by Jessie Lane
It was there in the look on her face as she took in what I had said to her and battled her tears that I knew I had finally won. She was going to let me buy her the purple purse from a ludicrously expensive store.
Her mouth opened, and I was seconds away from jumping with joy at my victory when the unthinkable happened.
“How fortuitous for me that I see my long-lost wife and daughter walking around New York City while I’m here on business,” a cold, low voice said from behind me.
The words almost didn’t make sense to me since I had been staring at my mom’s face, waiting for her voice, when the cultured baritone took its place. I understood all too clearly, though, when my mother was roughly pulled around me by a strong hand on her arm and into the body of a tall, slim man.
Once he had her positioned in front of him with her back to his front, he then wrapped one of his arms across her chest, just above her breasts, effectively holding her captive against him.
My mother’s eyes were now wide and panicked as she stared at me. At least, I thought it was me until I heard shuffling.
Turning my head slowly to either side, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw two large, bulky men who were now pinning me in with their presence, cutting off any possible escape route I might have had.
When I looked back at the man who held my mother caged in his arms, my heart started to thump so hard I thought it might beat itself right out of the front of my chest.
It had been sixteen years since I had seen him, but I couldn’t forget that face. That face had haunted me in my nightmares since Mom and I had left him.
His sandy blond hair was styled and combed to perfection. Blue eyes just a few shades darker than mine stared at me ruthlessly as precious seconds ticked away. In that moment, he seemed totally opposite from what my nightmares remembered.
There was no denying who this man was or what he was to me.
The monster was back.
Only, this wasn’t a nightmare, and Lucas wasn’t here to save me.
This wasn’t the furious man who had raged and roared. No, this man had an air of quiet, deadly calm. And the funny thing was that I would suddenly rather deal with the bad temper from my nightmares because this man … Well, he scared the living shit out of me with merely a look.
As a child, even though I had a vivid imagination and lived half my life with my head in the clouds, I would have never dreamed it possible that the monster who had terrified me was capable of becoming anything scarier than he already was. Apparently, my imagination just hadn’t been good enough. This man who stood in front of me with his expensive suit and polished leather shoes didn’t just ooze a menacing aura … He radiated danger.
Sometime since we had escaped him, he had transformed himself from being a monster to the sort of being monsters were afraid of. I had no idea how that was even possible.
All of my instincts were screaming, Run! Whereas, my mind was telling me the cold, hard truth. We were screwed, trapped, and there was no getting out of this.
He cocked one seriously impervious-looking eyebrow at me then subtly nodded his head to the street. “Follow my men into the car, Virginia. You don’t want to know what will happen if you don’t.”
I internally shuddered at the order. I didn’t need him to verbalize what he would do if I didn’t listen. The little girl trapped inside me knew well enough that, if you didn’t do what dear old Daddy wanted you to do, he got angry.
It was never good for anyone when the monster got angry.
I slowly made my way into the limousine waiting at the curb and climbed into the back after one of my father’s henchmen opened the door for me. As I slid onto the leather bench seat, the car door on the other side opened, and one of his men got in, blocking any escape I might have had.
I stopped in the middle of the seat, waiting not so patiently, terrified out of my mind, as my mom climbed in and sat herself across from me on the other bench seat. My father sat down next to her, wrapping his arm back around her shoulders as if he didn’t want to let her out of touching distance for an instant. Maybe he was afraid, if he did, both of us would up and disappear again.
The second henchman, who had held the limousine door open, slid in next to me, and my breath choked up in my chest. I was sandwiched between two men who looked like they ate professional wrestlers for breakfast and were no doubt armed with at least one gun. The word fucked came to mind, as in I was totally fucked in a bunch of not very good ways. Even that description seemed to pale in comparison to my current reality.
I was sitting across from the very man my mother had risked everything to leave in order to protect us both. It wasn’t likely we would escape him again. Now the question was, what would he do with us?
My mother had painted him as a good boy gone bad through desperate circumstances. However, as I forced myself to stare into his cold, hard eyes, I didn’t see an ounce of good left. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t the man my mother had fallen in love with years ago. No, this man, who had his arm wrapped around my mother like he would super glue her to himself if he could, had a face that didn’t just say, “don’t fuck with me.” That face said, “I’m your worst nightmare,” and in my case, he was.
It took everything I had not to tremble in fear while staring at the face that somewhat mirrored my own, waiting for what he would do next.
With his free hand, he knocked on the glass partition separating us from the driver, and the car moved forward, merging into traffic. He didn’t move his eyes from my own, and although I was scared shitless of him, some part deep inside wondered what he saw as he looked at the daughter he hadn’t seen in sixteen years.
A beloved daughter returned to him? Or a nuisance he wanted to get rid of once and for all?
I was terrified of learning his answer would be the latter. Not just because every woman wanted their father to love them, even if they were a deranged, dangerous man, but because—in my case—my life might be on the line.
Hopefully, my mother was right in her belief that, deep down, she felt my father was still the good man she had fallen in love with. However, as I stared into those seemingly soulless eyes of his, I wondered just how deep down that part of him was buried, if it was there at all.
He finally pulled his gaze from mine to turn his head and look at my mother. Grabbing the hair at the back of her head gently, he then turned her so she was looking back at him. I couldn’t be sure if it was the dim lighting through the tinted windows or just my wild imagination, but I could swear a look of tenderness passed over his face for a split second.
“I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair styled so short, darling.”
If he thought mom’s short hair was drastic, I would hate to see how my father would have reacted to all the different hair colors she had tried over the years.
He ran his fingers through the short strands of mother’s bob in an almost loving inspection. The sight reminded me of a movie I had watched about a man who had obsessively stalked a naive woman he ended up killing.
A shiver went down my spine at the thought. Now was not the time to lose my shit, so I pushed the morbid thoughts away in order to stay in the moment.
“It might be fashionable on other women, but you know I prefer your hair long.”
Well, that comment certainly didn’t help me forget about my creepy, stalker slash killer movie comparison! However, he was my father; thus, I would try to stay positive and hope for the best, despite the fact that I was positively scared shitless. Perhaps the years had changed him and he wasn’t the scary monster I had thought he was when I had been a little girl.
“My beautiful girls are back with me where they belong.”
An unexpected part of me softened at his quietly spoken declaration. Maybe Mom was right; my father was good somewhere deep in his bones.
“Now you’ll tell me everything about where you’ve been all these years, or there will be consequences, and those consequences will be dire, my love. If I have t
o figure it out on my own, I’ll go and wipe out every person who’s helped you in any way, shape, or form, even if it includes burning the mailman alive in your old driveway.”
Nope. It looked like my father really was a psychopath.
Chapter
13
Lucas
One Month Later …
“Mom, what’s going on over there?”
I was stationed in the middle of hell, and my life was slowly unraveling on the other side of the world. To say I was hanging on by a thread would be the biggest understatement of my life.
My left hand held the phone so tightly I heard the plastic groan from the pressure over the sound of my mother’s hysterical sobbing through the phone.
I had called my parents’ house because I had received something in the mail today that had all but ripped my beating heart from my chest—a letter from Ginny.
My hopes had soared at the sight of that familiar handwriting on the outside of the envelope. I had written Gin several times before leaving for my deployment, unable to give her space. Something inside had told me it was imperative that I make my angel understand I was sorry for everything I had done. It was vital to get her to talk to me so I could finally give her the three words I should have told her years ago.
I love you.
All of my hope had been crushed after opening that envelope, though. Then, once I tried to find answers from my sister, my gut warned me that shit back home was a lot worse than I’d feared when I had gotten my mother, instead.
My mother’s sniffles were breaking my heart almost as much as the words she was giving me.
“Mrs. DuBois died last month in some freak car accident,” she rambled.
Just hearing those words was enough to tell me how distraught my mother still was from losing one of her closest friends. “I know Gin’s mom died, Ma. You told me that the day after it happened—last time I called. What I want to know is if they figured out why she had the accident.”
“From what poor Ginny explained to us, her brakes went out, and she slammed into a huge tree after she lost control of the car. She was going downhill, and her car was going so fast that, when it slammed into the tree, it exploded. There was nothing left of her by the time the fire trucks got to the scene.
“I’m so worried about her, Lucas! She’s not talking to anyone. She’s losing weight. Our sweet Ginny needs us now more than ever!” By the end of her speech, my mother was crying so hard she could barely speak.
I heard my sister taking the phone away from her as my father coaxed his overwhelmed wife away to calm down.
I completely understood how my dad felt right then. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t give to be able to comfort the woman I loved, and I couldn’t. I would soon learn my troubles didn’t end there, though.
“Lucas?” Olivia’s watery voice asked.
Logically, I knew my sister had suffered right along with my mother, even Ginny, over Mrs. DuBois’s death. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very logical at the moment.
I was torn between anger at myself for being half a world away from everyone who needed me and fear that I was somehow on the verge of losing more than I had ever thought I would.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me what’s going on with her?” I snapped at Olivia, knowing I shouldn’t take out my frustration and worry on my sister, but the overwhelming feeling of helplessness had taken over.
Men like me didn’t do helplessness. If something was wrong, we fixed it.
I couldn’t fix this. Not for Ginny. And that meant I had failed my girl again.
Maybe it was irrational thinking, but it was all that was swirling around in my head. My girl had lost her mother, and I hadn’t even been there to hold her hand to comfort her.
“It’s not like I can call you, Lucas!” Olivia snapped back. “Mom and I both wrote letters, trying to let you know what’s going on, but they must not have gotten there yet. I couldn’t send you a Red Cross message, because Mrs. DuBois wasn’t a direct family member, and neither is Ginny. I did everything I could.”
Olivia wasn’t the only one who had written letters. I had written one to Gin every day since I had received the news Mrs. DuBois had died, begging her to pick up the phone when I called, doing my best to put into meager words just how sorry I was that she had lost her mother. I knew it took time to process mail from deployed soldiers, but I also knew she had received at least my first few letters already and had chosen to ignore my phone calls, anyway. Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. No, the epitome of all my damn nightmares was what I received from Gin today.
I tried to run my hand through my hair but couldn’t; Ginny’s letter was still clutched in that hand. As a result, I stood there with my fist clutching her devastating words, resting on the top of my head.
Everyone in the room around me knew bad shit was going down for me, and they were either leaving the room or moving farther away to give me space, not that it mattered.
If I had thought I was standing in hell before, I knew better now. Hell wasn’t a desert with an enemy trying to blow you up with roadside bombs. Hell was being half a world away from the woman you loved while she went through the worst moment of her life, and she didn’t want a goddamn thing to do with you.
All the proof I needed that Gin wanted absolutely nothing to do with me was written in black, daintily scrawled ink on the paper I was clutching in my fist as if my life depended on never letting it go.
That one piece of paper contained the embodiment of my worst fears. It told me in no uncertain terms that she had finally given up on me and decided to move on from her foolish dreams of being in love with me, something I would have gone out of my way to dissuade her of if it weren’t for her parting line.
If you have ever cared for me in any capacity, Lucas, if the years between us have meant anything at all, I ask that you respect my request for no further contact. Don’t write me any more letters and don’t call me anymore. I need some time to process everything that’s happened. If you can’t do that, then I’ll be forced to sever all of my ties with your entire family, even Olivia. Please, don’t make me do that.
The knowledge that I had hurt my angel so badly she was willing to give up the only pseudo-family outside of her mother that she had ever known was a brutal blow to my conscious.
Could I take that chance of pushing her away from any semblance of family she had left?
A desperate part of me wanted to run home, drop to my knees, apologize for every shitty thing I had ever done to her, and then tell her I was so fucking sorry I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I couldn’t do that, though, since the Army would waste no time labeling me a deserter before throwing my ass in the brig.
I could say all that in a letter, but what if, in her grief and devastation, that letter finally pushed her over whatever fragile sanity she was holding on to, and she really did turn her back on my family who loved her so much, just to get away from me?
I couldn’t take that chance. I couldn’t let my angel be completely alone in the world.
Since she wouldn’t turn to me, I had to agree to her request so she would at least have my family to turn to. It was the least I could do for fucking things up so badly between us.
When you loved someone, you were supposed to make them happy and build them up with your love. In my ridiculous attempts to push away the woman I knew was meant for me alone, due to my insecurities and doubts, I had shredded the amazing gift of love I had been given.
The bad news didn’t end there, however. What Olivia said next between her hysterical sobs was enough to send chills down my spine.
“She’s leaving, Lucas. She’s leaving, and I don’t know how to stop her!”
“What the fuck do you mean she’s leaving?” I growled, my voice cracking, which caught the attention of a few of the guys in the room with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer their concerned looks.
“She came over two days ago to tell Mom and me t
hat she accepted a job in Chicago. Why would Ginny leave us after she lost her mom like that?”
Because I had probably finally pushed her away, not that I was going to admit my mistakes to my little sister. I didn’t think I could get the words out of my mouth if I wanted to. Not just because I was too proud to admit I had screwed it all up, but mainly because my heart hurt so much right now that I was half convinced I was having a heart attack.
I had done this—well, me and fate. I’d pushed and pushed and pushed her away until I had broken her, and then fate had come in and taken her mother away, too.
There was absolutely no one to blame but myself, and even though it went against every fiber of my being, I was going to give my angel exactly what she wanted from me now.
Absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t going to call her, and I wasn’t going to write her a letter or mail her another postcard.
It was the least I could do for the woman I loved.
Even if it destroyed me.
Blowing out a weary breath, I broke the silence between my sister and me. “Listen up, Olivia, and listen good. I know you’re worried and upset about her leaving, but you’re going to keep your opinions to yourself and help your best friend through this. That means you’re going to go over to her house, help her pack up her shit, and then tell her you’ll always be there if she needs you. And you’re going to do all of that without giving her any shit, you got me?”
“How can you say that, Lucas? Why would you want me to help her leave us when she needs to stay here where we can take care of her?”
“Because it’s not about us, Olivia. It’s about her, and she obviously needs this right now, so you’re going to have her back like a best friend should. If we’re lucky, after she’s been in Chicago a while, she’ll decide to come back home.”
“I can’t believe you’re telling me this! How in the hell could you give up on her like this? I thought you cared about her!”