Chapter Two
He’s always been wild. The phase in his late teens when he seemed to settle down was just an act. I know the truth. That boy is as dangerous as they come.
Yet it is a man who stands before me, a slight smile of contempt dancing over his lips, and a man who stares at Belle, my fiancée, with an expression I cannot read though I have known the boy my entire life. He is a man now, and perhaps I judge him too quickly on what he was, not what he is.
"What no welcoming kiss?"
Perhaps not.
His voice sounds as if he’s trying to be jolly, but it comes out sarcastic and harsh. I see Belle flinch, and feel her small body move back to be resting more fully against mine. She didn’t expect this. He has no right to be angry with her for moving on with her life, even if it is with his once best friend and still uncle. This is supposed to be a happy day, and he’s going to ruin it because he can’t cope with the jealousy of knowing that the woman he once betrayed and almost destroyed is capable of living without him, worse, living with me.
"What are you doing here?" It’s Belle who speaks, the first one who does. No one is quite sure whether to welcome him back as a long lost son, or run him out of town for hurting us all so badly, and one worst of all. The people in this town have long memories, and Shawn hasn’t been gone long enough for any of us to forget what happened the last time he was here. I know I’ll remember it until my dying day.
"What do you think?" His mouth is half curved into a snarl, but his voice is calm and cold. Of all the things I expect from Shawn, coldness is not one of them. I’m used to the passionate boy. Perhaps his time away has turned him into the controlled man.
"To wreck my life again," Belle chokes out.
He grins at her, not his old ‘trademark’ grin of his teenage years, but the toothed smile of a predator watching its prey. "Guess again. I see you’re keeping well. Tell me, how long did it take you to agree to marry your prince," Who, me? Well thanks, Shawn. I think. She certainly is my Princess. "was it an hour, or did you miss me for a whole day?"
I may need to think again. I’ve never seen Shawn more angry in my life. I’m about to say something, to defend my fiancée, but she gets there first.
"At least I waited, Shawn. I didn’t jump into bed with the first tramp who came my way while I was still with someone else," she is so mad, but I can sense the tears behind her barked words.
What he says next astounds me. He has nerve, you have to give him that, but he seems to use his nerve to hurt people.
"I never did," and the words are low and pain filled, as if he is staring back across a crevasse of hurt and can only see Belle, stuck on the other side with my arm around her shoulders, comforting her. "But that didn’t stop you, did it? I would have died for you, Belle, but I guess you didn’t feel the same way."
Then he’s gone, the Pub door crashes shut, and the aftermath kicks in. I don’t know why he’s back, and I don’t particularly care. I just want him gone. He destroyed so many lives the last time he was in Salem. I won’t let him do it again.
I begin planning what I can do to keep her safe, and it’s then it happens.
Bo storms into the Pub, face as dark as a thundercloud, and raises his voice so we can all hear. "I’ve got some bad news."
"Like your son is back?" I hear Belle mutter under her breath, and I rest a restraining hand on her shoulder. She still thinks of Bo as a third father (after Roman and John), but it doesn’t stop her from hating his eldest child.
"Paul Mendez has died. Someone just found his body down by the docks. It looks like murder." There is a gasp from my one time stepmother, Nicole, now married to my half brother Austin, but that's a situation too complicated to explain right now. Like most Salem families, we qualify for our own edition of the Jerry Springer Show. We could even supply our own audience.
Nicole is visibly upset, and Austin is trying to comfort her as best he can. Paul may have been her father, but even she admits he was a dangerous, evil son of a bitch rapist. She hated him more than anyone else in this world. Except perhaps Jan.
"I thought he was dead," it’s Mimi, and she’s visibly shaking. The tremors cause her to look like she’s in the middle of a personal earthquake. Her voice is cracked and low, thinking of what happened the last time Paul was around. "He’s meant to be dead."
"He is now," Bo says, and no one is sorry. Why should we be? In life, he was cruel and practically the spawn of the devil, though for once Stefano was not to blame. He has caused enough suffering, and if he had died from natural causes, we would all be celebrating, but it wasn’t natural causes, it was murder. That means somewhere in Salem, there is a murderer on the loose.
We all think back to the last murder here, and who just came striding through the Pub door. The connection is obvious. The last time is too fresh in our minds. It caused Shawn to leave us, and the very night he returns, another body is found. Bo won’t like it, but he may have to arrest his older son on suspicion of murder… for the second time.
I shudder at the thought, and hug Belle closer to me. No one is going to hurt her while I’m around.
No one.