Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
Georgia/ Five Years Ago
A s I’m pushing the front door of the library open and turning on the lights, I’m startled by the baritone greeting from the broad-shouldered man in the custom Versace suit. “Hello, Georgia.”
Goose bumps cover my arms as I stare dubiously at my father sitting in my favorite armchair by the fireplace.
There are only two keys to the library. One of them is in my hand and I highly doubt Mariam, the head librarian, let him borrow hers. She barely let me touch it until she had no choice but to give me the spare when I took on opening hours. “I doubt I want to know how you got in,” I murmur, leaving the door half-open just in case.
My father may have never hit me before, but I know he’s capable after watching Mrs. Ricci step between us the day he raised his hand.
He doesn’t say anything right away, but he chuckles when he sees me walk away from the door and go behind the check-out counter. I know underneath the suit that makes him look both wealthy and professional is a powerful man not to be messed with. Lincoln and Conklin’s words from my husband’s birthday echo in my head.
No matter how well put-together my father looks or how approachable he appears, there’s far more hiding beneath the surface if what I heard is true.
“I have my ways,” he answers simply, his eyes roaming from the tips of my shoes to the messy bun I threw my hair into. “You looked better brunette,” he notes, the statement a punch to the gut I take with as much dignity as I can.
My eyes go to his graying hair that was once as rich a brown as mine. “That’s because I looked like a Del Rossi.”
He makes a thoughtful noise. “Much to your dismay, you will always be a Del Rossi. No matter what horrible color you dye your hair.”
The comment makes my teeth grind. “I’m surprised you haven’t stopped by sooner to congratulate me on my nuptials.”
I see the slightest flicker of a smile that’s gone when I blink, and I know it has nothing to do with amusement. I’ve seen it before whenever I snooped in on his meetings as a child. When he was challenged or second-guessed by the person he met with, that smile would appear. Usually, before that person went away. It was rare I ever saw them again. I’d heard rumors that they were fired, stripped of their roles, and moved away.
Disgraced.
Like me.
That smile, no matter how minuscule, is terrifying.
“Are they really nuptials if they’re fake?” he questions, gripping the arms of the chair.
“I assure you, the documents are all very legal.”
“I wasn’t referring to the documents.”
His eyes are bloodshot, not staying on me for too long. Is it because he doesn’t see my mother anymore?
“Then what were you referring to?”
“I preferred it when you barely spoke back,” is his only response.
I drape my coat over the back of the chair, giving him minimal attention. “I’m sure you do. It was easier for you when I didn’t ask questions. I want more out of life though.”
When I peek up at him, I see his jaw grind as he studies our surroundings. “Do you honestly think that the life you’ve chosen for yourself is any better than the one I could have provided for you?”
I slide my purse under the counter. “I got to choose this life for myself. That will always make it better than being forced to live under whatever cruel arrangements you set up.”
The laugh he lets out is short and cold. “Have you seen yourself? You’re a mess, Georgia. You are married to a man who makes you work. You look like you haven’t slept. From where I sit, you chose wrong .”
He has to say that, doesn’t he? A man like him would never admit otherwise. “It’s so nice to hear you’re concerned about me and my well-being. How very…fatherly of you. I almost forgot you were mine since you’ve made it a point to throw the world’s largest temper tantrum because your adult daughter made a few choices for herself.”
For a long, tense, minute he doesn’t say a word. His sharp gaze is piercing, and I realize I’m poking a bear. A grizzly. Deadly. “You used to be a reasonable girl. That’s how you were raised.”
“I was raised to obey,” I correct, standing taller. “Whether I saw reason in it or not. There’s a big difference between the two.”
He hums, standing as well. His presence takes over the large space, making it much smaller. Flattening a hand down his suit jacket, he says, “Loyalty is everything to the Del Rossi name, which is not lost on you no matter where you decide to play house. I’ll admit, Georgia, that I thought you a lost cause when I learned that you whored yourself out to a cop and married him behind my back. But all is not lost after all. Not yet.”
“If you think I’m going to come back—”
“I think you need to stop talking and let me finish.” He cuts me off, voice leaving no room for argument.
As if my body recognizes the tone, it locks up, throat tightening and tongue heavy to trap the words wanting to escape it.
Once he realizes I’m not going to speak, he tucks a hand in his pocket. It’s a casual gesture, one far too simple for a man of his stature. A power play, I realize. To get me comfortable—maybe even to make it seem like he isn’t a threat when we both know he is. “Our family needs a united front. It always has. Your absence and your marriage have been very well-noted in our community. What’s also noticed is how haggard you look at such a young age. Your officer is hardly taking care of you. The beauty you were known for, praised for, is wasted on whatever act of rebellion you saw fit.”
It’s quickly clear to me that it’s not me he cares about, but his image. “So, what? You want me to let you back into my life after you shut me out? Threatened me? Threatened Lincoln? Made our lives more complicated than they already were? Those were all your choices. I made the one best for me. My husband is a good man. He works hard for us. We’re both building a future we can be proud of. It doesn’t matter what people think anymore.”
“It does to me. To your mother.”
“Leani is not my mother.”
“I’m not speaking of my second wife,” he spits, eyes narrowed as they land on me. If looks could kill, I’d be writhing on the ground.
Swallowing, I clench my fists. “How can anything matter to a woman who is dead?” I question, feeling my doubt wrap itself around my heart.
My father’s expression tightens, his eyes draining of whatever anger that he felt before, and in its place…irrevocable sadness. The same kind I saw at her funeral when people were sharing their condolences one measly handshake at a time.
“Look at you,” I whisper, shaking my head in disbelief. “You’re so worried about what people think of me, but I don’t even recognize you anymore. Do you sleep? Eat?”
He doesn’t answer any of those questions.
“Your mother,” he says, voice cracking, “was trying to do everything she could to make sure your life was secure. That you were happy . She cared more about you and your future than she did herself, which is why she’s dead.”
He says so much without saying anything at all. “You said before not to be naive about how she died, so why don’t you tell me the truth for once? I can handle it.”
His laugh is short, cold, and abrupt. “You do not have what it takes to handle the truth. That’s why your husband doesn’t tell it to you. Our world is built on a foundation of lies and deception. You’re guilty of it as much as I am.”
What have I ever lied about? “That’s not a world I want to live in then.”
“Do you know the effort the cop is putting into taking me down? How much energy he’s spending behind your back on all of those late nights at work and away from you just to meddle in business that isn’t his to know?”
When I heard Lincoln talk about his suspicions surrounding my father, I didn’t want to believe it. But all of those late nights at work, of the phone calls he takes in different rooms when he’s home, makes me wonder what it is he’s found out that only he, Matt Conklin, and my father seem to know.
“You don’t question me,” my father says, the sadness masked by cool indifference, “because you know I’m right. What kind of marriage is shaped by lies and deceit? That’s all yours ever was and ever will be. Your mother would be ashamed.”
Bringing my mother into it cuts deep. “And would my marriage to Luca Carbone have been any different? Would it be shaped with honesty and transparency? You said that’s not what our world is built on. We both know the Carbones don’t have a clean reputation. Maybe my choice is less about choosing someone who would lie to me and picking the person with a good reason to lie in the first place.”
It’s the only justification I can let myself have to separate Lincoln’s actions from my father’s—from Luca’s.
He’s not the same as them. He’s…good.
“And what do you think I’ve been doing this whole time? I have done nothing but protect you, Georgia. I have done everything in my power to ensure you don’t get taken from me like her . She refused their wishes once and look where she is.”
For the first time ever, I see genuine fear in his eyes. It’s faint, half-hidden behind the hideous mask he wears to seem indifferent, but visible only if you look close enough.
“I do not want to bury you too.”
“Who are you so afraid of?” I ask, my voice far gentler than it had been before.
He looks away, his jaw moving as his hands tighten and untighten by his sides. In a grave voice, he says, “That is a list far too long to share, Georgia.”
Chills run down my spine.
Is there any truth to what Lincoln and Conklin said? “Daddy,” I whisper.
His eyes slowly find mine.
“Are you…” The words get trapped in my throat, so I clear it and try again as nerves bubble under my skin. “Are you working with the—”
“Do not,” my father cuts me off, “ask questions that you do not want the answers to.”
It’s a nonanswer that tells me enough.
“But why?”
“Because I’m being punished,” he answers, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he evades his eyes briefly to look at something on the wall. “That is what love gets you. Punished.”
All I can do is shake my head.
His eyes turn back to me, skating over my tired expression that’s grown guarded and cautious since this conversation started.
Then something on his face shifts, like he shut off whatever emotion he was showing me before in order to bury it deep, deep down. “I was glad to hear the head librarian found the money they said you’d stolen. I thought to myself, ‘No daughter of mine would be caught doing such a scandalous thing,’ and that’s what I told the director when I made a donation in the Del Rossi name.”
Gaping, I let out a tiny breath. “How did you even know about the money?”
“The money you stole?” he questions.
He knows damn well I didn’t steal it. “We both know there was no stolen money, especially now that I know you wrote a check to ‘fix’ it. You hate that I work here—that I work at all instead of staying home like some dutiful nineteen-fifties housewife to a man whose family you seem to fear.”
His lips press together.
I sigh, feeling defeat warm my stiff muscles into my shoulder slump. Whoever this person is, he is not my father. Not the one I remember. Will I ever get that version of him back? I don’t think so, and that’s heartbreaking.
“You have interjected yourself every way you can since I turned down your last proposal. All I want is to be happy . I never wanted to be at war with you.”
Those dark brown-black eyes that used to be full of so much love before my mother passed away lock with mine. A newfound darkness in them that leaves me leery. “It is not me you’re going to war with, Georgia. It’s people far more powerful.”
And I have a feeling I know who now. “The same people you’re leaving me defenseless against? That you’re keeping me in the dark about?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What deal did you make that you can’t get out of?” I question, my gut clenching with warning over asking these things. “Ever since Mom died, you’ve buried yourself in a world that has taken the man I used to know away from me. You used to love me. You used to love us . But now you only see me as some object to trade in for something better. Mom wouldn’t have wanted that for me.”
He walks over to me, closing in on the space I put between us until the air is thick. “You knew nothing about your mother, so don’t act like you know what she would want for you.”
Swallowing down my retort, I watch his crazed eyes grow darker until there’s barely any of the brown color left. He is a man possessed by power and something far darker.
“You’re afraid,” I whisper. “Of whoever is pulling the strings.”
His nostrils flare. “You should be too. He is everywhere, daughter. He’s always looming, with one foot in the door, ready to take it all away. That is the deal I made. I asked for a future, and his price was you.”
Me. “Who is he? Antonio? Luca?”
“His name doesn’t matter. You only think you’re happy because you assume the alternative is worse,” he informs me, glaring at the romance books stacked on the counter. “But you have no idea the things he can do to get what he wants.”
“If you’re in trouble, maybe I can help.” It’s a last-ditch effort to find the man who used to tuck me in at night with my mother. I may not remember a lot about her, but I remember his warm smile whenever she was around. She made him better. Without her, he succumbed to demons I’m afraid I can’t do anything about. “We don’t have to be enemies.”
For a split second, he stares at me as if he sees the genuine concern on my face and feels it in my voice. I think there’s a chance he could accept the help, the figurative hand I’m offering to get him out of whatever situation he’s in.
He straightens to his full height. “If there is one thing you need to remember, it’s that weak foundations can be the collapse of otherwise sturdy structures, Georgia. I am not your enemy. But I am not your friend.”
I begin to answer, but he turns and walks out before I can so much as utter a syllable.
But his words soak in all the same.
*
The library lets me go two weeks later. They say they can’t keep me because of budget cuts, but I know better. Mariam can’t even look me in the eye when she asks for my key, so I don’t bother pleading my case or asking for her to reconsider.
It isn’t up to her. Not if my father’s visit has anything to do with the sudden change of funding.
She gives me a card signed by everybody and offers me an envelope with some cash they’ve saved up to “get me by” until I find something else. One of the girls I work with on Saturdays says she can get me a job at the new bookstore in town because she knows the owner.
When I get home that night, I don’t tell Lincoln that I’ve been fired when I see the weight slouching his shoulders. I decide to wait—to let him tell me about the lost little girl they had to search for who’d been taken by a relative, then the brutal suicide involving a revolver and lonely old veteran that they’d walked into in the afternoon, followed by two different unattended deaths caused by drug overdoses.
My admission is on the tip of my tongue by the time he goes silent, but I swallow my words when he eventually says, “Sometimes, I think this job is going to kill me. I should have gone into a different field. The only thing keeping me here is the money and the chance at making a difference.”
Tell him, an inner voice urges. I part my lips, ready to add to his stressful day, and admit I can no longer contribute past the two hundred dollars that had been tucked away in the envelope from the library.
But I curl into his body, kiss his chest, and say the only thing I can. “It’ll be okay.”
I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince.
Him or me.
I don’t think for long.
Next thing I know, he’s stripping off my nightshirt, cupping my breast, and putting his mouth over me. When he tells me to get on my knees, I do.
Because I don’t want to talk. To tell him the truth. To feel like I’ve failed again, all thanks to the man who gave me my last name.
Maiden name, I remind myself.
I am not Georgia Del Rossi.
And it will be okay.
One day.
I watch him undo his jeans and pull himself out, knowing he needs this control after a long day of not having any, of having to be on his best behavior after the last two complaints were made against him. He’s on thin ice and feeling it with each passing day when he comes home with another problem, another reason why I can’t add to the mess.
So, I wrap my hand around the base of him and take him in my mouth, hearing those four familiar purred words above me. “That’s my good girl.”
And long after we’re both naked and sated, and he’s passed out tangled in the sheets, I think about what I’m going to do next.
But I never have an answer.
Only more questions that eat away at me as I bury them deep, deep down, to try to pretend nothing is wrong.
My head turns to see the steady rise and fall of Lincoln’s chest, and I wonder what he’s dreaming about.
More than that, I wonder if the beautiful, naked liar beside me will ever tell me the truth or if I’m destined to love the kind of men who will always keep me bathed in the darkness.