2
Logan
Avery long silence follows Piper’s words.
I’m reeling. Not because I don’t think about Lia every moment of the day, or because I haven’t talked about her with Piper before. But I have to do a lot of preparation before hearing anyone speak her name out loud. Even when her own daughter refers to her, it sends me spiraling.
I grip onto the side of my desk, gulping in deep breaths to calm myself.
“Okay, Piper. What about Lia?”
“Well… I’m pretty sure she just called me.”
I bolt up from my chair, feeling like lightning has fried my skin right off. “What are you talking about?”
My voice comes out harsh, much harsher than I intended it to. Much harsher than I know Piper has ever heard it before. I don’t need to see her reaction to know she’s freaked out.
“Sorry, sweetie.” I take a few more calming breaths. “You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
Everything’s fine. And everyone’s fine. Except for whoever played that cruel gag on you. She’s dead.
“It’s not fine,” she says in a shy voice, “it’s better than fine. Isn’t it? My mom is alive.”
“No.” I bite my tongue to keep the groan from leaving my mouth. Eighteen years of pain, and I still can’t handle it. I just can’t fucking handle it.
I crouch by the desk, willing away the threads of white currently invading my vision, and hug my cell phone to my ear. “She’s not alive. Piper, don’t take her calls anymore. It’s a trick. Lia’s… dead. You know that.”
Eighteen years, and it’s still the hardest word to speak.
But I have to. Because the only person I truly care about in this world, apart from her, is her daughter. My daughter.
She may not be called Aurora anymore, but she’s still mine. I may have given her up, officially, but she never stopped belonging to me.
“But she said she was my mom,” insists Piper. “Maybe… maybe…”
“Enough, sweetie. I know how much you wish it was true, but… but I visit Lia’s grave every day. I don’t think ghosts know how to use phones.”
The bitter joke can’t possibly mask the heartbreak in my voice.
Even though I know it’s a trick, a trap that must have been laid by whatever mafiosos pathetically remain, it still hurts like hell.
All the old, painful memories crowd back in.
The ones I’ve spent so long pushing down.
The ones that still vibrate underneath the layers of hardness I’ve built up over the years.
“Logan,” insists Piper, and my heart squeezes painfully like it always does when I hear her call me anything but papa, the way she did when she was little.
But that’s just how it is. She’s lived a full, happy life without me.
I’m not her father anymore. I lost that the night I lost everything, eighteen years ago.
“Logan,” she says again, “I know it was her. I… I can’t explain it. But her voice sounded familiar. It was like when you showed me that photo album of me as a baby. I didn’t have any memory of it before, but it kind of started to pierce through the fog… like a grey-out or something.”
“A grey-out?” I repeat.
“Yeah, like, when you’ve had too much to drink, but it’s not quite a black-out… because you remember things once people tell you about them.”
I scowl. “I really hope you’re not drinking, Piper.”
“Yes, dad.” That’s the closest to papa she’ll ever get to, and it’s only to mock me when she thinks I’m overdoing it with the fatherly concern. I can’t tell if it makes me want to laugh or cry. “I’m twenty-two, by the way. Almost twenty-three. I’m legally allowed to drink.”
I know exactly how old she is, but it’s still strange to hear it. Twenty-two. My little girl is older than Lia was when she died.
And that’s the thing—the words everyone says are false. Lies. Because time doesn’t make anything easier.
Time crushes you. Time drives you to your knees.
But time also makes it easier to learn to hide your pain.
When I speak again, there’s no sign of that emotion in my voice. There hardly ever is, anyway.
“If I hear you’ve had even a drop of alcohol, young lady, I’m flying over to Oregon to ground you.”
I pause, waiting for her reaction. My lips are already twisting into a smirk, imagining her eye roll. But instead, when she speaks again, she sounds nervous.
“We-e-ell… here’s the thing.”
“The thing,” I echo.
“Yeah, the thing. The thing is… uhm… I’m not in Oregon anymore.”
“You’re not…” I interrupt myself, suddenly growing very cold. “Piper. Please tell me that’s a joke.”
“Uhm, it’s not. Don’t be mad at me. But how could I stay in Oregon when my mom called me?”
“Piper! She’s not your mom!”
Again, my voice sounds far too harsh. I love my daughter to pieces, but fuck, how can she possibly be so oblivious? Doesn’t she realize how much danger she’s putting herself in by leaving her safe house?
I start stalking around the room, panic making me walk in circles. I do my best to try to smooth over the harshness in my voice that I know terrifies her. “Piper, I’m not losing you…”
“Don’t worry,” she tries to reassure me, though her shaky voice makes me want to reassure her.
“It’s not like I’m in any danger. Coltello’s dead, and you told me the mobsters that remain are like a joke, now…
I don’t know why I have to be in hiding anyway.
I’m sick of it. I mean, I love the place in Oregon, but I don’t want to be stuck there for the rest of my life.
What’s the big deal? Besides, it was my mom on the phone. I just know it was.”
“You silly girl…” I bite my tongue, not wanting to yell at my daughter, let alone call her names. She reminds me of her mother. Is she truly so thoughtless, or does some part of her want to provoke me? “Piper, where are you? I’m going to get a plane and send you right back—”
“So, I’m downstairs, actually. On the ground floor of Devil Tower. The receptionist won’t let me up without a visitor badge. I told her I’m your daughter, but she doesn’t believe me.”
It takes a huge amount of self-control to keep myself from throwing my phone across the room. I’ve tried so hard to protect my daughter by giving her a new identity and sending her far away from Astley, and then she waltzes right back and shouts her real name from the rooftops.
“You should come down quickly, by the way,” she adds, “because Quill’s got his gun out and he’s two seconds away from shooting the receptionist, if she doesn’t let us up.”
“Quill,” I repeat in disbelief. I’m aware my daughter’s thoughtless, but I had higher hopes for her psychopath boyfriend. “Alright, Piper, pass him the phone. Let me have a word with the idiot.”
“Don’t call him an idiot…”
“I’ll call him a lot worse, if you don’t pass him the phone. In fact, I’ll call him a lot worse, period.”
She lets out an exasperated sigh, and then I hear static as she passes the phone to him.
“Yeah—”
“Hey, you fucking piece of shit, what the fuck are you thinking, bringing my daughter back to Astley? Have you gone fucking insane? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you with her. Fuck!”
I let out all my rage on him, spewing a string of insults that would leave anyone else quaking. But I know it won’t have the slightest effect on him.
“Are you finished?” he says coldly, once I’ve run out of swear words. “We’re downstairs. Can you send us up?”
“I’m about to send you down. Six feet down in the ground, to be specific.”
I slam shut the door to my office and walk down the carpeted hallway toward the elevator.
I’ve grown used to it, but ever since I reconnected with Piper, all the old thoughts have come hurtling back.
I see everything I built from the perspective of the power-hungry teenager who had nothing.
But that hadn’t stopped me, back then, from believing I was on top of the world.
And I was pretty close to getting there.
It took just one night of bloodshed to win the fight for power.
While I’d been in hiding with Lia, Damien had been busy bringing as many people to our side as possible.
It took one night to win, and a few years to solidify our power.
We left the slums of Oakley behind and founded our empire in the neighboring wealthy town of Astley.
As soon as the elevator dings and the doors open, I march out into the large downstairs space, where a receptionist sits in the middle of the room behind a thick desk.
Three men are standing around, probably waiting for meetings, but their eyes are all fixed on one point.
On Piper and Quill, who are standing in the very center of the room.
On Quill especially, because he’s got his gun fixed to the receptionist’s head.
She looks nervous, but determined to do her job: keep anyone lacking a visitor badge from going further into Devil Tower.
I roll my eyes, then take out my own gun, angling it at Quill.
He stares at me with a bored expression on his face while Piper chews her lower lip nervously.
“Please, Logan…”
“Did you tell anyone else who you were, Piper? Did anyone overhear?”
“I don’t think… no, definitely not.” She shakes her head resolutely.
“Is my daughter lying, Quill?” I ask, my finger on the trigger. “Did anyone overhear? Those men, maybe?”
By now, the three men in suits are edging backward, looking more than a little nervous.
Quill shrugs.
“Well?”
“I didn’t let any man hear her voice,” he growls.
“Only the receptionist, I guess,” I say mockingly.
“She’s not a man.”
“You fucking idiot,” I spit out. “You let your girl tell her who she really was. Fucking hell. I thought you had enough brain cells to keep her safe, at least. I should shoot you right now.”
“I am keeping her safe. No one can hurt her as long as she’s with me.”
I don’t even bother with another mocking retort. “Alright. So only the receptionist heard.”
“I’m Mary,” interjects the woman timidly. “Should I have let them go up, Mr. Colt? I didn’t know…”
“You still don’t.” I turn my gun to her, and her eyes widen. “Say goodbye, Mary.”
Before she has time to react, I’ve pulled the trigger, and her head explodes against the desk.
“Fuck!” screams Piper.