most expansive oil pockets that this country had seen in decades; he’d patented that new drill and rigging system, and all of a sudden, Gatewood Industries had a heartbeat again.

  “He came back into my office a month later and handed me a file.”

  “I took the liberty of hiring my own geologist,” he said smugly. “And I expect your resignation by morning,” Jordan said, looming over Lars still sitting behind his desk.

  Lars stood up. That impertinent bastard needed to be put in his place again. “Remember who you’re talking to, boy.”

  Jordan planted his fists on Lars’s desk and leaned close to him. “No, Lars. You remember who you’re talking to,” he said threateningly. “I’m your Frankenstein monster, motha fucka. You got sloppy. Weak. Maybe sentimental,” Jordan said with a wry smile. “Eight million, wouldn’t you say?” Jordan shrugged. “Ballpark? Is that how much you’ve stolen from me over the years?”

  “I haven’t stolen a gotdamned thing,” Lars shot back.

  “No. You’ve stolen eight million gotdamned things. I’ve been keeping track. I’ll admit it, man”—Jordan straightened his stance and stuffed his hands in his pockets—“you had me going in the beginning. It was rough and your ass put me through it.” Jordan nodded introspectively. “But you taught me lessons I could’ve never learned in college. Fuck an MBA.” He smiled. “Right? The school of hard knocks taught to me by my enemies. Pure gold.”

  Gradually, Lars began to understand what they’d done to young Gatewood.

  “You get the fuck out of my building,” Jordan said calmly. “On your way out, I want every gotdamned stock option you ever put your fuckin’ hands on.”

  Lars was livid. How dare this black bastard threaten him and threaten to take any damn thing he’d worked all these years for.

  “Who the hell’s going to believe you, boy,” he growled. “You dumb fucker. You think because you hit pay dirt it makes you more than what you are? You’re a nigger, Jordan. An ignorant nigger who’s got no business—”