Victor: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad)

by Theodora Taylor

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said again, truly meaning it. “Jacoby’s a total hard-ass. He told us at the beginning of the year that there was no getting out of our presentation date, no matter what.”

  Dad audibly sighed. “Well, I guess Byron’s better than no family at all.”

  The mention of Byron made a new suspicion fire off in my head. Byron had been so worried about Dad discovering he was bi in Japan. But when Dad found out years later, he’d taken it unbelievably well. I’d assumed when Byron told me that we’d both underestimated him.

  But now, I had to wonder if maybe his easy acceptance had come with time. Like, way more time than we’d initially thought.

  The question needled at me. To the point that I had to risk our newfound peace to ask, “Dad? When Byron and I were in high school, did you…”

  I trailed off when the doorbell rang. “I have to go. I’m hosting this grad school thing, and the pizzas just got here.”

  “All right, if you change your mind about the ceremony, let me know,” Dad said.

  “I will,” I promised, even though there was no way of that ever happening.

  The doorbell buzzed again as I dropped my phone back in my tote bag.

  Wow, the pizza delivery guy was kind of impatient. I rushed to answer the bell, a little surprised that the guy got all the way to the front door. Usually, Wayne intercepted all deliveries and dropped them outside the kitchen with a sharp rap on one of the windows.

  But it wasn’t the pizza delivery guy at the front door; it was someone I recognized. Someone I hadn’t seen in a really long time. And he had a small army of guys behind him.

  “Phantom?” I asked, barely able to believe my eyes. But it was definitely him. He hadn’t changed much in the ten years since I last saw him. If anything, he looked way more intimidating than I remembered. He wore a black suit and red open collar shirt, with even more tattoos peeking out.

  “Coming through,” he said without any greeting whatsoever.

  That was all the warning I got before I had to scramble to get out of the way as he barged right on into the house.

  “Clap-clap, assholes,” he called over his shoulder to the guys that were with him. “We don’t have all day.”

  “What’s this all about?” I asked Phantom as men filed through the door with platters of food, silver serving ware, and tons of party decorations, including balloons.

  “A gift, courtesy of Victor, for your soft presentation or whatever,” Phantom answered. What would’ve sounded like good news from anyone else came out a grumble in his rough tone.

  I jolted. “Seriously? Victor arranged all of this?”

  “Yeah,” Phantom answered with an annoyed shake of his head. “Who else do you think cares anything about your school shit?”

  I wouldn’t have put Victor on that super short list of people either. Not in a million years.

  My eyes widened as I watched a bunch of set-up guys went to work. By the time they were done, the living room looked like a Pinterest board entitled, Best Showcase Grad Party Ever.

  Phantom handed me a small white envelope after they left. “Victor told me to give this to you.”

  I pulled the note out and read, If you think this is nice, wait until our date after your real thesis presentation.

  I’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying to harden my heart against the man who dropped me off without a word and disappeared. But it melted the moment I read that note.

  “I can’t believe he did all of this for me.”

  “Yeah, you and me both,” Phantom grumbled. “He’s done a lot of things for you that I can’t believe.”

  Phantom scowled down at me as he said this. But I couldn’t tell if it was his usual “I don’t like you” glower or in reference to something specific. Like, having to oversee the set-up for my Group B presentation party.

  Either way, I asked, “May I borrow your phone? I want to thank Victor for doing all of this.”

  “You don’t have to thank him,” Phantom answered, his scowl deepening.

  “But I want to, and I’m not going to stop pestering you until you let me do it,” I let him know with a bright smile.

  Phantom folded his arms and glared at me in a way that made him look even meaner and more dangerous than usual.

  But I stood my ground, folding my arms right on back at him. To be truthful, I wasn’t quite sure how much power I had to make demands here. Phantom could just walk away.

  But in the end, he pulled out his phone and typed a quick message. “There I sent it. See you later.”

  “No, no, no, I’ll wait until he answers,” I replied, rushing to get in front of him before he could leave.

  “He’s a very busy guy. It might take him a while to—”

  I knew Victor had sent back a message when the phone in Phantom’s hand lit up, and he cut off with another scowl.

  Phantom rolled his eyes after glancing at the text. “This shit is ridiculous. I’m not reading it out loud.”

  To my surprise, Phantom handed over his phone. And there I found the “ridiculous” message from Victor: Tell her she’s worth it.

  Okay, did I say I was all the way over Victor?

  I guess I was wrong about that. Nearly a whole day of anti-Victor reframing dissipated into the ether as I floated back into my now Pinterest-worthy living room.

  And that only left the truth, glaring and bright.

  Despite the last ten years…despite my get-out-of-prison date being so close….I was falling for him. Again

  30

  “Whoa, look at this spread!” Wallis, the only other black person in the grad animation program, exclaimed. He grabbed a plate as soon as he entered the living room and saw my Pinterest board-worthy thesis rehearsal party.

  “Dawn, you really shouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble!” Asher said, grinning as he, too, grabbed a plate.

  Rebecca, one of the character animators from Group A, nodded in agreement. “I mean, you even put out sushi! Most of these parties are just pizza and a couple of Costco fruit and vegetable trays.”

  “There’s pizza down here!” one of the other grad students called to her from the far end of the buffet table that Phantom’s guys had set up underneath the living room’s bay window.

  “Don’t expect this when you come to my place next Sunday for the Group C presentations,” Harlow, a hard-edged stop-animation genius, groused at all of us.

  Wallis pretty much spoke for all of us when he answered, “Girl, if we get out of your place without you feeding us spiders, Imma consider that a win.”

  Nobody expected Harlow, with her love of all things dark and creepy, to be a perfect host. Or even a decent one.

  Everybody except Elizabeth Ann Margaret laughed at Wallis’s joke.

  “Is your husband still here?” she asked, eyeing the stairs just beyond the living room. “We haven’t seen him since he showed up out of the blue that one time. You should have invited him to help us eat all of this.”

  “I’ll bring him a plate later,” I answered noncommittally. I was deeply aware of Asher openly staring at us, now that the subject of my husband had come up.

  “Is he the one who arranged all of this?” Elizabeth Ann Margaret asked. “The last time we came to your house for a group project, it was just chips and dip.”

  Wow. Nosy much? “Yes, actually. It was a surprise. I would’ve just ordered pizza and two Costco trays, like Rebecca said. But he likes to go all out.”

  “How generous, if a bit wasteful,” Elizabeth Ann Margaret said with a little moue of concern. “I hope you have plans to deliver whatever we don’t eat to the homeless after we’re done here.”

  Before I could answer, her eyes went back to the stairs. “You really should tell him to come down here so that we can thank him. I value gratitude above everything, and this just feels really impolite.”

  “I’ll let him know you appreciated it,” I answered before turning my back on her to ask Harlow about how her s
top-motion cannibal bunny rabbits piece was coming along.

  The first few Group B presentations went well. Everyone asked all the hard questions, which was a generous thing to do at a soft presentation.

  We’d all seen thesis showcases where someone got hammered with a hard question and completely fell apart. It was better to have something like that happen here with your fellow grad students than when you were presenting in front of the entire animation school, undergrads included.

  You think that would’ve been the end of the Victor subject. But at break time, Elizabeth Ann Margaret started quizzing me again.

  “I know you’ve mentioned spending time in Japan when you were in high school. Is your husband Japanese? He doesn’t look Japanese. I thought they had a thing about tattoos.”

  “No, he’s Chinese.” My cheeks burned. And I could feel Asher’s eyes on me again.

  “ABC?” Wei-Chuan, a visual effects animator, who was also Chinese, asked. She came over to stand with us.

  ABC stood for American-born Chinese. Victor had often used those three-letter signs to describe Phantom. Also, to make excuses for him.

  “No, he’s from China. From Hong Kong,” I answered Wei-Chuan.

  “It’s unusual for a couple from your two backgrounds to get together, much less marry, right?” Elizabeth Ann Margaret demanded, her tone a lot less respectful than Wei-Chuan’s.

  She had no idea. But I had to ask, “Is there a reason you’re so interested in my husband?”

  “Just curious,” Elizabeth Ann Margaret answered, her eyes once again drifting toward the stairs. “I mean, he showed up at RhIDS that one day, and that one day only—almost like you told him to. It just seems a little strange that he would go through all this effort for your soft thesis presentation but wouldn’t even show up for it. I mean, is your insanely hot husband even planning on coming to your thesis showcase? Or is he going to be out of town again?”

  She didn’t make mocking quotation marks around the words “out of town,” but she might well have. Everyone listening, including me, could see that Elizabeth Ann Margaret was working a theory that Victor was some kind of actor or male model. Someone I’d hired to play the part of my husband to prove Elizabeth Ann Margaret wrong.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered between clenched teeth. “But I don’t need a husband there to validate my work.”

  “Maybe not, but you’d think any real spouse would want to be there,” Elizabeth Ann Margaret answered. “Or at least put in an appearance at the party he really put way more effort into than he should have.”

  “He’s not one for parties,” I answered, even though I realized I was playing right into the narrative Elizabeth Ann Margaret was trying to sell that I’d made him up.

  “Is that on account of him being deaf?” Asher asked, coming over to join us with a plate piled high with vegetables from the Costco tray.

  “I saw you two speaking in sign language when he picked you up the other day,” he said. He was technically addressing me. But he was looking straight at Elizabeth Ann Margaret to let her know that someone had seen Victor again after that one classroom kiss.

  But, of course, Elizabeth Ann Margaret didn’t even have the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

  “So he’s deaf?” Elizabeth Ann Margaret asked, whispering the word “deaf” as if it was some kind of scandal.

  “No,” I answered. Then before she or Asher could ask me any more questions, I called out to everyone else that we should probably get on with the rest of the presentations.

  A few more people in the second half, then it was time for me to close out the show.

  We all watched as my father’s ancestors go from apes to humans in the cradle of civilization before spreading out across the continent of Africa. After that, my mother’s ancestors in Korea transform from a scattering of Neolithic clans into a series of dynastic societies. Meanwhile, ships with slaves aboard sail across oceans to deliver my father’s ancestors into slavery. And then both my mother’s and father’s birth countries take turns waging bloody civil wars.

  The montage of Korean and American history ends with a black American soldier spotting a young Korean woman working with her parents behind a farmstand.

  Their eyes connect…and they both smile.

  And that was where the animation ended.

  A hush fell over the room after the lights were brought up. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. But then, Harlow wiped tears from her eyes and led the class in clapping.

  It was a little embarrassing to tell the truth. I wasn’t used to so much attention. My face heated, and I had to raise my eyes to look away from everyone who was applauding.

  But then, my heart nearly stopped when I saw Victor standing in the living room’s arched doorway, clapping along with everybody else. How long had he been here? Had he seen my film?

  “Your film was amazing,” he signed, letting me know he had. “No black history museum required.”

  I grinned at his compliment, nearly giddy with happiness that he’d shown up as I signed back, “Thanks for coming.”

  It was just a few signs, but Asher took notice. He cut off clapping and turned to look over his shoulder. His expression went from delighted to annoyed when he saw Victor standing in the living room’s doorway. But I couldn’t bring myself to feel guilty. I was just so elated to see Victor there.

  There were more compliments after the applause died down. Then people started asking the hard questions. Wallis wondered if this were too big of a subject for the short eight minutes I’d given it. And Wei-Chuan asked if I was trying to say that these two people falling in love made up for the horrors of their history.

  “I’d hope the short length of the film would serve to magnify the scope of the large history for both Koreans and black Americans,” I answered Wallis.

  And I told Wei-Chuan, “No, nothing makes up for that history. What I wanted to explore in this film was the beauty that comes despite the horrors of the past. Kind of like the flowers that grow in the cracks of concrete. I think it’s fascinating that love bloomed for my parents after everything their ancestors had gone through. Actually, I think it’s fascinating that love blooms for anyone. No matter how much pain humans cause each other.”

  It wasn’t intentional, but my eyes connected with Victor’s as I said that last part.

  There were a few more questions after that. Then, Elizabeth Ann Margaret, who hadn’t said a word about my project, spotted Victor standing in the doorway.

  “It’s Dawn’s husband!” she announced to everyone as if a special guest star had just come through.

  Everybody turned toward the doorway to thank him for the food he’d provided.

  Victor just smiled and gave a humble bow.

  “We’re almost done here,” I quickly signed while everyone was turned toward him. “Ice cream after I kick everyone out?”

  He nodded and gave everyone a wave and a slight bow before disappearing up the stairs.

  I figured that was as good of a segue to everybody leaving as any.

  I was relieved that everything had gone off without a hitch. And that Victor got to see me in my element. I hoped he was proud of me. That he could see now that the money he’d given me hadn’t gone to waste.

  I was also relieved to see Elizabeth Ann Margaret’s back as I held the door open for everyone to leave. She was the first to go through, claiming loudly that she had a Bumble date with a Directing grad from Brown.

  But Asher, who was at the end of the line, hung back with a, “Hey, can we talk about the last few moments of Love Origins. I just had a few narrative notes.”

  He closed the door with him still inside before I could answer, effectively shutting the rest of the group out of the conversation.

  “What’s up, Asher?” I asked, lowering my voice to a near whisper. I was deeply aware of Victor’s presence upstairs. And though Asher only wanted to give me a note or two, it still felt like I was doing something wrong just by talking to h
im.

  “That’s the same question I had,” he said, lowering his voice as well. “What’s up, Dawn? One day you’re talking about going out with me after you file for divorce. But now your husband, who no one ever met before this year, is here and buying you overpriced food for your soft presentation? Kissing you in front of me? Picking you up from campus?”

  I pause. Granted, I haven’t dated for ten years. But were guys really this entitled? How was this any of his business? “Okay, Asher, I understand that you’re upset, but I don’t think—”

  “Are you getting back together with him?” Asher demanded, his voice pitching high. “After everything I did to make sure we’d be in the same city after you graduated? Do you think it was easy for me to get you that interview with Yinz Entertainment?”

  What? He’d made it sound like all he’d done was put in a phone call in his email. “Asher, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to lead you on or anything like that. And I’m grateful for the job but—

  Asher cut me off again. “But what? Are you trying to get back together with that rich asshole? Why? You think just because he’s here now, he won’t disappear on you again?”

  Wow, this was crazy, but Asher was speaking out aloud all the hard questions I’d used on myself over the past couple of months to keep myself from falling head over heels for Victor again.

  “No, I’m still getting a divorce,” I insisted to both him and myself. “It’s just…complicated.”

  “Well, uncomplicate it for me,” Asher demanded. “Do you like me or not? Do you want to be with me or not? Because I like you. I want to be with you.”

  I gawked at him. I get that he felt like I led him on or something, but I had never promised him anything. I mean, we hadn’t even kissed. Why was he acting so crazy over a date he never even asked me on? A date I would never agree to now after all this unnecessary drama?

  “That’s what I thought,” Asher answered.

  I realize in the next moment that he must’ve mistaken my silent outrage for something it really wasn’t. Before I could tell him that I didn’t return his way too strong-for-this-situation feelings, he grabbed me by the shoulders. And the next thing I knew, he was kissing me, trying to shove his tongue in my mouth.