Danielle Steel - Malice

“What is this, Grace?”

“I don't know.” She was crying as she sat down next to him, shaking. “I don't know …”

“It can't be you.” But it looked like her. You could see her face. Even though her eyes were closed, she was completely recognizable. And then suddenly, she knew … he must have taken off her clothes … he must have taken them all off. … The only thing she was wearing was a black ribbon around her neck. He must have put it on her, for sex appeal, while she was sleeping. The credit for the photograph said Marcus Anders. She went even paler than she was when she first saw it. And Charles had seen her look. He knew there was something to it. “Do you know who took this?”

She nodded, wishing that she could die for him. Wishing, for his sake, that she had never met him, or borne his children.

“What is this, Grace?” For the first time in sixteen years, his tone was icy. “When did you do this?”

“I don't know for sure that I did,” she said, choking on her own words as she sat down slowly at the kitchen table. “I … I went out with a photographer a few times in Chicago. I told you about him. He said he wanted to take pictures of me, and they wanted me to at the agency …” She faltered and he looked shocked.

“They wanted you to do porno? What kind of agency was this?”

“It was a modeling agency,” the life was going out of her. She couldn't fight this anymore, she couldn't defend herself forever. She would leave him if he wanted her to. She would do anything he wanted. “They wanted me to model, and he said he'd take some shots, like for a portfolio. We were friends. I trusted him, I liked him. He was the first man I'd ever gone out with. I was twenty-one years old. I had no experience. My roommates hated him, they were a lot smarter than I was. He took me to his studio, he played a lot of music, he poured me some wine … and he drugged me. I told you about it a long time ago.” But he no longer remembered. “I guess I must have passed out. I was completely out of it, and I think he took pictures of me when I was asleep, but I was wearing a man's shirt, it was no worse than that. I never took my clothes off.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

She looked at him honestly. She had never lied to him, and she didn't intend to start now. “I don't. I don't know anything. I thought he had raped me, but he hadn't. My roommate took me to a doctor and she said nothing had happened. I tried to get the negatives from him, and he wouldn't give them to me. My roommates finally said I should just forget it. He needed a release to use them, if I was recognizable, and if I wasn't, who cared anyway. I would have liked to get them back, but I knew I couldn't. At one point, he tried to make it sound like I'd signed a release, but then he gave me the impression that I hadn't. I don't see how I could have anyway. I was so stoned from what he gave me, I could barely see when I left.

“He showed the pictures to the head of the agency afterwards, and the head of the agency made a pass at me. He said the shots were pretty hot, but he said that I had a shirt on, so I figured nothing really terrible had happened. I never saw the pictures. I never saw him again. I never thought we'd be in this position, that I'd be married to someone important and we'd be vulnerable.” Now he could do anything he wanted. And they looked terrible. They looked like real porno. All she was wearing was a black ribbon she'd never seen before tied at her throat. And as she stared at the photograph, she saw that she looked drugged. She looked completely out of it, to her own eyes. But to a stranger, intent on seeing something lewd, it was everything they could have wanted. She couldn't believe anyone could do something like that. He had destroyed her life with a single picture. She just sat there, looking at Charles, her whole body sagging with grief as she saw the pain on his face. Killing her father in self-defense was bad enough, but how was he going to explain this to his constituents, the media, and their children?

“I don't know what to say. I can't believe you'd do such a thing.” He was overwhelmed, and his chin was quivering with unshed tears. He couldn't even look at her as he turned away and cried. Nothing he could have done to her could have been worse. She would have preferred it if he had hit her.

“I didn't do it, Charles,” she said weakly, crying too. She knew for a certainty that their marriage had just ended over Marcus's pictures. “I was drugged.”

“What a fool you were … what a fool …” She couldn't deny that. “And what a bastard he must have been to make you do that.” She nodded through her tears, unable to say anything in her own defense. And a moment later, Charles took the paper and went upstairs alone to their bedroom. She didn't follow him. She was beside herself, but she knew that on Monday, the day after Matt's party, she would have to leave him. She had to leave all of them. She couldn't keep putting them through this.

The photograph itself was on the news that night, and the story broke so big that every network and wire service in the country were calling. His aides were frantically trying to explain that it was probably all a mistake, the girl only looked like her, and no, Mrs. Mackenzie was not available for comment. But even worse, there was an interview with Marcus the next day. He had white hair, and he looked seedy in the interview, but he said with a lascivious smile that the photographs were indeed of Grace Mackenzie, and he had a signed release to prove it. He held it up for all to see and explained that she had posed for him in Chicago eighteen years before. “She was a real hot mama,” he said, smiling. And from the photographic evidence, she certainly looked it.

“Was she in great financial need at the time?” the interviewer asked, pretending to look for a sympathetic reason why she had done it.

“Not at all. She loved doing it,” he said, smiling. “Some women do.”

“Did she give you the release to use the photographs commercially?”

“Of course.” He looked insulted even to be asked. They flashed the photograph again, and then moved on to another topic, as Grace stared at the screen in unconcealed hatred. She had never given a release to him, and when Goldsmith the libel attorney called back at noon, she told him point-blank that she had signed no release to Marcus Anders.

“We'll see what we can do, Grace. But if you posed for that photograph, and gave him a release, there isn't a damn thing we can do.”

“I did not sign a release to him. I didn't sign anything.”

“Maybe he forged it. I'll do my best. But you can't unring a bell, Grace. They've seen it. It's out there. You can't take it back, or undo it. If you posed for it eighteen years ago, you've got to know it's out there, and it'll come back to haunt you.” And then, in a worried tone, “Are there any others? Do you know how many he took?”

“I have no idea.” She almost groaned as she said it.

“If the paper bought them from him in good faith, and he represented to them that he had a release, and presented one to them, then they're protected.”

“Why is everyone protected except me? Why am I always the guilty party?” It was like getting beaten again, and raped. She was a victim again. It was no different from getting raped night after night by her father. Only her father wasn't doing it anymore, everyone else was. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that just because Charles was in politics they had a right to destroy her and their family. They had had sixteen wonderful years, and now it had all turned into a nightmare. It was like coming back full circle, and being put back in prison. She was helpless against the lies. The truth meant nothing. Everything she'd done, everything she'd lived, everything she'd built had been wasted.