Chapter 15
T he next morning I woke up early, but Dad had risen before me and was sitting in the living room in his tailored suit, his legs crossed with the New York Times in his hands.
I was still wearing the shirt and sweater from yesterday, so I only had to put on a pair of sweatpants. “Why did you lock me in? And where’s my cell phone?”
Dad peered over the newspaper and smiled kindly. “Good morning, darling. Are you feeling better?”
I looked at him silently and folded my arms across my chest.
He sighed. “You seemed to be in a miserable state yesterday. Almost unpredictable. I didn’t want you to rush out of the house or maybe make phone calls that wouldn’t be productive.”
“Not productive?”
“I was afraid you might call Grandma Anna.”
Luckily, Nathan hadn’t saved his number, otherwise, Dad might have used a trick to find out where he was. “Why Grandma Anna?” Because of everything that had happened, I hadn’t thought about her or the letter recently. Dad had, apparently.
“Grandma Anna has interfered in our family affairs far too often.” He placed the New York Times on the table and stood.
“What I told you yesterday about Isaac McCormack is the truth. He’s a madman, a psychopath.
” Even I would agree with that . “And your mom was sick, Willa. She suffered from pathological paranoia, one reason why your grandma came up with such terrible theories. She believed her. She didn’t want to believe that your mom was psychotic. ”
I remained silent. You don’t dare think the impossible .
Dad continued talking, saying he had given the staff a week’s vacation so that we could use the time to rekindle our father-daughter relationship undisturbed.
We had gone long enough without each other, but he would drive back to the office later and order dinner from Jacques again this evening even if I hadn’t touched anything yesterday.
“You’ve gotten terribly thin, Willa.” He looked at me carefully.
“Maybe you should start painting again. That used to do you good, didn’t it?
Painting always helped you. And you should talk to Dr. Moore if you don’t want to confide in me.
You were the victim of a violent crime and, obviously, had to go through some terrible things.
” He looked as if he was remembering the scars on my body and seemed hateful for a few seconds. “We have to call the police or…”
I blinked several times in a row; my tic had grown more distinct because of my experiences. “Or what?”
“Or Arrow Corp will finish it.”
I suddenly had a stale taste in my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“They could find the culprits and neutralize them.”
“You mean kill them?” I asked, shocked.
Dad remained silent.
“You would have them killed? Order it?”
“After seeing what was done to you yesterday…any father would do that. And, I can.”
I shook my head violently. “They’re dead, Dad.
The men who did this to me are all dead.
Isaac McCormack too. They died from the effects of Coldville’s pollution.
Immune system failure. Cancer. Their act was an act of desperation, only…
only Isaac”—I stumbled over the name—“he acted out of personal revenge.”
“They’re dead? All of them?” Dad stared at me, confused, as if he didn’t believe me. “Where did they take you after they left the cutter?”
So Arrow Corp had discovered it. They had found the Agamemnon! God, if only they had come in time, I would have been spared so much. However, Nathan and I might never have found each other, but…that was a high price to pay. I looked at my father. “Dad, it doesn’t matter at all now.”
“It does to me!”
Naturally. Dad needed someone to blame, but I couldn’t betray Nathan, Raphael, Jack, Ian, and Kjertan, or his brother.
I had no doubt that Dad would sic Arrow Corp on them.
The question was if I wanted him to sick them on Billy, Maury, and Anthony.
On Dave and Peter. On Taurus and Mykonos, who were going to die anyway or were already dead.
I had thought about this for a long time before I arrived in New York.
I knew Dad would ask me about the perpetrators and would want revenge.
Especially after seeing my scars. Even Nathan didn’t want to let the others get away with it.
The hatred in his heart burned as hot as lava.
We had often talked about it because Nathan didn’t know how to go about it.
Most of the men were from Coldville, friends of friends, relatives of friends.
“I swear to you, Will, if it makes things better for you, I’ll make sure they receive their just punishment.
” But I had kept quiet about it because I was still too anesthetized by my torment at the time.
If someone had put a gun in my hand, I would have shot myself rather than any of the others.
The problem with Dad was that if his unit caught these men, they might also betray Nathan and his friends. And something had become clear to me over the weeks: punishing these men wouldn’t reduce my nightmares nor my scars and fear. But Dad didn’t need to know that.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “With anyone. Ever.” And part of that wasn’t a lie.
Dad followed me into the kitchen where I made myself breakfast for the first time in years. He sat next to me, surely hoping for a word from me, but I remained silent.
Honestly, who was this man next to me? He wanted to have men he didn’t know, whose guilt he could only measure through me or my body, killed on his orders.
He’s a bit like The Godfather, Isaac whispered in my head.
I took a deep breath and pushed his voice into the dark vault of my soul.
So my father would actually order a murder.
And yet, he had had his special unit searching for me all these months.
If there was one thing I didn’t doubt, it was his love.
Was it possible that he had lied about my allergy but told the truth about many other things? I didn’t know and that was more unbearable than the truth could ever be.
Later, when he was chauffeured to the office to clear up important matters related to his oil sands business, it didn’t change my situation.
I remained locked up, my phone confiscated, and the line dead, this time, however, I didn’t have a panic attack because it didn’t come as a surprise.
Still, my chest felt tight. I walked through the penthouse like a sleepwalker unable to calm down.
It was as if I was searching for the truth in the halls, corridors, and Dad’s curiosities.
At some point, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and stopped in front of his study.
I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.
His computer. Dad stored all important things at home, not in his New York office because he didn’t trust anyone there.
Not even his security. Maybe I could find something about Coldville and the oil sands business.
I stood on my tiptoes to fish the key from the top of the frame. He had been hiding the key there ever since we moved in and it seemed that hadn’t changed in the last two days. This hiding place was an open secret, even Delilah, Jane, and Ruby knew about it.
I unlocked the door and slipped into Dad’s inner sanctum.
As before, it smelled of his cigars, a little vanilla, tobacco, and earth.
I had loved the smell as a child, there was something homey and warm about it, but today, it gave me a dull pressure in my stomach.
Still, I didn’t tilt the window open, fearing I might forget to close it again.
Pensive, I booted up the PC, dropped into Dad’s leather chair, and unlocked the computer with the digits of my birthday, the numbers in reverse.
Dad had told me the code when my laptop broke and I had shared his PC for a while.
When the desktop’s background image appeared, a snapshot of Dad and me in the penthouse, I breathed a sigh of relief. So, he hadn’t changed the password.
I immediately opened the browser and clicked Google but noticed that the internet wasn’t working.
It was irrelevant to my search for documents about Coldville because Dad would certainly never store important documents in a cloud.
The only problem, I couldn’t send Nathan any sign of life.
I had an idea when I started the PC about writing an email to the hostel: Please tell your guest Nathan McCormack that I no longer have my phone.
Regards, W. H. At least that way he would have known why I hadn’t been in touch.
To rule out a malfunction of the LTE router, I rose to see if there was a problem. The device was connected but the buttons weren’t lit up. I pressed the on button but nothing happened. Dad must have disconnected the wireless router somehow. Apparently, he wanted to isolate me completely.
So that’s how far you’ll go! I glanced at the screen in shock and then regained my senses. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But, I could also search for documents without the internet. For example, for reports on water samples.
For a while, I clicked through several drives and a bunch of folders. Unfortunately, I didn’t know much about technology or operating systems, but at some point, I stumbled across a password-protected folder.
Damn! Even if it contained important documents, it would take me years to crack the password because I didn’t know the code. I also didn’t know how many attempts I had before the security protocol locked me out.
On a whim, I typed in my birth date again, this time in the correct sequence, but the password was wrong.
I tried it backward, but that didn’t work either.
I thought about it for a while and then used Nicholas Jr.’s birth date.
I held my breath in anticipation, but nothing happened.
To my relief, it didn’t lock me out. I could keep trying.