13. Wade
— ? —
Wade
I’d been planning to buy her flowers.
That was the absurd thing, the detail that would haunt me for years afterward.
Standing in my father’s study, about to have my life detonated, I’d been thinking about the florist on Newbury Street.
The one that did those arrangements Luisa loved, with the wildflowers and the trailing greenery.
I was going to pick them up on my way home, surprise her, apologize for being so distant lately.
I was going to fix things.
“You wanted to see me?” I stood in the doorway, calculating the fastest exit route. My father’s study was a room designed to intimidate, dark wood, heavy furniture, portraits of Buckley ancestors glaring down like they were judging everyone who entered.
I’d been judged by this room my entire life.
“Sit down, Wade.” Alton Buckley didn’t look up from his desk. He was signing papers, always papers, his signature a weapon he wielded with precision. “We need to discuss your future.”
“I have a meeting in an hour.”
“Cancel it.”
I didn’t sit. Standing gave me three point two seconds more reaction time if I needed to leave quickly. A useless calculation, but my brain did that, reduced everything to numbers and angles and escape routes.
“This won’t take long,” he said, finally looking up. His eyes were the same light blue as mine, but colder. Like mine had been run through a freezer for sixty years. “I’ve been patient with you. More patient than you deserve.”
“Patient about what?”
“About Dolores.”
The name hit me like a system error. Dolores Vandermeer had been calling me for months, grieving her mother, needing support, pulling at my time in ways that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with our families’ intertwined history.
Her father George had been my father’s business partner before his death. I’d known her since we were children.
I’d been trying to be a good friend.
“What about Dolores?”
“She’s in love with you.” Alton said it like he was reading a financial report. “Has been for years. And you’re going to marry her.”
I laughed.
It came out sharp and startled, the sound of someone who’d just heard the most absurd thing imaginable. “I’m already married.”
“Marriages end.”
“Mine won’t.”
“Wade.” He set down his pen. The click of it against the desk was precise, deliberate.
“The Vandermeer fortune is substantial. George left everything in trust for Dolores, but there are conditions. She needs to be married to access the full inheritance. And she’s made it very clear, she’ll only accept you. ”
“Then she’ll never access it.”
“You’re not understanding me.” He stood, moving around the desk with the slow certainty of a man who had never been refused.
“Buckley Marine is in trouble. The expansion cost more than projected. We’re leveraged past the point of safety.
The Vandermeer money is the only thing that will hold us together. ”
“So find another investor.”
“There is no other investor. There’s only Dolores.”
“Then let the company fail.” My voice was steady. In that moment I actually believed I could walk away clean.
The words landed between us and just sat there. I watched my father’s face go through a series of micro-expressions, surprise, then a flicker that might have been respect if he’d been capable of it.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” I stepped forward, my voice harder than I’d ever made it. “I love my wife. Do you understand that? I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. More than the company. More than money. More than you. And I will never, never, leave her for someone else.”
“You’ll do what I tell you to do.”
“No. I won’t.”
Alton’s smile was a terrible thing. It spread across his face like ice forming on a window, cold and crystalline and completely without warmth.
“Let me be clearer,” he said. “You will marry Dolores Vandermeer. You will give her whatever children she wants. And in exchange, I will allow your current wife to continue existing without interference.”
My blood went cold.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Accidents happen, Wade.” His voice was conversational. Pleasant, almost. “Car crashes. Muggings gone wrong. Gas leaks in charming brownstones. Terrible tragedies that no one could have predicted.”
“If you touch her-”
“I won’t touch anyone. That’s not how these things work.” He moved closer, until we were standing inches apart. “But if you don’t do exactly what I say, something will happen to that pretty wife of yours. And you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have prevented it.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m practical. There’s a difference.”
I wanted to hit him. The desire was so strong I could feel my fists clenching, my body calculating the angle needed to break his jaw. But violence wouldn’t solve anything. Violence would only give him ammunition.
“Think about it,” Alton said, stepping back. “Take a few weeks. Consider your options. I’m sure you’ll come to the right conclusion.”
I left without another word.
The drive home was a blur of numbers and angles, calculating risk factors, analyzing threats, running scenarios through my head like a computer processing bad data.
My father had just threatened to kill my wife.
My father, who I’d always known was ruthless, had looked me in the eye and told me he’d have Luisa murdered if I didn’t comply.
And the worst part?
I believed him.
***
What followed was three weeks of hell.
I started documenting everything. Every conversation with my father, recorded when possible. Every suspicious transaction at Buckley Marine, flagged and copied. I built a case the way I built systems, methodically, carefully, one piece at a time.
But building a case took time. And time was the one currency I didn’t have.
Luisa noticed the change in me. Of course she did. She knew me better than anyone. She asked what was happening, why I was so distant, why I tensed every time my phone rang.
“Work stuff,” I said. “Nothing to worry about.”
I was lying to my wife. The woman I loved more than breathing. And every lie felt like a piece of my soul being carved away.
Dolores kept calling.
I couldn’t ignore her completely, that would raise suspicions with my father. So I answered sometimes, let her cry about her mother, listened to her talk about feelings I didn’t return and didn’t want. And I hated myself for every second of it.
Luisa found a text.
I saw it happen, the moment she picked up my phone, the way her face changed, the questions she asked that I couldn’t answer honestly.
I wanted to tell her everything, to fall at her feet and explain that I was trying to save her, that every meeting with Dolores was a performance designed to keep her alive.
But if I told her, she’d want to fight. She’d want to go to the police, to confront my father, to do the brave, stupid thing that would get her killed.
So I said nothing.
And she started looking at me like I was a stranger.
The night before it happened, before everything exploded, I lay in bed and watched her sleep. She’d turned away from me, her body language screaming that she didn’t want to be touched. I’d done that. I’d put that distance between us.
I’ll fix it, I thought. As soon as I have enough evidence, as soon as my father’s in prison. I’ll explain everything, and she’ll understand, and we’ll be okay.
I was a fool.
***
The next day, my father called.
“Time’s up,” he said. “Make your choice.”
“I need more time.”
“You’ve had enough time. Tell your wife it’s over, or she won’t see tomorrow.”
I drove to the brownstone in a haze. My hands were steady on the wheel, but inside I was fragmenting, my brain running calculations that all ended in the same terrible conclusion.
To save her, I had to lose her.
To keep her alive, I had to break her heart.
She’d fled the gym ahead of me and I’d followed her the whole way home. By the time I pushed inside, she was standing in the living room, breathing hard, all her dancer’s stillness gone, those dark eyes that had captured me from the first moment now looking at me like I was a stranger.
“We need to talk.”
The conversation that followed was the worst thing I’ve ever done.
I told her I wasn’t happy, that we’d grown apart, that maybe we should consider, and the word tasted like poison in my mouth, separating.
She didn’t believe me at first. Asked questions I couldn’t answer. Pushed back in ways that made me love her even more, even as I was destroying us.
I didn’t mention Dolores. But I could see Luisa making the connection, all those calls, all those meetings, all those times I’d been unavailable. I watched her put it together and watched her heart break, and I didn’t stop it because I couldn’t.
If she believed I’d fallen for someone else, she’d leave. She’d hate me. She’d stay far away from anyone named Buckley.
She’d be safe.
When she walked out, I stood in the kitchen for a long time. The silence was absolute. The house we’d built together felt like a tomb.
Then I picked up my phone and called my father.
“It’s done,” I said. “She’s gone. Now leave her alone.”
There was a pause on the other end. A long pause, weighted with what I should have recognized as satisfaction.
“Oops,” Alton said. And I could hear him smiling. “You’d better hurry to the hospital, son. You took too long.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“I gave you a deadline. You missed it. These things have consequences.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. But I heard there was an accident. Something about a drunk driver, a few blocks from your house. Terrible timing.”
I was already running.
The phone was still pressed to my ear as I sprinted to my car, as I fumbled with the keys, as I peeled out of the driveway so fast I left rubber on the pavement.
“If she dies-” My voice was unrecognizable. “If she dies, I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will burn down everything you’ve built and I will put a bullet in your skull and I will watch you die.”
“Careful,” Alton said. “That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
I hung up and threw the phone across the car.
The hospital was eighteen minutes away. I made it in eleven, running red lights, swerving through traffic, my mind calculating the probability of survival for various crash scenarios and coming up with numbers I couldn’t bear to process.
Drunk driver.
My father had sent a drunk driver to hit my wife.
Or not drunk, that was the cover story, the plausible deniability. Someone he’d paid. Someone who would disappear after the job was done, leaving nothing that could be traced back to Alton Buckley.
I parked illegally and ran into the emergency room, demanding information, demanding to see her, demanding anything that would tell me she was still alive.
She was.
Bruised ribs. Stitches. A concussion that made her eyes unfocused when she looked at me. But alive.
I stood in the hallway outside her room, shaking with relief and a rage that felt like it might actually kill me. I couldn’t go in. If I went in, I’d tell her everything. I’d beg for forgiveness. I’d hold her and never let go.
And my father would try again.
The only way to keep her safe was to push her away completely. To make her hate me so much she’d never come back. To burn every bridge between us until there was nothing left but ashes and distance.
I could hear her crying through the door.
I walked away.
So I became the thing my father had always wanted.
Cold. Calculating. When it came time to end it on paper, I slid a settlement across the table that could have bought a small country, because I knew her pride would make her shove it back and walk away from me clean.
It was the only way I had to put her somewhere his money and his threats could never reach.
I let her leave.
And then I started building my case with a ferocity that surprised even me.
My father wanted a monster? He’d get one. He wanted someone who could look at human suffering and calculate its value? Perfect.
I’d calculate the exact value of his freedom. And then I’d take it away.
But first, first and forever and always, I had to make sure she was safe.
Even if it killed me.
Even if she hated me.
Even if I grew old alone, dreaming about a woman who thought I’d betrayed her.
Safe, I thought, driving through the night toward a future I couldn’t see. She has to be safe. That’s all that matters.
My hands were white on the steering wheel.
My heart was a system running on corrupted data.
And somewhere in Boston, my wife was making plans to disappear, and I was going to let her, because the alternative was watching her die.
Safe, I thought again.
Safe, even if it kills me. Even if she hates me forever.
Safe.