by Vivian Wood
Fitzgerald Sparrow has survived a miracle and walked out unscathed.
I rotate on my heel towards the door. “Wha…what are you doing here?”
My father is as physically imposing as his voice. His large, muscular frame takes up the entire doorway of the back room of the bar, and even his business attire cannot hide the immense muscles beneath. It’s all part of the power image of King & Sparrow.
Powerful influence. Powerful minds. Powerful bodies.
“What am I doing here?” he asks. “I own this goddamned building. This city block. Question is: What are you doing here?”
“I was actually here for something else,” I tell him. I motion off-handedly toward David’s blood on the floor. “I got sidetracked.”
He looks behind me at the small red pool on the floor.
“Huh. I see,” is all he says. He never was very sympathetic. To anyone. He doesn’t give a shit about King’s current state.
“Never mind that,” he barks, the broken lawyer fumbling out the door of no consequence. “I came down to talk to you. I talked to Marilyn. She told me you might be here after I saw you weren’t at your penthouse.”
My damned sister. She knew.
“You woke up…” I throw at him.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“Thought you’d take it better this way.”
“Why?” I scoff. “Because you know me so well?” I walk forward, facing him. “Well, you know the fuck what, Dad? I’m not David King. I’m not your people. Maybe once, I was one of those people: a spoiled ass teen turned adult…with nothing but money and time to waste. I tried to follow in your footsteps. I tried, and I kept failing at it…because it’s not me. It never really was. But you did do something right with me, Dad. You instilled an appreciation to be great. To strive for something bigger and better. Well, now I’ve found it.” I think of Violet. “And that’s all I need. So, I’m done with the bullshit, Dad. I’m done with being your flunky. King & Sparrow is my fucking business now. We can build instead of destroy. And if you can’t agree to that, then the only thing I’m concerned with destroying…is you.”
I stop talking and the room gets quiet—deadly quiet.
I brace myself for impact. Dad always was a scrappy son-of-a-bitch. I can’t imagine how mad this must make him. I’ve seen him level a grown man or two in my day. This might make him mad enough to hit me.
“Really?” he finally says. It’s not so much a question as it is an accusation. Putting his hands on his hips, he hangs his head. Exhaling loudly, he lifts it seconds later. “Well, it’s about damn time.”
My mouth can barely move. “Wait…what?”
“King & Sparrow was my business, my child. And you…you are my son, my flesh and blood. I knew that one day the sibling rivalry would be too much. There’d be no way for you and King & Sparrow to coexist in the same space. Life just doesn’t work that way.
“You fought King & Sparrow—the family business—more than you fought your own sister. But let me tell you something. That boardroom full of pricks… That used to be my boardroom. My kingdom. I’m a no-good, arrogant, condescending bastard, and I know it…but I was still ruler.” He smirks. “Ruler of the dicks. And there really wasn’t enough space on the throne for two dicks anyway.
“I’ve been waiting on you to realize your full potential. And I guess I always knew it wasn’t sniffing up my ass. Sure, I wanted you to take the reins of King & Sparrow once I was done, but that was before. When you were floating around, resting on your laurels” His gaze grows serious. “I have been keeping an eye on you, son, over the years. And you’ve changed. You went out into the world and wound up a man…” He snorts softly. “A better man than me.” He stares absently at the floor. “A man whose own business partners were trying to kill him…”
“Jesus, Dad. What the hell are you talking about?” I try to step forward. But my dad stops me with his voice, glancing up at me, a rare quiver in his tone as he starts to talk.
“In my hospital room, after I woke up.” His weathered face contorts from confusion. “A man named Steven Randall called. Said he wanted to confess. Said he was hired by Chris Jackson to stalk Violet Keats. Apparently, she was next on Chris’s ‘Hit-List’…after our firm decided not to represent Chris, leaving him with second-rate lawyers. I called police. They picked him up an hour ago.”
“And David King?” I ask.
“Guilty of being nothing but a dickless asshole.”
Recognition reaches inside the recesses of my mind, making me think. Of course Steven Randall’s face was familiar when he slinked into the break room with me and Jesse.
I’d seen it on TV screens.
He was the slimy bastard lurking in Chris Jackson’s personal entourage. In a delivery uniform and hat, he’d looked different than the deferring asshole that had followed Jackson like a shadow everywhere he went. It was even more confirmation of the man that Chris Jackson was.
Abuser. Fiend. A fraud.
I’m livid it didn’t occur to me until now. But my father breaks my stupor.
“It’s not your worry, son,” he whispers, sending my skin into a flush. “Your priorities were in the right place. Keeping the woman you love safe. Now, it’s time to go get her back.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Until I turn. And find Violet gone.
The scent of her strawberry scent is still lingering. But with David King’s confession still ringing in my ears, I know that of all that I have gained—a firm, a family, maybe even a father—I’ve lost the most important person.
And I may have lost her for good…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
VIOLET
Christmas Day
The lobby of the SparrowHead is a freaking madhouse. But then again…so is the inside of my mind.
Christmas Day in Manhattan is one big oxymoron. In a city where business is always booming and the population never sleeps, the holidays aren’t a time for rest.
If anything, the borough kicks up another billion notches, and I can’t reconcile the vision of snow-white winter with the darkness that’s just inside my head.
But I’m trying my very fucking best.
In the middle of a mild Tuesday afternoon, I stroll up to SparrowHead building, my resignation in hand.
I prepare to flash my badge at Security Guard Sam when I realize that this will be the last time, and I reach over, suddenly needing to shake the black-coat wearing teddy bear’s hand. I smile.
“Working on Christmas Day, Sam?”
“Always working, Ms. Keats.”
“Here,” I say, fishing out every last dollar from my wallet. I hand them to him. “Merry Christmas. You might not get the day off. But this might ensure that you take some time next week.” I wink. “It was nice meeting you, Sam.”
He blinks slowly, thanking me. Confusion washes over his face, but I keep walking.
“It was nice to meet you too!” He calls out.
I open the elevator, strolling inside. Pressing the white button for the seventieth floor, I wait silently, my heart karate-chopping out of my chest.
I hope I don’t have to see Heath. And I hope I do.
In a simple red blouse, skirt and jacket, I swear I almost sweat the fabric through, my pulse racing a mile a minute as the lift stops, letting me out.
I envision a lot of images when I step out onto the King & Sparrow floor. But the scene in front of me…is the last thing I thought I’d ever see.
My mouth drops as a team of decorators props up a stream of glowing white lights. My jaw unhinges at the glittery sight of the office.
I watch as people set up a slew of bobblehead Santas and enough snow globes to glitterize the southern half of New York. I stumble on shaky legs through the decked-out halls of the office, making note of the ten different types of tinsel hanging from each doorway.
Christmas, indeed, came to town and exploded in King & Sparrow on its way out. The place is
transformed.
I can’t focus on any one item. There are too many.
I can’t focus on the busy decorators adorning each door. I can’t focus on the inflatable Nutcrackers being placed in every corner.
I can’t focus on any one item…but him.
My brilliant boss. My Christmas partner-in-crime. My lover.
My Adonis with irises the color of freshly brewed coffee, tall and tempting. The vision of his face is tap-dancing on my brain, and if it weren’t for that simple fact, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess at all, I’d have corralled the decorators right out of there, cancelled the Christmas Day surprise the second I looked up and saw the first person amble across the hallway in those frilly socks I picked from the department.
I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now…which is anything to distract myself from one inarguable, undeniable reality…
Realizing that the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen wasn’t mine. And as I saunter past the gaudy decorations and an even gaudier decorators, that feeling of vulnerability, of being naked and exposed, follows me—much like it had done last night when that asshole David King tried to assault me, and the man I now know as the “the worst man on Earth” came in and saved me.
I could call him. Could use any person’s phone in this holiday heaven to reach out, but shame, thick and inexplicable, stops me. The sickly sweet smell of candy cane and sugar-dipped pixie sticks floating through the stale air does nothing to make my mix of emotions better and before I can head towards the exit, the apparent head honcho of the decorating team, a Mister Maximillian Major floats in my direction, waving an insistent finger in front of my face.
I feel my patience starting to snap. I stare at his hand.
“No, no, no, my dear,” he stops me. “Where do you think you are going? We need you here. Here to tell us what to do, how to set up, where the rest of these decorations go.”
I look him in the eye. “In the trash, most likely.” I gaze around the room. “Excuse me, Max, but I shouldn’t be here.” I motion with my hands. “This… This is great.” My voice softens. “But I don’t work here anymore.”
Max moves in closer. “It’s Maximillian, sweetheart,” he corrects me. “And if I remember correctly, Mr. Sparrow said no such thing on the phone. He said ‘Give her the holiday she always deserved. Make it fun and beautiful and Christmas-y. For the love of my life’.” He waves a hand towards the wall. “This is fun and beautiful and Christmas-y.”
“Yeah…” I sigh. “I’m sure Mr. Sparrow did say that.” I rub my hairline.
Resigning was my only endgame just minutes ago, my only thought. The only endgame I’ve managed to land since I’ve stepped foot in King & Sparrow is a headache, and I massage my temples, my neck aching, and bones creaking worse than a woman Betty White’s age.
Probably from all the sex I’ve had recently.
And all the while, my stomach churns. I still can’t believe I’m going to walk away from my job. I still can’t believe I’m going to walk away from the best—and worst—thing that’s ever happened to me.
And I’m not talking about King & Sparrow.
Nausea rolls in my gut, and I lean against the wall, feeling a wave of sickness roll over me. I raise my head, rasping the words. “I need to get out,” I whisper. “I’ve gotta get out.”
Maximillian looks at my face. The man isn’t slow, I’ll give him that. With a clap of his hands, he crowds his employees together in the middle of the floor and out the door. Once it shuts, I sag against the wall, sliding down it. My head falls into my hands, and the tears I’ve held back for the past two weeks fall down my face with abandon.
Finally, any and all audiences are gone and I can let go. I let go of everything.
The Fletcher case I’m being forced to close and everything that means for my career. The assault I suffered at the hands of a Senior Partner. And finally I let go of the thought of the relationship that never was, the romance I thought I’d had by not, as Marilyn put it, “playing it safe.”
I failed. I fucking failed. At everything.
I stand to my feet, shaking off the sobs. Wiping under my eyes with my shaking wrists, I smudge what’s left of my mascara on the edge of my sleeve with a heavy sigh. I reach for the first line of streamers strung along the wall and just before I pull, a hand lands on my cotton-covered shoulder and that intoxicating smell of sandalwood comes with it, leaving me dizzy, driving a sudden punch to my stomach that threatens to double me over as it dawns on me who the hand belongs to.
I slowly spin, meeting his brown gaze with mine. I inhale a week’s worth of air in one fell swoop. I know who it is before I even turn around…
Chapter Thirty
HEATH
Christmas Day
Everything below my waist stirs just looking at her.
She’s fucking delectable when she’s vulnerable, her defenses down. I haven’t met many people with more walls than Violet Keats. The tough-as-nails lawyer could best any bricklayer.
Her hair is straightened and sleek, a silky sheet of glossy ginger. Her lips are painted blush red, and she wears a dark black skirt suit, the jacket and skirt fitting her body perfectly, accentuating her petite but curvaceous shape. The shirt beneath the jacket is as red as her mouth and nearly as enticing.
I stare at her with brazen longing. My icy girl. There’s no girl in those curves, nothing childish in that skin. I can attest from personal experience…that she’s all woman.
She freezes, shifting the black purse that’s in her hand. She looks at me, scoffing, strands of hair swinging as she shakes her head. “I don’t believe this…” She licks her lips once, turning on her heel, and marches back out of the office and down the hallway. I take off, following closely, my stride in synch with the clicks of her black pumps.
“Violet, hold up!”
“Not for you,” she slings at me.
“It’s not what you think.”
She glances at me as she continues to storm out.
“You unbelievable bastard. Was this part of your plan? Finesse me, fuck me? Trade me to David King like some baseball card?”
I’m taken aback. “It wasn’t at all. There was never any…”
She throws me a look quickly over her shoulder, shooting daggers from her eyes.
“Okay,” I backtrack a bit. “There was technically a bet going on, but I…”
“You liar. I can’t believe I trusted you,” She reaches the elevator, jumping in the crowded space, leaving no room for me to join her.
I watch the elevator close, catching a glimpse of her gorgeous eyes. They’re shimmering, glistening back at me with unshed tears that refuse to fall. I know she won’t let them. Not in front of me.
I blink, and then they’re gone, disappeared with the rest of her. I let her leave me once before. I’m not going to let her leave me again.
I run towards the stairs, opening the wooden door to the stairwell. There’s no one in here. No one would be. It’s practically suicide taking these stairs up or down. I’m clearly the only fool willing to risk my life.
I start running, skipping steps, dropping down floor by floor.
Every fifth level, I consider stopping: consider running to the elevator to catch it on its way down. But if I miss it, then I’ll be waiting. And Violet will be out of the front door and possibly out of my life. For good. So, I can’t.
Floor 39.
Floor 22.
Floor 17.
At Floor 11, I start to panic, thinking maybe her elevator doesn’t have as many stops as I’d hoped.
Hope is a weird sensation. It makes you crazy.
I had hope when I ran to Marilyn’s hospital bed three weeks ago. I had hope when I saw her. I have hope. Even now. But the hope is no longer about whether or not my sister’s life will be saved.
Now that life that needs saving? It’s mine.
Because when you fall in love, your life is no longer your own. Mine belongs to Violet Elizabeth Keats, and I’m n
ot going to let her go until she knows it.
I nearly collapse onto the SparrowHead lobby level, soaked with sweat, my heart pumping as I search for her. My collared shirt is stuck to my chest, hair plastered to my brow. I circle the expanse outside of the elevator chutes, catching my breath, searching for her.
Several doors open. Even more actually close. Suits go in. Suits come out. But none of them are her. I clutch my knees from the exhaustion, bending at the waist, believing I’ve missed her.
Violet’s disappeared again…and I doubt she’ll come back this time.
The ding of the doors brings me back to life again, and this time, when I look, I find the vision I’ve been searching for.
She bypasses me, as I’m crouched over, picking up the pace as she heads toward the front doors. I limp after her, trying to keep up.
My gait is slow next to her power-walk; she struts in sky-high heels like they don’t exist. There’s nothing Violet can’t master, nothing she can’t rightfully conquer.
She’s built for business, pleasure, and everything in between. She’s everything I didn’t know I needed…wrapped in one smoldering ass package.
She hits the front doors to the SparrowHead lobby with a jolting force, exiting with me in hot pursuit. The gust of air that greets us from outside is muggy: breezy and wet from the rain that now drizzles.
Where there was once sun just an hour ago, there are now clouds, dark and ominous, moving swiftly across the sky.
Through the light rain shower, I speak to her retreating back.
“You can trust me.” There’s silence in return. “You have to know that I did this without thinking, that I knew I couldn’t lose. Not when it comes to you.” Still nothing.
“Hurting you was never part of the deal. I would never want to hurt you.”
She scoffs harshly. “Yeah…right.”
That’s it. I’ve finally caught my breath, but my patience has run out. I grab Violet’s elbow, spinning her towards me. She stops walking immediately, and now we are face-to-face. The sleet begins to fall faster.