The Gem (D'Arth Book 4) Read online

  The Gem

  D’Arth Series Book 4 (reading prior books not necessary)

  By Camille Oster

  Copyright 2014 Camille Oster

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the work of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements:

  To Jean for her help.

  Camille Oster - Author

  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Camille-Oster/489718877729579

  @Camille_Oster

  [email protected]

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  Peter Dunham sped along the near empty streets of London—well, as empty as they got in the wee hours of the morning, having come from the Advertising Industry Awards Dinner, held at the Merchant's Guild Hall. A trophy lay across the passenger seat of his Maserati, a shard of glass with his name etched into it, rewarding his work at a Senior Group Manager at Grossman Altitude.

  He'd won before, but he liked winning, more so because it was at the expense of other. His win meant their loss. Murray Henderson—the twat. Sasha Tenners, with the nice thighs in which he'd been ensconced a time or two. Jeffery Bunning from Jamieson Poole, sitting with his team, his mouth lemon tight. He saw them all as he got up on the podium to accept his award, give a little speech about how touched he was.

  Looking out over a hall full of his peers, he knew he owned his place there in an industry driven by ruthless competitiveness.

  He also saw Marco D'Arth at the Jamieson and Poole table, the young gun, sitting with his girlfriend, Alex, who had not so very long ago been his protégé, but she'd thrown the gift of his patronage away and had lost her place in the industry because of it. Everyone knew he'd fired her and that made her damaged goods—untouchable in this industry. Well, if she chose to snuggle with her boyfriend rather than do what it takes to make it to the top, then that is what she got.

  He, on the other hand, had made it to the top. Only a few weeks ago, his boss, Mr. Casov, had informed him that he was being offered partnership in the firm. Peter had felt joy seep into him, achieving a goal he'd been working on for years. All his hard work had now paid off and he was making indecent amounts of money.

  His victory deserved a treat and he wondered which girl he'd call over that night. He'd make it one of the very good ones, the ones you really had to pay for. A bottle of cognac was waiting for him at home, so smooth it felt like honey, sun and delicious wickedness rolled into one. He was going to go home and just savour his achievement.

  Someone's lights were shining at him as if they were on high beam, and they just kept coming. It actually took him a while to realise they were actually going to crash into him. It seemed like such an absurd turn of events, but suddenly there was screaming metal, breaking glass and incredible force impacting on him. It happened so fast, he didn't even have time to react.

  Shifting his tongue, it almost hurt as he peeled it off the roof of his mouth, like he was dehydrated. Where the fuck was he? He felt funny, like a bad hangover, or even a trip from when he was into that kind of stuff. Heaviness weighed on him, as if he couldn't move, and this awful tapping noise.

  "Mr. Dunham," an unknown voice called. "Open your eyes."

  He wanted to tell them to fuck off, but he couldn't find his voice, even as they kept going on relentlessly. It wasn't a tapping noise, someone was pushing on his chest. "Do you know where you are?" the voice continued.

  Of course I do, he thought, but then realised he had no idea, not liking being challenged on such a simple thing. "Go away," he finally managed, but his voice sounded distant and weak. Weak, a trait he hated above all else. Alex had been weak and he hated her for it.

  Then there was pain, hitting him suddenly, but he didn't know where it came from. Lights shone in his eyes disturbingly. He remembered lights. They weren't supposed to be there. "We have to scan, I think," someone said. "Go see if we can push a slot."

  "Stop moving," someone said, but he had to, there was pain and he had to escape it. "We're going to have to sedate him for the scanner." And then the pain went, almost fully.

  Peter's eyes struggled open, but failed. He felt like shit, and that was before the wave of nausea hit. Reaching, he tried to move, but found that he couldn't.

  "Still," someone said.

  "Where am I?"

  "Charing Cross Hospital. You were in a car crash. Do you remember it?"

  Urging his mind to work, Peter tried to recall. Lights. There had been lights. "Yes," he said. "Before, not after."

  "That's not uncommon. Just relax. There is nothing for you to do. I'm calling the doctor now. Can you open your eyes?"

  Again, he tried, but the bright lights hurt. Pushing through the discomfort, he opened his eyes and looked around. He wasn't just in hospital, he was in the serious part where there were machines and stuff.

  He felt someone moving around him, and he turned to find a nurse checking a drip. He had a drip. "What's wrong with me?"

  "The doctor will be here in a moment."

  "I want to know." Nightmare scenarios ran through his head. Did he still have his legs? Forcing his head up, he was hit by another powerful wave of nausea.

  "Don't do that," the nurse said with an efficient smile. "You're head’s a little angry at the moment."

  "Angry? Is that your official diagnosis?" he said tartly, furious that she refused to tell him what was wrong when she obviously knew. But she wouldn't budge, leaving him in ignorance until the doctor finally came.

  "Mr. Dunham?" he said as he came in the room and picked up the chart from a holder on the wall.

  "What's wrong with me?"

  "Got yourself a bit beat up?"

  "What does a bit mean?"

  "Concussion, a fracture of your femur—that's your thigh bone, left—and some bruising around your spine."

  Spine—that was the word Peter was dreading to hear. "What does bruising mean?"

  "It means there is pressure on your spinal cord, impacting on your movement. The cord seems intact, so you are lucky."

  "Will I walk?"

  "Once recovered, but the femur needs surgery. It's set for this afternoon. A rod will be placed to stabilise the fracture. Once that is in place, it should heal quickly."

  Peter relaxed. "Nothing else?"

  "Just bruising. A couple of broken ribs."

  He'd had broken ribs before—they were a pain the arse, but he could cope with that.

  "Your mother is on her way, we have been told."

  It must be serious of his mother was flying over the Atlantic. It wasn't necessary, but he guessed car accidents were the one thing she'd come running for. Not that there would be anything for her to do, but it wasn't usually a requirement for her. She lived in LA with her American husband, in a cultureless but expansive mansion with less history than a lamp post, surrounded by lush gardens and a Versace designed pool, generating false and artificial Italian elegance. But his mother hated England, preferring the glossy, artificial living in LA.

  Lying back, Peter tried to relax, unable to reconcile that this had happened to him. Things like this didn't happen to him—they happened to other people, but here he was, trussed up like a chicken, wires and tubes going everywhere. As long as he could recover from this, he would be alright. If his body could mend, everything would be just fine, he told himself.

  The only thing he had to focus on right now was getting through the surgery. At least he had the ability to focus on the important things, and place everything else on the back burner—it kept him calm, knowing what the immediate steps wer
e.

  Finally, after more talking, they gave him drugs that took the pain away and it did wonders for his mood. Knowing that things would come right helped, and he now wished he had his phone and could check some messages, but had no idea where it was. Perhaps it was in the car, which was god-knows-where. He fell asleep again, until his room seemed to overflow with people coming in, unhooking him from the machines and carrying him away with the bed. He must be off to surgery, he recognised, but he was too tired to open his eyes.

  Chatter around him, a mask came onto his face and he was gone.

  He woke again, feeling encompassing pleasantness, like there was nothing to worry about, not remotely caring that he had no idea where he was. He couldn't open his eyes, but he could hear people walking around him as his consciousness returned, against his will. It had been nice where he'd been, and there was just unpleasantness where he was going.

  "Everything went fine," someone said close to his ear. "Can you hear me?"

  He nodded, but still refused to let go of the feeling of pleasantness.

  "Go ahead and sleep if you want to," they said. "You're in recovery and you will be moved up to the ward in about an hour."

  Peter tried to relax and recapture the feeling of warm nothingness.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  He knew her perfume before he opened his eyes. Cracking them open, he saw her sitting in a chair across the room. He still felt sluggish, like his body refused to move.

  "Mum," he said, his voice sounding more like a croak. Even one word was an effort.

  "I'm here, sweetie." She'd called him that all his life, but he knew it was an expression she used for others just as readily. "You look like hell, Peter."

  "You should see the other guy." They’d actually had that exact conversation once when he was younger.

  His mother stood up, her heels clicking on the floor as she walked over to the bed. Even rushing to the hospital, his mother made the effort to wear heels—Charles Jordan was her preferred brand. She only wore designer clothes, showing off her too thin body as the Americans seemed to prefer. "What have they done to you?" she winced. He could hear the concern in her voice. It took quite a lot to get his mum to be motherly, not that he really wanted it.

  "I'm fine, or I will be, apparently."

  "The police came by, but you were still unconscious."

  He tried to nod, but he wasn't sure anything actually moved. "How is Frank?" he asked like he did every time they spoke, not that he gave a stuff about Frank—the obnoxious man his mother had settled with.

  "He's fine. In Palm Springs, playing golf."

  Frank was her husband—property developer with serious money, which was what his mother found so unshakingly attractive about him. After years in LA, her accent had mellowed slightly, taking on some of the drawn out vowels of the LA drawl, even though she tried hard to preserve her crisp English public school accent.

  "It was a drunk driver, they said," his mother said, standing by the bed. Keeping his eyes closed, Peter had to chuckle with the irony—for all the vice he engaged in, it was ironic that he should be the victim of someone else's. "The bastard. They shouldn't let these people roam the streets."

  His mother stood awkwardly by, not really knowing what to do, which was typical when it came to them. They usually met once a year, at Christmas, where he would go to LA and spend a Christmas full of artificial lights, silver trees and fake snow.

  "You shouldn't have come," he finally said.

  "Nonsense. If you are in trouble, I will always be there for you." He appreciated the sentiment, knowing it was intention more than action that drove his mother. Rarely did she carry through.

  "I will be fine," he assured her. The idea that he had a bruised spine was terrifying, but not as much as a broken spine and that was the only important thing right now. Tiredness hit him and he couldn't keep awake anymore. "I'm going to sleep now."

  "Alright, sweetie," his mother said, kissing him on the forehead. He knew his mother loved him, but they had absolutely nothing in common. "You sleep, gain your strength."

  It seemed he couldn't manage to stay awake for more than twenty minutes at a time—completely ran out of energy and just crashed. His mother was intermittently there, other times not.

  There was a big, steel rod sticking out and running the length of his thigh, seemingly holding it together. He still didn't feel anything as the nurses were pumping pain-relief into his drip, but he was taken to another ward with less machines and longer periods in between checks.

  The doctor came to review his chart and the wound where metal stuck out of his hip and knee. Apparently they couldn’t do the internal brace as planned, opting instead for an external brace, which would be removed when he had surgery again.

  "The bruising along your spine will affect your movement for a little while, but it will slowly subside. The important thing now is to give yourself time to recover. You're body has taken quite a beating, Mr. Dunham."

  "Can I work?"

  "Not for a while. You have to rest, which is what your body is going to need to heal. But in a couple of days, you can go home."

  That did pick him up. It couldn't be that bad if he could go home. Home would be much more comfortable than here, even though he had slept most of the time. It still wasn't nice to wake up in a hospital with someone poking or prodding him.

  After the doctor had gone, his mother arrived, wearing yoga gear. She must have come straight from the gym, or retreat or wherever the hell she went for that kind of thing. He'd suffered through more than one diatribe about her fabulous yogis.

  "Seeing you like this has my chakras all out of order," she said stroking his face. Peter rolled his eyes and tried to shift, to make himself more comfortable. "It's good to see you awake, although you look so much like my little boy when you're sleeping."

  "I can go home soon," he said.

  "Home? You're not in any state to go home. You can't even move."

  "Doesn't mean hospitals want you to stick around."

  "There must be a recovery centre we can put you in, sweetie." He knew his mother was thinking of the kind of place she went after plastic surgery where you sipped champagne through your bandages, and no one stared at you for looking like a mummy.

  "I don't want a recovery centre. I'd much rather be at home." It was an odd statement, because home was somewhere he took women or slept, not much more. He didn't normally spend much time there. Watching the business news as he got dressed in the morning was his most consistent activity at home, at least when he was on his own. Truthfully, he didn't quite know what he would do with himself if he couldn't work or entertain women.

  A thought of Alex seeped into his mind, how she'd react if she'd been there, but he wiped both the irrelevant and irrational thought away. His subconscious had developed this strange fixation with her—probably because she'd turned him down, he rationalised. He didn't get turned down; he got a feigned fight, but they always gave in. Without fail, he as out of there before they ever got a notion that there would be more than a quick fuck. Sometimes whores were just easier.

  "We'll have to get you a nurse," she said, smoothing her glossy hair. "Someone professional who knows what they're doing. I will call an agency, have them send some people over."

  Peter smiled weakly, indulging in a flash of naughty sponge baths. His mother thread in his life too lightly to know how distant he kept women. The only one that had made him doubt his policy, just for a moment, was Alex. He'd tried to … He wasn't quite sure what he'd tried to do, but he’d had higher hopes for her—seen such potential in her to be somebody, but she'd thrown it all away to go play housewife with her boyfriend. She'd just hadn't had the guts to play and he'd been utterly disappointed in her—disgusted even.

  "I'm sure we'll find someone qualified," his mother said.

  "What?" Peter said with confusion.

  "The nurse, sweetie. Now I have to call Frank."

  His mother left the room
and Peter felt the consuming tiredness overtake him again, and he slipped away as his mother spoke to her awful husband. Peter saw Frank for what he was—an arrogant, philandering moron. Peter had concluded that his mother couldn't possibly be stupid enough not to see that, instead had chosen not to see it.

  "You can go home today!" his mother said excitedly.

  "What?" he said groggily. He'd actually gotten used to his mother being there and it didn't give him a shock every time he heard her voice. Go home? He couldn't possibly. He still couldn't move and he was so damned tired. "Can't it wait?"

  "No, they're here to collect you."

  Peter groaned. Getting out of bed seemed like such an impossible task at the moment; he didn't want to do it.

  "Up you go, Mr. Dunham," one of the more brutal nurses said. He was sure he heard glee in her voice—the sadistic bitch. She carried his legs over the side of the bed and brought them down to the ground, grabbing him around his torso to move him from the bed. It was utterly humiliating, being manhandled by what was a female version of a wrestler. He was even sure she had the making of a beard.

  Slumping into the wheelchair, he groaned. His mother put a blanket in his lap like he was some octogenarian and a young man with corn rows started to push the wheelchair out of the room. Peter swore he would never let himself get old, refusing to get to a state where he lived like this. He'd top himself first.

  To further his humiliation, he was rolled into a special needs van. Closing his eyes, he supposed he should be grateful that he didn't have to go through the trouble of getting out of the wheelchair into a car seat.

  They buckled his whole chair down and then pulled out of the hospital complex. He was sleepy again, struggling to keep his eyes open.

  Two men in green and yellow jackets waited with him as they travelled up the elevator to his apartment.