Chapter Sixty-One
Kwame
Come Clean
As soon as the door closes behind him, I turn to my father. “What is going on with you and Oz?”
He gives me a quizzical but amused look. “Nothing. My security people are a client of his, and he has the same system.” He plucks a cigar from the lacquered humidor on his desk, snips the end and sits back in his chair to light it.
“Do you really trust him, Dad?” I ask and take a seat across from him.
“He’s family, Kwame. He’s loyal, and he makes the most of every opportunity I give him.” He takes a draw from his cigar and blows out the acrid smoke, and eyes me through the haze. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“What does that mean?” I bristle.
“I've heard that you’re applying for a job at the US Attorney’s office.”
My stomach drops. “Who told you that?”
He shakes his head, his eyes steady on mine. “It doesn’t matter. I should have heard it from you.”
“I was going to tell you when I had something to tell you.”
“Where are you in the process?”
I contemplate how much to tell him. I wonder how much he already knows. “I’m waiting for my background check to clear.”
He snorts a laugh. “There’s something holding it up?”
I look up sharply. “Why?”
“Is it me?” He continues drawing on his cigar, calm as the sea on a moonless night.
“How can you know that?”
“Because I know them. They have a problem with the fact that I’ve flourished in places they’ve failed to find a foothold.”
“Who is they?”
“The government of your country.”
I like how it’s my country when he’s the one who chose it. “Dad, you’re building luxury real estate in a country they’ve got sanctions against.”
“People live in those countries, and they deserve to have a nice place to live. I’m not doing anything wrong. I do business with anyone it makes sense to do business with. It’s not illegal. They do it, too. So why should I not be allowed the same?”
It’s the same argument I made that day. I wrestle with what to share for a minute before I finally do. “I want to tell you something, but you’ve got to keep it between us.”
He nods. “Of course.”
I eye him and hope he keeps his word. “You’re not the real problem in my background check. It’s Oz. The feds are investigating him.”
He sits up, sputtering, his face contorted. “And you brought her here? Are you crazy? You asked me to let her interview me?”
“Yes. What has that got to do with Oz?”
His eyes narrow. “That girl is trying to poke your eyes out, and you handed her a sharp stick.”
Perplexed, I lean away. “Dad, this isn’t about her. This is—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he roars and gets to his feet so he’s towering over me. The change in his demeanor is so dramatic it gives me whiplash.
“She’s not going to make a bit of difference for whatever bleeding-heart crusade she’s on.
” He slaps the table with an open palm and the back of his rings crack against the wood.
“But she could uncover things she won’t understand and will misconstrue in a way that could destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to build. ”
I lean back in my chair, the weight of his words hitting me like a burst of open flame to my face. “Destroy you? Things like what?”
His expression goes grim. As grim as it had been the morning my mother took her last breath. “I told your mother this wasn’t a good idea.”
The anguish in his eyes makes my stomach swoop. “Dad, what do—”
A simultaneous thundering boom of sound and the percussive vibrating of the trembling ground beneath our feet.