Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
NICO
I know it’s normal, at some point in your life, to discover your parents aren’t perfect.
It’s a realization that dawned on me as I got older, not in my teens, but my twenties and thirties.
I started to see my father’s controlling nature for what it was.
I stopped making excuses for all the times he was too busy for me.
When he scolded me for enlisting in the Army instead of coming back to the city and working with him at his company, insisting that I was wasting my talents, it was the first time I was truly angry with him.
So I’ve known for a while now that he isn’t without his flaws.
But this.
How could he?
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. My jaw clenches to the point of pain. Without meaning to, I hit the gas, sending the car shooting forward.
Anger—no, not anger, that’s not strong enough of a word, more like rage—surges through me again.
Tension bands around my head and throbs behind my eyes.
Fire expands inside me, spiraling out from my chest and through my body.
How could he?
How could he do that to her?
How could he do that to me?
A quick glance at the speedometer shows the speed at close to seventy-five.
Which is far too fast for the Parkway, even for such a late hour.
Maybe if I was driving on 87 headed upstate, it would be okay.
But here? Not the best idea if I want to make it home without being pulled over or getting into an accident.
Getting a ticket would be one thing. I certainly have the money to pay for it. But an accident could land me in the hospital, and then who would protect Sofia?
Well. My friends could. Anyone at Fox & Falcon could. But I don’t want them to.
I want to protect Sofia, dammit.
I want to make it up to her.
Shit. I want to do something, anything, to redeem myself for the massive fuckup I made.
And I can’t very well do that if I end up in a pile of broken bones and crushed metal on the side of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Or worse yet, at the bottom of the Hudson River.
So I force my foot to let up on the gas, even though I’m desperate to get back home. Desperate to start trying to fix—
Shit.
How can I fix things?
My father lied. He had Sofia arrested. He accused her of stealing jewelry that had been in my mother’s family for over a hundred years. And then, in a false act of generosity, he forced my sweet, scared girlfriend to leave the city.
Fuck.
FUCK.
I punch the dashboard, welcoming the resulting flare of pain in my hand.
He lied. Not just lied, he planned the whole thing. Planted the evidence. Paid off the witnesses. He framed her.
My chest feels like it’s cracking in two.
And there, in the center of it, torn and bleeding, my heart.
God. I can’t stop thinking about what Sofia said. How she waited there, in the detention center, so sure I would come. How scared she was. How confused. How hurt.
I punch the dashboard again. “Dammit.”
She’ll never forgive me. How could she?
“You’re making this into a bigger deal than it is,” my father insisted.
“She didn’t serve time aside from a few days in juvie.
And I did you a favor. If you’d stayed with her, you wouldn’t be where you are now.
You’d be slaving away as some underpaid federal worker instead of running a multi-million dollar company.
Living in some crappy house in the suburbs instead of Manhattan.
And you’re happy with your life. So don’t act like I did something that terrible. ”
I showed up at my parents’ house in Scarsdale just past ten, not wanting to wait until tomorrow to see my dad.
I couldn’t wait, not knowing the confrontation I was about to have.
I had to know right away. And a phone call wouldn’t have been enough.
I needed to look my father in the face. I needed him to really know how serious I was about getting the truth.
So once I got Sofia settled back at my place, I called Knight to come over to watch over her. “I won’t leave,” Sofia said wearily when I told her Knight was coming. “It didn’t work the last time. And I’m too tired to try again.”
But that wasn’t why I wanted Knight to come. Even though my condo is extremely safe, I still didn’t feel right leaving Sofia alone. Not when she was still hurting, scared, upset… And she’d met Knight before, so it wasn’t like bringing over a complete stranger.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I told them as I stood in the doorway, keys in hand. “An hour each way, give or take, plus however long it takes to deal with my father.”
“I’ll be okay,” Sofia replied. But I didn’t miss the flicker of fear in her eyes.
Fear that my dad would convince me she was lying?
Fear of being alone with Knight?
Or fear of being without me?
Ha. As if she’d be afraid of being without me after what I did? After what my father did?
When I got to my parents’ place, I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
I just told my father we needed to talk.
Immediately. While he sputtered about unexpected visits and how late it was and setting up a meeting for next week, I just grabbed his arm and marched him into his office.
As soon as the door shut behind us, I jumped right into it.
“I want to know everything,” I told him, “about Sofia’s arrest. Not what you told me back in high school. But the real story.”
“This again?” He huffed at me. “Are you serious, Nico? You came here at ten at night to ask me about her? You know the story. We went over it already.” Then he changed tack.
“You didn’t just say hi to her, did you?
She fed you some sob story and now she wants money for some purported wrong. Is that what it is?”
“No.” I leaned over his desk and pinned him with the don’t fuck with me glare I perfected in the Army. “I think you lied about it. And I want to hear the truth.”
“You know the truth,” he started. “She stole—”
“No. She didn’t.” I was ninety percent sure by then, and I was certain I could make him give up the last ten percent. “I talked to the pawn shop owner. The one who claimed Sofia sold him the stolen jewelry. And do you know what he said?”
My father’s ruddy cheeks paled. “What?”
Technically, I didn’t talk to the shop owner. But Wraith did. He tracked the guy down to a house out in Yonkers, and after some convincing—nothing too frightening, but enough—the owner spilled the real story, which Wraith relayed to me during my drive to Scarsdale.
“Sofia never came into the store,” I told my father grimly. “He’d never seen her in person. He only knew who she was because you gave him her photo. And her name. And you offered him a cut of the money if he said she sold the jewelry.”
My father just gaped at me as I continued, “You framed her. You set her up and called the cops on her. You had Sofia sent to jail. An innocent, seventeen-year-old girl. A girl I’d been dating for two years.”
“I didn’t,” he sputtered. “The owner, he’s lying.”
“You’re lying!” I roared. “You lied about the pawn shop owner. I bet if I talk to our old housekeeper, I’ll find out you forced her to lie about Sofia, too.
” More coldly, I added, “Here’s how it’s going to work.
You’re going to tell me everything. How.
Why. All the details. And if you don’t, I’ll just find out myself.
But if I have to search for the truth myself—and you know I’ll find it—I’ll make damn sure you go down for it. ”
Was it a credible threat? After eighteen years, I’m not sure what sort of repercussions there would be. And if there were, could I actually send my father to jail, no matter how angry I was?
I’m not sure. But the threat was enough. And he told me everything.
He told me how he’d planted the jewelry in Sofia’s backpack. How he paid the housekeeper, the pawn shop owner, and the two girls at school to implicate Sofia. He admitted that he’d visited her in the detention center, offering to drop the charges in exchange for her leaving.
“It was better for you,” he insisted. “She was nothing. Just some poor—”
“She wasn’t nothing!” I shouted. “She was my girlfriend. She was smart. Sweet. I loved her. And you ruined her life! You lied to me!”
Never in my life have I wanted to strike my father. Not until then.
The final thing I wanted to know before I left was why. Was it just to get Sofia out of my life? Or was there another reason?
“The company wasn’t doing well,” my father finally admitted. “I’d made a few bad investments. And home security, it was getting more high tech. Computerized. I needed more money for upgrades.”
“So you sold the jewelry to get money for the company?” I asked. “Why say it was stolen, then?”
He glanced at the closed office door and replied in a low tone, “Because I didn’t want your mother to know.
If she knew the company was struggling, she would have worried.
Then she would have asked her parents for money to help.
They already thought I wasn’t good enough for her.
So my solution killed two birds with one stone.
I’d get the money for the company without having to tell her, and Sofia would be out of your life for good. ”
I still can’t get past the irony of what he said.
My father was worried my mother’s uptight, came over on the Mayflower parents didn’t think he was good enough for her. But then he turned around and made the same assumptions about Sofia.
As I stormed out of the house, my father trailed after me, casting out pleas I refused to respond to. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said. “Leave things well enough alone. What’s done is done.”
But it’s not done, is it?
Even eighteen years later, the hurt is still there.
And knowing the truth… Shit. I can’t stop beating myself up over it.
Why didn’t I look into Sofia’s case sooner? Why didn’t I track her down after her mom told me to leave? Why didn’t I—
A honk from behind me jerks my attention back to the road. Belatedly, I realize that in my attempt to slow down, my speed is now below forty.