Chapter Twenty-eight
Karina
The bedroom was dark except for the little blue light on the humidifier perched on the nightstand. Estelle had really gone all out in her role as my nurse and caretaker. A humidifier, candles, a heated blanket, a fresh tray of food. My mind was still a bit foggy as I pushed myself up to sitting. I rolled my neck in circles, trying to relieve a bit of the ache from lying down for so long. I couldn’t find my phone without any light, and panic settled in, growing by the second as I moved the heavy blankets around.
“Are you okay?” Estelle entered the room, flicking on the light.
She turned the dimmer down as I covered my face from the shocking light. Her outfit was different from the last time I saw her, but still extremely casual compared to what I was used to seeing her wear.
“Do you know where my phone is?” I asked as she got closer.
“In the drawer.” She pulled the top drawer of the nightstand closest to me open and handed me my phone.
The power was off, which gave me even more anxiety. As the phone turned on, notifications came through. A few texts from Elodie asking how and where I was. Gloria’s name popped up, and I held my breath. I would never forget the way she’d looked at me, full of hatred. My heart was broken, but I couldn’t feel sorry for myself because she was right. If I hadn’t gone to Kael’s, none of this would have happened. Pushing through my fear and pain, I clicked on her name and read the message.
I’m so sorry for what I said. We should talk in person, be safe and please try not to take what I said to heart. I didn’t mean it. I took my anger out on you and I’m so sorry.
Reading her message filled me with two types of emotions. On the one hand, I was relieved, and felt like I could breathe again, but on the other, I felt undeserving of her forgiveness. When tragedy happened, it was much easier for everyone involved to have a clear villain, and I was more than willing to take on that role for the sake of those around me. Especially Gloria, who had been so welcoming and kind to me from the beginning. Her life would never be the same now.
I stared at my phone, unsure how to respond, and decided to wait until my thoughts were clearer and I could give her a better reply. I looked up at Estelle, who was standing over me, her brows pushed together in worry.
“I know you probably don’t feel like it, but can you please try and eat some crackers? Or the broth? You’ll get sick again if you don’t.” Her request came softly, borderline maternal.
Instead of being snotty to her, I agreed, and reached for the tray of food. She beat me to it, grabbing it and setting it on my lap.
“Kael came by,” she told me as I took a sip of broth. I almost spit it out.
“When?”
“A few hours ago. You were asleep, so he said he would come back.”
I wanted to vent to her about how selfish I felt, how I knew that I was suffering the least out of everyone, and that I felt like a freaking idiot for feeling so defeated, so exhausted, so afraid. I wasn’t the one whose husband wasn’t going to walk again, I wasn’t the one who had an actual screwdriver sticking out of them, I wasn’t the one whose husband had caused all of this and was now nowhere to be found. I was just a stupid girl who’d thrown herself into the middle of the fire and was now being babied by her stepmom.
“I need to get up,” I told Estelle after finishing the broth. “I can’t just lie here anymore. I need to shower and . . . I don’t know, but I need to do something.”
She didn’t try to persuade me; she grabbed the tray and moved it, then pulled the covers off me and turned the light all the way up. My bones ached as I stood up, and my head was tender from Phillips’s grip on my hair. I patted the spot to see if he had ripped any out, but it didn’t feel like he had.
When I got out of the shower, there were brand-new clothes waiting on the bed for me: cotton pants and a thick sweater, both pale green and as soft as fur. Estelle ignored no detail, so there were also panties and a bralette tucked under the outfit, even a pair of new socks to match. I brushed my hair into a tight bun at the nape of my neck and pinched some temporary color back into my cheeks before I made my way downstairs.
My father was sitting at the table, his phone to his ear.
“You have two hours to find him. Whoever finds him first will be heavily rewarded and whoever doesn’t will be equally punished,” he threatened.
I knew who he was talking about, so there was no need to ask.
“You’re up,” he stated, looking me up and down from head to toe.
“I’m up,” I repeated.
“We’re going to find him. I have my best scouts looking for him. He won’t touch you, any of you, again,” he promised.
“Thanks.” I didn’t have the energy to grill my dad over his involvement or why he would bother helping any of us.
“I never meant for this to happen, Kare. If I’d known how unstable he was, I would have never requested orders to bring him back.”
I didn’t think my heart could sink any lower, but it did. I should have expected my father to somehow be tied to this tragedy.
I gripped the back of the dining room chair to keep me upright.
“What do you mean? You brought him back?”
“I did not know about your brother and Elodie’s involvement. I thought I was doing the right thing, but evidently, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I never imagined this would be the outcome.”
Something in my father’s tone made me believe him, for once.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to see to it that Mendoza gets the top care this post can offer, and if that’s not enough, I’ll send him up to Walter Reed in Maryland,” my dad promised.
Maybe it was the concoction that Estelle had given me or my desperation for something good to happen, but I chose to believe him and find comfort in the fact that he was finally going to use his power for good.
“Your brother will also be fine, and Elodie can file for an emergency divorce, given the circumstances. Her parents are arriving any minute, I sent a driver to pick them up from the airport.”
“Why are you doing all this?” I asked. I didn’t want to get involved in a trade-off with my father, him doing something good and expecting something from me or Kael, or any of us.
My father pressed his palms gently on the table. “I never wanted to be the villain in your story, Karina. I know I have done many, many wrongs in my life, to you and to my soldiers, but while I have time, I want to spend it doing the best I can. I always put my job before you, before myself, and I can see that has had the worst impact on our family.”
“I’m sorry, but this is very sudden. Are you dying or something?” I meant it as a joke, but as the words fell between us, my dad’s face changed—his eyes dropped and his jaw ticked.
Oh my god .
What the fuck .
“Dad.” I could barely speak. “You’re—”
“I figured he would tell you. I thought it would be better coming from Martin than me.”
The room began to spin. I sat down in the chair in front of me, farthest from my dad’s seat at the head of the table.
“Martin—I mean Kael—knows?”
My father’s cold military expression was nowhere to be found. “Only recently. He likely hasn’t had the chance to tell you what with everything that’s happened. I’m sure I was at the bottom of the priority list.”
I didn’t have a damn clue what to say or how to process what I was being told. I focused my attention on the centerpiece on the table. Fall-colored ornaments surrounded a woven cornucopia with little pumpkins.
“What is it exactly?” I asked him as the silence got to be too much.
“My liver is failing.”
“How? You’re not even fifty.”
My dad had gone to PT every morning for the last twenty years, so how could his health be failing? It didn’t make sense.
“Well, illness doesn’t seem to have any age limits, Karina. It sounds worse than it is, I’m not going to die right now. I don’t know when, but there’s still some time for me to get things right.”
I almost laughed at how outrageous this was. He refused to call it what it was, and was keeping the details to a minimum, but his eyes were full of vulnerability, the only time I had witnessed such an emotion from him. My father was sick and now wanted to make amends with everyone around him, Mendoza was wounded and couldn’t use his body from the waist down, my brother may or may not be fine, Elodie’s baby was coming in a few weeks . . . I was so overwhelmed I wanted to scream. It felt like every time I turned around, something bad was happening to someone I cared about. My father and I had our issues, but I would never wish death on him.
“Does Estelle know?” I thought about how much she had been taking care of me the last few days and how overwhelmed she must be. My dad was essentially all she had.
“Yes. Your brother doesn’t, and I don’t think it would do any good to tell him right now,” he confessed.
I hated the idea of lying and deciding when the right time to share devastating news was, but my father was right in this case.
“Why did you tell Kael before me?” I asked him, genuinely unsure how and when the two of them had even been around one another.
“I trust him with your life, Karina.”
Trust . . . what an interesting choice of words for a man who proved again and again to be the opposite of trustworthy. It seemed everyone around him trusted him, except me. Did he blatantly lie to everyone else, too, or was I the special one?
“Well, that’s a mistake,” I warned him, standing up to leave. I couldn’t stay cooped up here any longer, moping around while the world continued to go on.