29. April 14, 2023
Cherry
“Knock, knock.”
Cherry stood in the doorway of Zion’s office, papers in hand.
It wasn’t lost on her that almost twenty-six years ago, she’d done the same thing in her father’s doorway the day he disappeared.
Only this time, she wasn’t seeking the critique of someone she respected.
Instead, she was serving as a distraction for Demon to get out of the villa, as well as see if Ka-Bar’s picture shook anything loose.
Zion looked up from the eight-by-eleven piece of paper he held. He flipped it upside down on his desk and smiled at her. It was the cold smile he reserved for when he was displeased, but he wanted to keep his thoughts from the witness. “Come in, Esme. What brings you to my dark and dingy office?”
She crossed to the front of his desk but didn’t sit. Whatever he’d been looking at was a photo. She wondered if she could lure him out of his office somehow and get a look at his desk .
She extended her hand with the papers to him. “In all of the excitement yesterday, I never got this to you. It’s the information on my friend’s brother.”
Without looking at the papers, Zion reached out his hand to her and took the stack. “Thank you. I’ll give the commissioner a call in the morning. No promises, remember, but I’ll see what I can find out about your friend, Kent.”
It was out of her mouth before she could hold it back.
“I didn’t tell you his name,” she whispered.
As soon as it came out, she knew it was a mistake.
Archangels and seraphims, he knew Ka-Bar!
Obviously they knew who he was because of Zahra and their son, but did they know he was collecting intel on them?
She should have held it back. She shouldn’t have registered his slipup.
Now she was in a lot of trouble, and she knew it.
His eyebrows rose, and he smiled ruefully. “No? No, I guess you didn’t.” His fingers played with the upside-down photograph on his desk. “You have the innate power to make men act foolishly, Esme.”
“I don’t understand. How do I make men act foolishly?”
Elbows retracted to the arms of his leather desk chair, he made a pyramid with his hands under his chin. “Simply by existing, my dear. Your father? Yourself? Neither of you had any idea what was being planned for you, personally, in the shadows.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested.
“You are the modern-day equivalent of Helen of Troy—making men yearn to possess you, even if it drives them to the brink of destruction. To a point where no sacrifice is too great.”
She frowned in confusion.
“Don’t worry, my dear. It’s not your fault. There are just some women in this world who possess the ability to twist men’s minds. They don’t mean to do it. It just happens.”
Her voice shook as she spoke. “I knew that something wasn’t right. Something about you made me uncomfortable. Even after all these years, I second-guessed your interest, trying to convince myself that my father’s best friend couldn’t possibly be so perverted as to lust after his underage daughter.”
He chuckled. “Oh, it wasn’t me who wanted you.
My tastes run a bit more… exotic. However, I was an inroad to you, which I have always regretted.
Because of that, I foolishly tried to intercede in the plans that were being made to take you from your father.
I assumed that my standing with the Salieri would be enough to protect you from the danger that awaited you. ”
“Danger? What danger could I possibly have been in?”
“General Howard.”
“Zion, you’re not making sense.”
“When your mother died, General Howard visited to pay his respects. He was captivated by the precocious young daughter who seemed so composed at the funeral of her mother. He saw you as strong. Resilient. He became fascinated with you.”
“I was six years old,” she protested.
“Oh, it wasn’t sexual,” Zion replied. “Did you know he’d had a daughter?
She was killed while riding her bicycle, and her death was ripping his marriage apart.
The accident happened shortly before your mother died, and she would have been about your age.
In his grief, I think his mind suddenly turned you into his daughter.
“Over time, his fascination with you grew. Around the time your father and I became partners, it was clear Howard always knew more about you than he should have, and that should have been a warning to us that it was growing into an obsession. But by the time I realized his feelings were growing into something else, you were turning sixteen, and graduation was looming.”
Somewhere in the course of Zion’s confession, Cherry had collapsed into one of the chairs in front of his desk.
Her eyes were glued to his face, and her ears were burning with the information they were hearing, but she couldn’t seem to force any words out of her mouth. The whole situation was ludicrous!
“Howard declared to our elder that he wanted you as his bride. He had plans for the removal of his current wife, whom he was essentially married to in name only since the death of their daughter. He furthered his case by informing the Worthy—our seven leaders—that your father had somehow learned about us and was investigating with the intent to reveal us to the world. That simply couldn’t happen, so approval was given as long as taking you for a bride included the termination of your father. ”
Her stomach heaved. Zion was involved and had known the day he disappeared that her dad was never coming back. Worse yet, he was covering for whoever had taken him.
“Were you involved in my father’s disappearance?”
He rose from his chair, tugged his suit jacket down, smoothed it, and crossed to the window. His hands were lightly clasped behind him as he stared out the glass. “Directly? No.”
He turned his head in profile. “When I learned what was happening, I tried to intercede without jeopardizing my position. Erroneously, I believed that if I could get you to Italy, studying abroad, living in my home, perhaps you’d fall in love with me.
Then I could protect you with my name and position. ”
He turned to look out the window again. “In the long run, it didn’t matter.
Given my position as your father’s partner, I realize now that I wasn’t allowed much information.
The events of your graduation day were set in motion without my knowledge.
My guess is that either Howard fed your father the information as a means to convince the elders to eliminate him as an obstacle and give you over as a bride, or possibly your father discovered something on his own and decided to confide his suspicions to Howard.
Either way, approval was given, with the caveat that your father be terminated.
“I made one final effort on the day your father was taken. I hoped that in your vulnerable state, I could get you away from the house and to St. Lucia, where I could hide you temporarily. At least until I secured your agreement to marry me. I should have known you’d be stubbornly loyal, and because you were eighteen, I couldn’t use legal guardianship as a means to force you to come with me. ”
“Then why wasn’t I kidnapped along with my father? ”
“That’s where I was foolish over you for the first time.
I thought I could allow you to live your life without interference and still protect you from any danger that brought you into.
You see, I thought I had far more power than I actually did—a common character flaw among young men at that age.
But what I did have was money. Lots of it.
And since that didn’t seem to work to seduce you into my protection, I used it with the Salieri, whom I knew it would work with.
Basically, I bought your freedom. My error was in believing that if I just left you alone, you’d be safe. From Howard. The Salieri. Yourself.”
There was a click behind her. Over her shoulder, she noticed Matthew had entered the room, closed the door behind him, and stood in front of it.
His hands were folded one over the other in front of him, but she didn’t mistake his posture as relaxed.
He would be ready with a weapon before she could even get to the French doors fifteen feet away.
Zion returned to the desk. He reached to flip over the photo he’d been looking at when she arrived in the room. It was Demon and her at the café the day she and Gem had nearly been blown up, where he had her pulled tight to his chest.
She swallowed hard as he reached for a manila envelope that held about an inch’s worth of paper. He pulled them out and revealed a series of photos, which he dropped one by one face up on his desk.
She looked up at him. “Spying on me?”
“Part of what I purchased the day I saved you from General Howard was the responsibility of keeping an eye on you. We had to be sure you weren’t aware of what your father had found out. So yes, I watched you.
“Early on, my observations led me to believe that while you were still going to put your brilliant mind to work, you were wracked with grief and totally unaware of what your father had been stirring up. I watched you shield yourself from the world at large. At first, I admit, I was concerned and confused. You never took a formal position anywhere, and I wondered why you were letting your education go to waste. Why did you simply disappear? Why weren’t you taking advantage of your gifts with any one of the universities that had to be clamoring for someone like you to teach other brilliant minds?
Why weren’t you being lured into some corporate think tank or government position worthy of your skills? ”
He gave a sardonic laugh. “And then I realized. You weren’t grieving. You were plotting. You didn’t do any of those things because you had your own plans. You were building your own corporation, independently, silently. Why? What could possibly be so important for you to keep it so secret?