“I’m well aware of that. I don’t see the relevance.”
“I’m busy, Dayton. Greg is pitching to a new client next week, and I’m pulling the presentation together.”
“I’ll have someone else assigned.”
She narrowed her eyes and fixed her jaw in the manner I’d come to recognize as Christa getting ready to put her foot down. “No, you won’t. This is my account and my hard work that’s got us to this point. I’m not bailing at the last minute. It’s bad enough I won’t be there for the actual meeting.” She nibbled her lip. “In fact, I’d been considering putting off the surgery to allow me to go.”
“Not a chance,” I said, my voice rising in volume.
Mrs. Flannigan’s head twitched, indicating interest in our conversation, so I pressed the button on the center console, and the privacy screen activated. “Your health, those surgeries, come before any client. There will be other clients, other pitches, other presentations. You will be having the surgery on Monday, and you will be taking the next two weeks off.”
She glared at me. “You can pull that arrogant bullshit with other people all you like, but not with me. If I choose to put off my surgery, then that’s my choice.”
I widened my eyes at her vehement outburst. It wasn’t like Christa to be so combative, and it demonstrated the strain she was under because of this fucking Atwood debacle and what she saw as her failure to persuade Kathy to come forward.
I caught her hand and rubbed my thumb over her knuckles. “Bad choice of words. Of course it’s your decision whether you go in for surgery or not, but what I meant to say is work should not come before your health.”
“Says the workaholic,” she grumbled, adding, “ anyway, I only said considering.”
“So, you’ll have the surgery?”
She sighed heavily. “Yes. But I’m still working this afternoon. And I can work from home after the surgery.”
“No,” I insisted. “You need to recuperate. You’re taking two full weeks off.” I spotted the look on her face. “I’m not kidding, Christa.”
She huffed, exasperated. “Sitting at a desk, tapping on a computer isn’t exactly physically taxing.”
“But it is mentally exhausting. The answer is still no.”
She turned to stare out of the window, muttering under her breath, “You’ll be at the office anyway, so I can do what I want.”
I ground my teeth. God, she could be frustrating as hell at times. I removed my phone and pulled up my calendar. One or two meetings might give me a bit of a headache to rearrange, but the rest…
I called Angie. “I’ll be working at home for the next two weeks, Angie.” Christa’s head whipped round, her eyes wide. “Have the location of all my meetings changed to the penthouse, with the exception of the one with Senator Austin. That location remains as is.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Christa hissed through her teeth.
I ignored her. “Tell Frank he’s got the chair. Put in a meeting at six each evening for us to catch up.”
“Yes, Mr. Somers.”
I cut the call.
Christa folded her arms and shifted her body so she was turned away from me. “You are so exasperating at times.”
“I get it from you,” I hit back.
The atmosphere in the car chilled, and Christa ignored me for the rest of the journey home. The second we walked into the penthouse, she went straight to work, setting up her laptop at the dining table, her back pointedly to me. I opened my mouth to make an attempt at reconciliation, but at the last moment, I changed my mind. Instead, I left her to it and went to my study to update Draven.
“No luck,” I said when he answered.
A resigned sigh filtered down the line. “I’m not surprised. Poor bitch is scared shitless.”
“Yep, but this makes it even more important that we keep looking. If Atwood had a penchant for attacking girls in his youth, even if he progressed to getting others to do his dirty work later in life, there are more like Kathy out there. I know it. All we have to do is find them.”
“I’m on it,” Draven said. “I won’t stop until we nail the fucker.”
My eyes sprang open, and it took me a few seconds to realize that my phone was ringing. I groaned and rolled onto my side. Three-fifteen in the goddamn morning. I felt around in the darkness, finally closing my hand around my cell.
“What?” I snapped as Christa stirred beside me.
“Dayton.” Nina’s urgent voice came down the phone. “It’s Dad. He’s had a heart attack.”
I sat up and flicked the bedside lamp on. “So?” I said, waiting to feel something, but inside was only emptiness. I’d given up caring about my father a long time ago, and the fact he was laid up in the hospital, maybe about to die, didn’t change a thing. I had much more important things on my mind than the man who’d beaten the living crap out of me and my sister for years, then tossed me out onto the street with nothing and no means to look after myself. He could rot for all I gave a shit.
“Dayton,” Nina pleaded. “I need to go see him before it’s too late. I need closure.”
Christa touched my arm, concern darkening her features, our earlier fight forgotten. “What’s going on?”
“My so-called father has had a heart attack.”
Christa sat up. “Oh no.”
“I’m coming home,” Nina said. “I’ll be there in three hours.” When I didn’t respond, she yelled, “Dayton! This might be the last chance we have to understand why he behaved the way he did.”
“I don’t care for his platitudes or his excuses, because there is nothing that man could say that would justify what he did.”
“Please, Dayton,” Nina said. “Don’t make me do this alone. I need you. If I’m going to pluck up the courage to face him, I need you by my side.”
I clenched my jaw. Nina knew she was one of the few people I found it hard to say no to, and she’d played her trump card to perfection.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll pick you up from the airport and then I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I love you.”
She ended our call before I could tell her I loved her, too. I dropped the phone in my lap and rubbed my hands over my face. “Fucking wonderful.”
“Is he going to die?” Christa asked.
“I hope so,” I said, causing her to frown. “Slowly and painfully.”
“You don’t mean that.”
I laughed bitterly. “That’s just it. I do mean it. I hate him, Christa. Like hate him. Nina has always had an urge to know why he treated us so badly, why he chose my sixteenth birthday to throw me out, but I never have. Do you want to know why?” She nodded. “Because there is no reason. He’s just a vicious bully who got off on beating his kids. Maybe it was some sort of power trip, but there is nothing he could say to me now that would make me forgive him. Nothing.” I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. “Some people are just born bad, Christa. You had the misfortune to hook up with one, and I had the misfortune to be bred by one. But believing people like that can be redeemed… I don’t buy it. If my father thinks that confessing his sins will allow him to die in peace, you can fucking bet I will take great pleasure in denying him that.” I bent over and kissed her. “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you from the hospital.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
I shook my head. “Hanging around a hospital is no place for Max. Besides, I won’t be there long.”
She shot me a concerned look but did as I’d asked, snuggling back under the covers. I flicked off the light, casting the room back into darkness.
When the time came for me to fetch Nina, I accessed the garage via my private elevator and scanned the rows of cars. My eyes alighted on my latest toy—a sleek black sports car imported from Germany. I grabbed the keys from the cabinet and climbed inside. The smell of new leather tickled my nostrils, and the dark, compact interior sent a shiver of excitement through me. A fast
ride out to the airfield in a car that needed a firm hand was just the thing to take my mind off my fucking father. I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life, rumbling under the hood, vibrating my seat.
I pushed the shift into first then eased her up the ramp that led outside. Manhattan hadn’t quite woken up, so the streets weren’t rammed with cars, allowing me to open the throttle. As I drove out to the private airfield to pick up Nina, the tension that had been riding me these last few weeks ebbed away. I needed this, the freedom of the open road, being in control of a demanding car, the smell of burning rubber as I pushed her to her limits.
By the time I parked alongside the plane, I felt calmer, more centered, better equipped to deal with what was to come. Seconds after I arrived, Nina came running down the aluminum steps. She greeted me by throwing herself into my arms.
“Thank you for agreeing to come with me. I can’t do this alone.”
I kissed her forehead. “You know I’ll do anything for you.” I opened the passenger door, then strode around the front of the car to get in the driver’s side. “Nina, listen. I don’t want you to get your hopes up that he’ll be contrite or able to explain away his actions. He won’t, even if he’s well enough to talk, because there are no excuses for what he did to us. You may want closure, but you’re not going to get it.”
She closed her hand over mine where it was rested on the steering wheel. “I thought about this a lot on the flight over. And you’re right. I don’t think there is a reason. But I decided that closure for me is simply being able to look my father in the eye and show him he didn’t win. Stand before him so he can see I’m happy, healthy, and living a full life, despite the trauma of my childhood. That’s my closure.”
I nodded, understanding. “Mine is watching that fucker take his last breath, then putting him in the ground where his body can slowly rot. Where I can imagine his flesh being eaten by maggots and smile to myself.”
She winced. “You paint quite the picture, brother.”
I started the engine. “Sorry.” I wasn’t sorry, though, not for any of it. I wanted that man to die screaming in agony and begging for my forgiveness. It wouldn’t happen, but it made me happy to imagine.
We drove to the hospital in silence. I let Nina out at the entrance, then went to find a parking spot. By the time I joined her in reception, she’d found out where he was. We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, to the ICU. Once we explained to the nurse on duty who we were, she showed us to his room.
I placed the palm of my hand on the small of Nina’s back and eased her inside. It had been years since I’d seen my father, and the intervening time had not been kind. He’d lost at least thirty pounds, his skin was thinning, his hair almost gone. Broken capillaries across his nose and cheeks made a crisscross pattern, and they had me wondering if he’d turned to excessive drinking in the last few years.
He was hooked up to several machines, some emitting a low bleeping sound, others silent. He looked small, insignificant, his power eroded by age. I waited to feel something, anything, even pleasure, but inside was only emptiness. I guess I’d avenged us years ago, and now there was nothing left to feel.
Nina edged forward, peering over him. “God, Dayton, he… he doesn’t even look like I remembered. He looks so… different. Nothing like the towering man who’d scared me so.” She pulled up a chair and lowered herself onto it.
I remained standing. “Is he going to die?” I asked the nurse who was sitting quietly in the corner, resting a clipboard with a pen dangling from a piece of string on her lap.
She offered me a sympathetic smile. “We’re doing all we can.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Her eyes widened at the sharpness of my tone. Nina shot me an irritated glare, then slowly shook her head. She was used to me.
“He’s a very sick man,” the nurse said, her lips pursing in annoyance. “He suffered a massive heart attack, and he’s old and frail.”
“So, that’s a yes then,” I drawled. “He is going to die.”
She stared at me as though I was an unfeeling monster. I wanted to point at my father and yell, “Well, there’s your fucking cause.”
“We’re not hopeful he’ll recover, no.”
Good. I rested my hands on Nina’s shoulders and stared at my childhood torturer, willing him to Just. Fucking. Die. I didn’t need this shit diverting my focus away from Atwood.
“Dad,” Nina said. “Can you hear me? I’m here, and Dayton is, too.”
“Under duress,” I muttered.
Nina didn’t respond to my childish murmurings. “Come on, Dad. Open your eyes.”
A rattle echoed through his chest and—fuck me—his lids flickered, then opened. That merciless gaze locked on to me, and for a few seconds, the heartless bastard made a comeback. My hatred for him was only mirrored by his for me. There was no reason for his past behavior. He was a sadist, that was all, a man who took pleasure in causing others pain.
He was another fucking Atwood.
“That’s it, Dad,” Nina whispered, misreading the animosity in his eyes for determination, a desire to live. “It’s me, Nina.”
The nurse rose from her chair and pressed her fingers to his wrist.
His eyes flickered to Nina’s but didn’t linger. No, it was me he wanted to focus on. Me, who he truly abhorred. He’d treated Nina badly because he knew how much it hurt me to see my sister frightened, cowering in the corner. I’d never tell her that, though. I refused to break her that way.
I met his gaze head-on, my message clear. He beckoned me forward. I stepped around Nina and leaned over him.
“You’re going to die tonight,” I whispered in his ear. “And I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer.”
He coughed, spittle dribbling down his chin. I left it there. This man didn’t deserve any sympathy, any care or attention.
“Dayton.” His voice sounded as if he was talking through a pit of gravel, raw and husky and barely audible. “I might be about to die, but I don’t care because while my suffering will be over, yours will persist. I’ll continue to live on through your hatred for me.”
I straightened to find him staring at me, eyes bulging, not through regret or distress, but through pure loathing.
I curled my lips into a sneer and put my mouth right by his ear once more. “Rot in Hell.”
He began to cough violently. Machines went off, the beeping sounds piercing my ears. And then Nina and I were shoved out of the way as medical personnel piled into the room.
I stood at the back watching them work on him, but I knew he wouldn’t make it. And I refused to feel a moment of sorrow.
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
17
Christa
I slipped my arm through Dayton’s as we stood at the graveside, watching his father’s coffin being lowered into the ground. There was only the three of us in attendance: me, Dayton, and Nina. Some of Dayton’s father’s old business contacts had offered to come along, but Dayton had stipulated immediate family only.
He’d also insisted on a burial, although I’d always thought them macabre. The idea of being eaten by bugs and stuff, even if I was dead… Urgh…
Dayton hadn’t shed a single tear or shown any grief at his father’s passing. Then again, after what his dad did to him when he was just a child, I wasn’t surprised he couldn’t find forgiveness in his heart but, all the same, I worried about the level of stress he was under. However much he hated his father, he had still lost a parent, not to mention the looming threat of Sutton and our inability to find a way to beat him. I touched his elbow, and he glanced down at me, the skin around his mouth tight, crinkles around his eyes. He looked tired and withdrawn, and my heart ached for him.
There would be no reception, no period of mourning, following today’s service. From Dayton’s perspective, he’d done his duty by arranging the funeral. I’d half expected him to refuse to attend, but when I’d asked him, he’d mu
ttered something about being there for Nina and making sure his father was truly gone.
The minister said a few words, but as I glanced up at Dayton’s clenched jaw and fixed expression, I wasn’t sure if he was even listening. After it was over, we headed back to the car. I winced as I climbed inside. My wound was still a little raw after surgery last week.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Dayton said when he spotted my discomfort. “You should be at home, resting.”
“It’s fine.” I gestured dismissively. He’d been smothering me all week, and while I appreciated how attentive he was, sometimes I just wanted him to give me some space. “Besides, I wanted to be here to support you.” I clipped my seat belt in place, holding it away from my stomach, and rested my head back against the seat. I did feel exhausted, not that I was about to tell Dayton that. He’d become insufferable if he knew how much I was struggling.
Nina had remained tight-lipped about her feelings, and as she sat across from me in the back of Dayton’s limousine, my concern for her grew. The death of her father had definitely hit her much harder than it had Dayton. She appeared drained, the tips of her fingers pinching at her throat as she stared out the window, and she’d lost some weight since his passing last week.
I leaned forward and squeezed her knee. “How you holding up?”
She gave me a faint smile. “Glad that part’s over.”
Ever since I’d known her, Nina had always had such a happy disposition, so to see her quiet and withdrawn, it worried me. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
“Why would she want to talk?” Dayton cut in. “He’s gone, and that’s a good thing.”
Nina winced. I shot a glare in Dayton’s direction. He might be relieved his father had passed away, but Nina’s feelings were entirely different. I shifted in my seat. Pain shot through my abdomen and I repressed a hiss. “Because she’s not you,” I said. “And women process things completely differently than men. So pipe down and keep your thoughts about what Nina may or may not want to yourself.”
Avenging Christa: A Billionaire Romance (Irresistibly Mine Book 2) Page 12