23. IVY
23
IVY
“Why wouldn’t I forgive you, Mom?”
The tires hissed on the wet asphalt as we drove through the night, streetlights illuminating the rain-slicked windows. Inside the car, the air tasted bitter with the poison of my mother’s words.
“Because you’ve asked me repeatedly why your dad killed himself and I didn’t tell you the truth.”
What?
Bile swirled in my stomach as I replayed all the times I’d sobbed to her with words like, “I don’t understand,” and, “Why would he leave us?” Every time, she’d patted my back, playing the part of a woman who was equally confused by my father’s death.
And this whole time…she’d known something?
How could she?!
Angry tears pricked at my eyes.
“His last wish was that I never tell you what happened,” she admitted.
His last wish?
“Why?” I choked.
Mom’s gaze, brimming with emotion, met mine.
“Because he didn’t want your conscience burdened with it.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “But it seems the truth is coming out, regardless.”
The car took a right turn, everything shifting at an angle.
Just like everything in my life—for the second time tonight.
“You were correct,” she started. “Dad did uncover an illegal weapons ring, and he did go to the authorities. That’s when they tried to kidnap you in retaliation.”
That fateful day came crashing back into my mind. The men. My screams. Dad beating one mercilessly. Dad knew who the men were? Or at least why they were doing it?
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I half-shouted.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to be angry at Mom and Dad; they always had my best interest at heart, and I was only thirteen, but honestly. That abduction changed my life, and they knew who was responsible? And kept that from me? How dare they!
“We were trying to protect you,” Mom said.
That’s why they were so overprotective—Dad was getting threatened.
“You guys should have told me!” I decided, because, yes, they should have. Maybe if they’d warned me, I wouldn’t have tried to walk home that day alone!
Sure, they probably didn’t expect a kidnapping, but that wasn’t the point! I trusted them both!
“Your attempted kidnapping scared him enough to turn a blind eye to the illegal activity. And for a while, things were better. You started self-defense classes, which helped you regain your confidence, and it also gave Dad the confidence that you could defend yourself better. Eventually, the weapons ring came back in full force, though, and when it did, they weren’t just moving weapons with the fire trucks; they were moving drugs. Again, Dad tried to keep his head down and pretend he wasn’t seeing it. But his conscience weighed on him. Every drug overdose, every shooting, left him haunted, wondering if it was one he could’ve prevented by coming forward.”
She rubbed her pant legs nervously while I screwed my eyes shut in fury.
They should have told me this. Both of them. It felt dirty, being angry at someone who’d passed away, but Dad should have realized keeping something from me and protecting me were two different things.
“By this point,” she continued, “you were an adult, so he thought the right thing to do was to go to the authorities. I begged him not to; I was scared. They’d gotten you once before, so what was to stop them again? But he…” She shook her head. “I guess with you being an adult, he thought it would be different this time. Especially because he was working with the FBI, not the police like years ago. But that’s when everything went sideways. The investigation was taking too long. They were making small dents in the organization, arresting small-level criminals here and there, but in the meantime, the men were going to make your father suffer a fate worse than death for what he’d done.” She hesitated. “They put a target on you, Ivy. To teach your father a lesson.”
So many emotions charged through my heart. First out was anger. If they didn’t feel I deserved to know back when I’d been almost kidnapped, how about when there was a target on my back? How negligent to not even give me a heads-up! Every moment I was out in public, I could have been in the crosshairs of some killer, and they didn’t tell me? How did keeping my safety a secret protect me, for God’s sake?
I forced myself to take a calming breath, thinking back to any warning I might’ve missed from them. Dad had been calling me much more often leading up to his death. I thought it was because he was down emotionally, but I bet he was checking on my safety.
“Witness protection fell through. So, he did the only other thing he could think of to keep you safe.”
“He turned himself over to them?” I asked in horror.
She shook her head. “That wouldn’t have saved you.”
I blinked, feeling like some awful answer was just within reach, but I couldn’t place it.
“The threat to you was only there so long as your father was alive.” She hesitated, dropping the volume of her voice. “So, he arranged his own death, hired someone to kill him.”
All the air escaped me at once, and pain shot through my abdomen with the gut-wrenching, terrible realization that I’d have to live with for the rest of my life— Dad killed himself to protect me.
Along with it, a sequence of agony I’d never wish on my worst enemy ripped me apart.
First came shock, a stillness of pain unbearable and unending.
The second wave was heartbreak for what he must’ve been feeling in those final days or weeks before his death, so full of suffocating despair and terror that he thought there was no other way out.
No other way to keep me alive.
Third was fury. Dad shouldn’t have taken his life. There had to be a different way to keep me safe! And how could Dad have kept me in the dark about all this, if it had reached that level? Maybe if he’d have talked to me, I could have assured him we’d find a solution that did not consist of him on a morgue slab! By not trusting me with the truth, he took away my voice in the matter. He made a decision that greatly impacted my life, without respecting me enough to include me in that decision. He had to know I’d have chosen to fight alongside him rather than let the bad guys win, so how dare he take that choice away from me? And how dare he give up the fight, leaving me alone with my survivor’s guilt?
“He’d had a life insurance policy for years,” Mom continued, pulling me from my thoughts. “But the payout was an afterthought. His primary goal was to save you. If his death provided money for Grams’s medical care in the process, great.” Mom wiped a tear from her cheek. “But it would only work if his death was not ruled a suicide.”
I was going to be sick.
“He, uh…” She cleared her throat. “He found someone on the dark web willing to do it. And he started to get his affairs in order.”
“This whole time, you acted like you had no idea why he killed himself,” I whispered.
“Your father made me promise not to tell you. It was for your protection, Ivy. He knew that if you found out, you would go looking for those men. You would push the police to find them, and then you would be in danger. Was he wrong?”
“I pushed the police anyway!”
“I tried to stop you!”
Ending his life to save mine? How was I supposed to live with that? My dad was the sun in my solar system, and for over a year, grief had entrenched my soul in darkness. How could I ever live a happy life again, knowing it came at the expense of Dad ending his?
“You claimed you were mad at Dad for committing suicide!”
“I was mad at your father, and I was scared, too! He was warned not to go against them, and I wished he’d have let someone else take down the bad guys. He should have kept his nose down. He shouldn’t have poked those damn bears. If he’d left well enough alone, he’d be here. And now…Grams, the bills, his choices have all fallen on your shoulders. I know it’s not fair to be upset with him, but it’s not fair what his choices did to you, either.”
I turned to the window, hot tears streaking my cheeks.
“The parking garage incident. Did you know that was Steve? I mean, Daniel? Pretending to be Bob?”
“No! Of course not.”
How could I believe her, though? How do you ever believe people who have lied to you?
“You acted so destroyed by Dad’s death.”
“I was destroyed, Ivy.”
But if what she was saying was true…
I turned to look at her again.
“If Dad arranged his own murder and that was supposed to look like murder for insurance purposes, then why did it look like suicide?”
A haunting pain carved deep furrows across Mom’s face, like this same question had plagued her for years. “I don’t know.”
“Think, Mom. Daniel’s the one who ordered Grayson to kill him and stage it. For us to believe it, Daniel must have known Dad was suicidal, but how would he have known that?”
She swallowed harshly.
An unsettling understanding crept through my bones. “ You told Daniel what Dad was planning.”
“I thought I could trust him, and I was hoping he’d have ideas on how I might talk your father out of it. But I should never have betrayed your father’s trust.”
I told myself it wasn’t fair to be enraged at Mom over that. Daniel was a CIA agent, so chances were, he was highly skilled at pulling sensitive information from people who didn’t want to reveal it. But if she hadn’t told him…might things have turned out differently?
“Daniel was working with the arms dealer, Ivan Vosch, Mom. He must have intercepted that dark web hit. So, why didn’t Daniel just tell Vosch? Why wasn’t I targeted!”
“I don’t know!”
“What would Daniel gain if Dad was dead ? If the arms dealer was calling the shots, why would Daniel risk going against him and his orders to target me , not Dad?”
“I don’t know, Ivy. I—” She suddenly stilled, several seconds ticking by. “The phone call,” she said to herself, replaying something in her past against all this new information. Like it was a thorn that had never sat well, but by itself, hadn’t grown into a garden of doubt. “I thought your father was just being jealous or paranoid, you know? I mean, by that point, he was seeing danger around every corner, and he’d overheard one phone call. With no details, by the way. He wasn’t making much sense, saying Steve was dangerous . ”
“Dangerous how?”
“He thought Steve might know the people moving the weapons. When I pushed your father, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of what he’d heard.”
“And you just let it go?”
“Steve—I mean, Daniel convinced me Dad must have heard wrong. And I was too focused on trying to talk your father out of killing himself. It was shortly after that, your father died, so the funeral and coping with all that took center stage. I genuinely believed St—Daniel, but obviously, I was wrong.”
Mom’s eyes welled with tears as I processed it all.
I could see the whole thing playing out. Dad—a man who came to many family functions—must have overheard something he wasn’t supposed to, something that implicated Daniel. Not clear what it exactly meant, he’d tried to warn Mom, but with her being so in love, of course she’d assume he’d heard wrong. Especially if Daniel was skilled at making her believe his lies.
But Dad wouldn’t believe him. And my guess was, that would be a huge problem for Daniel—who knew Vosch was planning to hurt me. And if that happened, I could only imagine Dad would be even more inclined to rat Daniel out and ruin his life. But if Dad died before he could do that…
Problem solved.
Except for one pesky thing. According to what Mom said, Vosch had put the target on MY back. Not Dad’s. So, if Daniel killed Dad instead of me and Vosch found out he’d gone against his orders, then maybe Daniel would be in serious shit with Vosch.
But if Dad were to follow through with a suicide…well, now, that would solve all of Daniel’s problems, wouldn’t it?
So long as no one found out about Daniel’s role in it.
No wonder my pushing the police was so problematic for Daniel; it wasn’t just the threat of being arrested for murder.
It was the threat that Vosch would find out what Daniel did.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry for everything, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Ivy.”
She had watched me desperately search for answers about why Dad killed himself. She had looked me in the eye, had wrapped her arm around my shoulders, and the whole time, she had kept this from me.
The betrayal cut deep, and I feared it was a wound that would never heal.
Especially with all the dominoes that had fallen because of her deception.
If I had known the truth, I never would’ve gone to the parking garage. Maybe I would’ve questioned Grayson’s role in all this since he was an assassin. Maybe I could have spared my fractured heart from having one final break.
My thoughts were cut short, though, when Red pulled into the police station parking lot, and Mom’s posture tensed.
“That man…” Her tone, previously burdened with guilt, was tight. “I know him.” She narrowed her eyes, studying something in front of the entrance as the vehicle inched closer.
“He’s Steve’s, uh… Daniel’s friend.”
Red’s grip tightened on the wheel. He looked at the man and then scanned the parking lot before saying, “This is a trap.”