Bliss. Pure, unutterably, unimaginable bliss.
The door opens before I touch the handle. Derek is silhouetted by sunshine. He was waiting for me, looking for me and it warms me. Knowing he could not wait to see me. I throw my arms around him. His lips taste as good as I remember. But then I realize, then I see.
“Derek?”
There are tears on his face.
DEREK
I wipe my eyes. “Sit down, Victoria.”
She does as I say. Slowly, cautiously. Her face is a study in confusion. “What's wrong?”
A thousand-year silence passes between us. I want to stop time, I want to go back, I want to live in a universe where the iBullet in my hand and the stuff on the news and the information in my head never existed. But instead, I’m here. And I can’t ignore what I know now.
“Derek?”
It hurts to listen to her voice, because it still sounds so perfect.
“You know, there were times I didn’t think I’d get you out of there,” I say softly. “It just felt so…incredible. Like I was up against this huge machine and I didn’t even have a tool to use against it. But I never thought about giving up on you. Ever.” I pause, trying to think of what to say. It’s hard.
Victoria must see my struggle. She leans forward and takes my hand. I squeeze it three times before letting it go. I say, “But I got lucky. I had help and found what I needed to find. I figure it was fifty percent work, fifty percent luck.”
“Yeah,” she says on a breezy, forced out chuckle. “You did great. Without you, God knows where I’d be.” She forces another smile. “And now it’s behind us. Time to get our lives back, right?”
Silence descends.
Her smile falls but just as quick, another flashes across her face. Her voice is an octave too high as she says, “Hey, you hungry? I’m starving. I’m going to get something to eat.” She stands but as she passes me, I grab her wrist.
My words are whispers. “Sit down.”
She looks at my hand then meets my gaze. Her eyes are pleading. “Derek...”
“Sit. Down.”
Victoria takes a breath and presses her lips together. She sits on the ottoman across from me.
I can barely stand to look at her for the pain. She is so beautiful, healthy and happy and so amazing that I can’t look away and yet it kills me to keep eye contact with her. My chest contracts tightly. Lead forms in my stomach and drops.
“Where's your pendant?"
"What?"
"Your pendant. The one I gave you three years ago. The one you swore you'd never take off, and, if I recall, you actually never have."
"The Corps," she whispers, "they took it. When they first—"
"Don’t lie to me.”
“I'm not. They took everything I—”
Silently, I stand and go to the TV. I tap it and the image from the news report comes on. I zoom in until I can’t anymore, until that small item on the dining room floor comes into perfect, agonizing view.
Victoria stares at the screen for a long moment. Finally, she looks at me. Her eyes are glistening, luminous, and burning. It’s like a cold frost slowly sweeping over clear water. She says, “I’d die for my father.”
“I know. And you’d kill for him too.”
VICTORIA
I step to the TV, arms crossed in front of me. The image on screen of that hideous, disgusting dining room seems to glow. The brown, ugly carpet, the Formica table, the mismatched chairs. Dishes and wrappers are everywhere.
“You see it, don’t you?” Derek says.
I nod, though it’s not really a question. Of course I see it. How could I not? Amidst all the clutter, right on the food-stained shag carpet, lays a delicate silver strand. A broken necklace. And right beside it, as if it slid off but had nowhere to bounce or roll to, is a one-of-a-kind, beautiful, damning pendant made by the person sitting behind me.
“The day you came over for my birthday,” I begin, my voice low and strained, “when my dad came in…he was so upset. I went up to his office to try to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t tell me. After that, he began acting strange. He would come home later and later. He was so distant toward me, and he was never like that before.
“One night, he came home with a bag loaded with money and put it in his closet. I asked about it but he wouldn’t answer me on that, either. The next time I looked for it, the bag was gone. And he just kept getting more and more…” I shut my eyes, the memories of that time slicing all my closed wounds wide open. “He was like a stranger. A ghost of the person I loved. It nearly broke me.”
I turn away from the TV and face Derek. And God, the look on his face—I nearly crumble to my knees and beg him, fucking beg him, to stop looking at me like that. Like he doesn’t know me.
I take a deep breath as a merciless chill runs through me. “The next time he went out, I followed him. I wanted to know where he was going, who he was visiting, and why. He drove to a house down south, near Somerset. He stayed there for like, two hours. And when he came out again, he was really upset. I’m not even describing it right. I can’t describe it." I wipe my nose. "And when I looked back at the house, I saw a woman inside. She was shutting the front door, but I saw her. So I put two and two together and figured they were having an affair. That she somehow broke his heart.”
“So what did you do?”
“The next day, I went over there. Knocked on the door. And the same woman answered.” I swallow. “Issy. Issy answered the door.”
Derek’s body collapses one vertebrae at a time until he’s hunched over, head bowed with both hands in his hair, his fingers gripping tight. The sight of him like that churns my insides and twists my gut.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so—”
“Finish.”
The word is like dynamite. It blasts me away and it takes moments before I can recover. I swallow hard. “I said I was Victor King’s daughter, and we needed to talk. I asked if she was having an affair with my dad. That’s when she invited me in.”
I flashback to that moment. That instant she looked me over and her eyes flashed like I was eighty miles beneath her.
“We sit at the dining room table and she gets me”—I scoff—“she gets me a fucking glass of water, like that’s supposed to calm me down or something. But I was livid by then. This woman, she had done something…irreparable…to my dad. And she has the nerve to play hostess.” I forcefully relax my mouth. “I asked her again why he had visited, why he was so upset. And she told me, she told me such…lies. Every word out of her mouth was a lie.”
Derek is still hunched over, but he tilts his face up so he meets my eyes. I take a step to him.
“Yes. Lies. You know what she said? She said he was”—I gulp, the word almost impossible to force past the block in my throat; it sounds so horrible, so filthy—“stealing. She said my dad was stealing.”
Hastily, I wipe a hot tear from my face. I ball my hands at my sides. “I mean, it was so absurd. No wonder he was upset. Even the accusation could ruin him. Just a whiff of that kind of scandal—it wasn’t true. I told her that.”
“But she wouldn’t listen?”
“You’re damn right,” I say, louder than I meant to. Another tear falls. I practically give myself a black eye shoving it off my skin. “I tried to convince her. I tried to tell her my dad would never, ever do anything like that. And that’s when she threatened him. Threatened me and him and my entire family.”
Now, the tears come fast and furious. I try to reach for my anger to use as a plug, but it’s buried beneath a mountain of shame and guilt, righteousness and sorrow. It’s impossible to pull out just one feeling when they’re all so knotted together.
And as I take in Derek’s expression, another rears its head: desperation.
I fall to my knees in front of him.
“Babe.” I put my hands on top of his and bow my head until my forehead touches his kneecap. “Please. Please don’t look at me like that. Li
ke I’m”—a sob explodes from my mouth—“bad. I’m not bad.”
I hear him exhale. It’s a tight, tremulous sound.
“Don’t you see?” I ask. “She cornered me. She said she had proof about my dad. She said she was going to the Corps and there was nothing anyone could say to make her change her mind.” I sniff and tighten my grip on his hands. “I begged her to change her mind. I bribed her. And she just wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t even try. And then she actually went to the phone. She started dialing, and I didn’t have a choice. I had to stop her. I had to make her stop, so I—I—”
Warm fingers slide beneath my chin and tilt my face up. My breath catches. Some people look horrible when they’re sad, all bloated and red-faced and pitiful. Derek is not one of those people. Locks of blond hair fall near eyes that are moon-sized and brilliant with unshed tears. Color has drained from his face but he doesn’t look ghostly. Instead, his skin is incandescent in the midday sunshine.
Derek says softly, “You hit her.”
I shut my eyes, as if I were on a rollercoaster that was racing downhill and off the track. “Then she charged at me and we fought. She must’ve broke off my necklace then. And she kept going for the phone. She kept screaming for help and she was so loud. She was so…” I shake my head. “I had no choice. I picked up a weight by the couch.”
I open my eyes to see Derek close his.
“It didn’t kill her though. She just was laying there, moaning and crying. So I hit her again. And she, um…she was still after that.”
I kiss the backs of Derek’s limp hands. “I know how it sounds, that I went there to purposely kill that woman. But I swear, I swear to you…I just meant to talk to her. That’s it. I swear.” I kiss him again. Pain soars through me. “And it just escalated. It just…she made it her or my dad, Derek. That was the choice she left me. In that moment, what was I supposed to do? Let him die? Let that liar, that bitch, send him to hell? She made me do that, Derek. She made me! And I’m sorry I did it, but I had to! I couldn’t let my father die!”
To my surprise, Derek suddenly stands and goes to the other side of the room. His back is to me, but I can see him cover his face with both hands and rub, as if trying to wake himself from a terrible nightmare. Then he turns to me.
And he asks me a question that brings the tears on anew.
DEREK
It’s the truth. For the first time in who knows how long, she’s telling the truth. Mr. King was stealing. His emails confirm it; his bank accounts confirm it even more. As for the Corps never digging into this…well, I guess William had something to do with it. My thoughts flashback to just days ago, when I confronted him in his office. His words ring in my ears:
I’m a pretty powerful guy in this city.
Yes, he certainly was.
But there’s still one more piece to this puzzle, one more thread that, God help me, I have to pull. Because even though Victoria has told me the truth so far, she still hasn’t told me all of it.
I stand and go the other side of the room. I can’t be so close to her; it would destroy any resolve I have. The familiar feel of her skin would highlight all the years I’ve touched her; the familiar scent of her hair would bring to mind all the mornings I’ve woken up beside her; and the brown of her eyes and the curve of her face would only remind me of how often I poured out my soul to her.
And I would be lost.
I take a deep, readying breath. She’s still kneeling right where she was, looking beautiful and tragic. I glance at her chaffed wrists. Then I say, “You called the operator twice.”
“What?” Victoria asks, clearly thrown by my statement.
“I got the Corps file on your case. I read every statement, heard every interrogation. When your dad was shot, you called 911 twice. The first time you hung up. Why?”
For a long while, she doesn’t answer. She sits on the carpet and leans against the couch. Then she covers her face with her hands and cries. I don’t stop her. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. These cries are bone-crushing, coming from a place beyond pain or heartbreak. This is true mourning—for a place, a person, a time that is gone forever and can never come back.
Finally, she lowers her hands. She’s hollow and empty. She doesn’t look at me when she says…
VICTORIA
I killed my father.
The Night of the Shooting
“Victoria, how about we go out tonight for dinner?”
She looks up from her tablet and her face breaks out in a wide smile. Warmth fills her at his invitation; it’s been weeks since they last shared a meal. “Yeah, I’d love to.”
“Great,” Mr. King says. “Why don’t you finish up and meet me at the car?”
Nodding, she swings her legs off the bed and changes from her jean shorts to a coral-colored dress. As she slips her feet into her shoes, she takes her phone and calls her boyfriend, telling him their plans for tonight would have to be canceled. She hangs up with a quick I love you and then heads downstairs.
“Where do you want to eat?” Mr. King asks as they slide in the car.
“Doesn’t matter. Wherever you want.”
Mr. King steers to the parkway and heads into town. He parks on Fifth Avenue and even though it’s raining, he and Victoria huddle beneath a large blue umbrella and walk the few blocks to Cappelli’s Restaurant. It’s as high-class as the city has and is considered one of the best places to eat in the entire state. It’s not cheap, but Victoria and her father never needed things to be.
They are seated in their usual corner booth. The waitress doesn’t bother to bring over menus. The Kings have their favorites, and the chef put them on the minute they walked through the door.
Warm bread is set on the table. Victoria takes a slice. Mr. King does not.
“I’m sorry I’m not a better cook for you,” he says.
She rolls her eyes and chuckles. “Please. Don’t ever worry about that. I like going to restaurants.” To illustrate her point, she takes a large bite of buttered bread. She chews voraciously, but stops when she realizes her father isn’t laughing. He isn’t smiling. It’s like he’s not even at the table anymore.
Victoria swallows hard. “Are you okay?”
A long stretch of silence. Then Mr. King says, “No. I’m sorry, but no.”
Dread fills Victoria’s stomach. It’s like they’re right back to a week ago, when he was secretive and strange. Worry fills her, but so does anger.
“Dad, please.” She sets the bread down. “Just tell me what’s wrong. Whatever is it, I can handle it. I could help you handle it if you’d just let me. Tell me what that money was for. Tell me who was at the gate. I can help you.”
The waitress drops off Mr. King’s drink. He didn’t ask for one, but he never usually does. Like his food, they know his drink, and it’s brought promptly and without question. The waitress walks away.
“Victoria,” he begins, “there’s no easy way to say this. I already told your brother and it…he uh, he didn’t take it too well.”
“He never does,” she says, trying to lighten the mood.
Mr. King’s expression remains dark. Finally he says, “You know what my business is. It’s an investment firm. I handle people’s money, sometimes a lot of it. And sometimes, appearances count. Know what I mean? Sometimes when you’re too lucky, when investments pan out and bring a lot in, that can cause people to start having unrealistic expectations. Expectations that it can be done every time.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice childlike and worried. “So did you um…did you like, lose some money or something?”
“Not some,” he chokes out. “Not some.”
Victoria’s eyes well up. Her nose goes itchy. But she fights to stay calm. “Okay, so it’s a blip. It’s a run of bad luck. But things change. Stocks change all the time. You’ll be alright.”
An agonized silence settles over their table. Mr. King’s heart aches in a way it’s never ached. It’s then he reaches over and takes his daught
er’s hand. As he looks at their entwined fingers, he thinks back to all the times he's held her hand.
“Luck is funny,” he says quietly. “One minute, you’re an emperor. The next, you’re nothing but a fool.”
“Dad?”
He takes a breath. “Li Kang was a long-term client of mine. One of my first, actually. Earlier in the year, he cashed out. Said he wanted to go into the hotel business and was willing to push all the chips in, savings included. I tried to convince him not to but he was adamant. So I closed it. It was worth about a quarter of a billion dollars.” Mr. King meets Victoria’s wide-eyed, frightened gaze. “He cleaned the company out.”
“So we’re…poor?”
To Victoria’s surprise, Mr. King chuckles. He releases her hand. “I wish it were that simple.” His laughter fades and his eyes turn dark again. “I did something bad, Victoria. I wasn't uh, responsible with people's money. I wasn't truthful about it."
“You didn’t steal,” she says, her father’s words unreal, unfathomable. “You just, you had to shuffle money. You had to move things but you didn’t steal.”
“You know, I used to tell myself the same thing. I wasn’t stealing. I was just appropriating funds. At the end of the day, it would all get paid back and accounted for.” He gives her a sad smile. “But the truth is, Victoria, I stole. And maybe I would’ve kept getting away with it, but after the Li Kang thing happened—and, as fortune would have it, after another client wanted to cash out, for hockey tickets, of all goddamn things—it just couldn't happen. By the skin of my teeth, I was able to get that man his money. But then another client called. And…well, I don’t need to go into all the details, but I didn’t have it.”
Victoria reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Stop this. Stop feeling so guilty, okay. You did what you thought was right at the time. You’ll fix it and things will be back to normal.”
“I can’t fix this.”
A small sob hiccups out of her. “Try. Please try.”
Unstoppable: Truth is Unstoppable (Truth and Love Series) Page 20
