by Cate Ashwood
“Are you nervous about seeing him again?”
“No. Not looking forward to it, but I think I need that closure.”
“That’s what this is for you? Closure?”
“Yep. My father has always had such a hold over me. It was partly my demented sense of hero worship when it came to him and his accomplishments, and partly manipulation on his part.” He huffed a sigh. “I probably need some pretty hefty doses of psychotherapy.”
I laughed softly. “We’re all a little messed up, but you’re stronger than you think. And if you need some extra support, I’m gonna be right next to you.”
He leaned his head back against my shoulder and covered my hand with his, squeezing gently. “Have I told you I love you?”
If the theories about multiple universes were true, there wasn’t a single one in which I wouldn’t love Holden with everything I had. And I would never get tired of hearing that he loved me too. I kissed his temple. “I love you too.”
He turned in my arms and slid his hands along the side of my face, pulling me in to kiss him.
I pulled back, my stomach flipping just looking at him. His eyes were unfocused and a little dreamy, and his lips were wet and darker than normal. I loved that I could do that to him, that I had that effect on him because he had the same one on me.
“What time are we meeting Frankie?”
“Eight. He’s meeting us at Revery then.”
I cocked one eyebrow. “So that leaves us nearly four hours.”
Holden grinned back at me, and my stomach flipped a second time. “What ever will we do to pass the time?”
I slipped my fingers behind the waist of his jeans and tugged the button open. “I dunno… You got any ideas?”
His pocket vibrated, and he tossed his head back as he laughed. “Whoever’s calling me has the absolute worst timing.”
“Let it go to voicemail,” I said, sliding my hands down over his ass, then pulling his earlobe into my mouth to suck gently. He tilted his head to give me better access, and the vibrating stopped.
And then started up again.
Holden groaned, but I didn’t stop groping him. I’d never get enough of this.
“I… should probably check… to see…”
“Mm-hmm,” I hummed against his throat as he let his head fall back.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he held it up to see the caller ID.
“Hey, Frankie.” He sounded breathless, and there was no way Frankie wasn’t going to know he was interrupting. I could hear the voice on the other end of the line, but his words were too muffled to make out.
Holden’s head snapped up. “What?”
I took a step back, and he began to pace, his phone pressed tightly to his ear. Gone was the relaxed, turned-on Holden from a moment before. In his place was a walking ball of tension, rigid and alert.
“What’s going on?” I mouthed when Holden made eye contact. He shook his head. I shoved my hands in my pockets and waited. Whatever it was, it had to be bad. I’d seen Holden deal with high-stress situations like they were nothing.
This obviously wasn’t nothing.
I waited with impatience for him to hang up, and when he did, he looked spooked.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Frankie... He was talking so fast, but the cops are at Westbridge.”
“What? What the hell for?”
“My father’s being arrested.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The front doors of Westbridge seemed so much larger than they had the last time I’d seen them, with large panels of glass that reached to the top of the second story. It almost seemed ominous now, and I had no idea what I was about to walk into or the scope of the situation. Frankie hadn’t had much information when he’d called, but he’d been panicking and that was enough for me to get my ass in gear.
Gage pulled the door open ahead of me and I walked in, getting swept up in nostalgia from the life I’d led a few short months ago. How many times had I walked through this lobby, taken the elevator to my office?
Today, though, it looked nothing like the place I’d left.
There were police officers everywhere, and everyone I used to work with was standing in the lobby looking completely perplexed. I searched through the crowd and spotted Frankie, his gaze darting around the room like a cat caught in the yard during the fourth of July. When it landed on me, he rushed forward, dodging people as he made his way toward us.
“Jesus, what took you so long?” he asked.
“We jumped in a cab the minute I got off the phone with you.”
He rubbed his hand down the back of his neck. “Sorry. This is so fucked-up. They came in here like they thought we were harboring El Chapo and his entire drug cartel. No one will tell us what’s going on. They dragged your father out of here an hour ago in cuffs. I called his lawyer already.”
What the fuck had he done?
A thousand possibilities swarmed through my head, each of them surpassing the other with how outlandish they were. Insider trading. Money laundering. Human trafficking. None of them seemed all that likely. My father was a money-hungry asshole, but I couldn’t see him selling people into the sex trade.
We stood around, watching the cops carry box after box out of the building. Whatever was going on, it was big, and it was far-reaching. My stomach was knotted, and all I could think about was Gage. If this affected my father, there was a chance it would affect him as well. It hadn’t been that long since he’d left the company.
“Can we get outta here?” Frankie asked.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
We gave our names to one of the police officers as we left the building and headed up two blocks to the bar on the corner. We hadn’t finished sliding into the booth before Frankie was ordering cocktails.
The waitress brought them in record time and sat them in front of us. Frankie slammed his back and ordered another before she’d had a chance to get more than two steps away.
“What a fucking day,” he said as she scurried off to grab him another round. “What a fucking insane day.”
“What happened?” Gage asked.
“It’s a lot of speculation at this point,” Frankie said. “But it sounds like Dr. Prescott’s spent the last year committing some serious fraud.”
“What? Fraud?” I was having trouble with the words, like I’d never heard them before. My brain tripped over the implications, and I searched my memory, looking for any signs I might have missed that he’d done these things. “Fraud,” I repeated. “My father committed fraud.”
“I know. It’s so fucked-up that it’s hard to believe it’s true. But Kendra Fairbanks was here this morning.”
The name piqued my memory. I’d seen her around the office a few times, but we’d never interacted. “The investor?”
“Turns out she’s not so much an investor as she is an investigator. She’s been meeting with your father for months and I guess looking into him at the same time. She came in this morning with a badge around her neck, and she was in the room when they handcuffed Dr. Prescott.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Frankie said. “That’s all I know. But this feels big… I don’t know how far this reaches.”
Gage had stayed quiet since we sat down, taking it all in. I desperately wanted to know what he thought about it. “Did you have any idea?” I asked him.
“None. I’m as surprised—and fucking confused—as you are.” He spoke with such conviction it made me feel a little calmer. “Philip is a lot of things, but I didn’t think he was capable of something like this. It’s gotta be a mistake.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t.
By our third round of drinks, we’d heard from my father’s lawyer. He was being arraigned in the morning, and there was nothing to do until then but wait.
I didn’t sleep all night. Even with a significant level of alcohol buzzing through my
system, I couldn’t calm my brain down enough to fall asleep. Sometime around three in the morning, I gave up and got out of bed. There wasn’t anywhere to go that wouldn’t wake Gage, and so I grabbed my cell phone and snuck into the bathroom.
Shutting the door behind me, I pulled on one of the plush robes hanging on the hook and climbed into the bathtub.
It was surprisingly comfortable and somewhere between the tenth page of my Reddit feed and the 206th level of Candy Crush, I must have finally fallen asleep.
I woke to the sensation of being lifted and opened my eyes to see Gage. He’d hooked his arms underneath me and pulled me out of the tub to carry me back to bed.
“What were you doing in there?” he asked, his voice gravelly.
“I couldn’t sleep.” I settled my head against his shoulder, still feeling the weight of exhaustion pulling me under.
“The drool on your robe tells a different story.” He set me down and pushed the bathrobe over my shoulders before pulling back the covers so I could climb in. He slid in after me and wrapped his arms around me, holding me to him.
“Why are you awake?” I asked, deciding this was a thousand times more comfortable than the tub.
“Couldn’t sleep without you.”
I kissed him, slow and languid and so fucking grateful he was there. I didn’t know how well I’d be dealing with this without him. I was feeling like the pieces of my past were disintegrating, and I didn’t even know why. We were still a ways away from finding out exactly what had happened, but for now, Gage was helping me hold it all together.
“You okay?” he asked, his eyebrows knit together in concern. It was the thousandth time he’d asked me since we found out my father was in jail, and my answer hadn’t changed.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“You want me to come with you tomorrow to talk to Philip?”
I’d been contemplating that since I realized I was going to be visiting my father shortly after he got out of lockup.
“God, yes. But I want to know what the hell is going on, and the chances of him telling me the truth if you’re standing there beside me…” I sighed. “Besides, I feel like this is something I need to do on my own. I can do this.”
“You can,” he assured me, kissing me again.
I wanted to believe him so badly. I wanted to have enough faith in myself to know that I was going to walk into that house and have enough courage to say what needed to be said. I’d come to New York with a purpose, and whatever my father was mixed up in, it didn’t change a goddamn thing.
Dawn finally broke and Gage and I sat around waiting to hear from the lawyer. It seemed to take all day, but in reality, it was only slightly after ten when the phone rang.
“Your father’s out on bail and heading home. I’ve told him you’re in New York, and he’s requested to see you.”
I didn’t know why, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that he might not want to see me. For some reason, I felt less sure about the whole thing knowing he was expecting me. Frankie and I had devised my showing up with the element of surprise on my side. With no time to prepare, the cutting remarks and disappointed speeches would be kept to a minimum.
“All right. When should I come by?”
“Now is fine,” he said.
I thanked him and hung up and immediately felt like I was going to throw up. I hadn’t expected to be this affected by the situation, but there were extenuating circumstances now that added pressure to an already stressful state of affairs.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Gage asked as I was pulling my shoes on.
“I’m sure. But keep your phone on. I might need you to meet me at a bar when I’m done.”
He kissed my forehead. “You’re gonna be fine. Your father is just a man. A shitty man, it turns out. Go, say your piece, and come back. We’ll get the rest of your stuff sorted, and then I’m taking you home.”
I leaned into him, letting him bear my weight. “I like the sound of home.”
“Me too. Now go and get this over with. I’ll be waiting for you.”
I nodded and stepped away, feeling a little better. I always felt better when Gage was involved. Even though he wasn’t coming with me, I could feel his support through my whole body.
My father’s home was as imposing and sterile as it had always been. I rang the doorbell, and a man—the lawyer, presumably—answered.
“Dr. Prescott is waiting for you.”
“Is my mother here?”
“She’s in Switzerland. She won’t be back until next week.”
“My father must be relieved she’s not here to witness all this.”
The man didn’t comment. I followed him through the halls of a house that had never felt like a home to me. Even when I’d visited on breaks from school, it had never seemed welcoming.
We found my father sitting in his study, his back to us when we entered. He turned in his chair, and I stopped myself from asking about his orange jumpsuit. Instead, I opened with “Are you going to prison?”
There was fire in his eyes—I could see the anger and humiliation from clear across the room.
“No.” But even in that tiny word, a word that took no more than half a second to speak, I heard the doubt.
“What did you do?”
“None of that has ever been any of your business, and it’s none of your business now.”
I don’t know why I’d expected him to tell me anything. He never had before. There was no reason for him to start now, even though he’d been charged with felony fraud.
I took a step forward. To me, my father had always been larger than life and so fucking untouchable. He was a genius surgeon, a ruthless entrepreneur, and a merciless boss, but in the three months I’d been gone, something had changed. I couldn’t say if it was him or me or both, but I wasn’t intimidated by him. I wasn’t beholden to his opinion of me.
Standing on my own for the first time, without the umbrella of my father’s empire over me, had done me good. Maybe Sawyer’s Ferry Regional Hospital wasn’t as prestigious as Westbridge—or what was left of Westbridge anyway—but I did respectable, meaningful work there.
And I was damn good at it.
I reached into my pocket and withdrew the small slip of paper.
“This is the last of the money I owe you. You can use it to cover some of your legal costs.” His eyes widened. I’d never spoken to him like that before. Two steps forward and I was within easy distance to drop it on his desk. “That’s the last of anything I owe you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he asked, his voice becoming increasingly loud with each word.
“You fired me from Westbridge, but I’m quitting you. I’ve found what I’m happy doing and who I’m happy doing it with. My whole world has opened up to what I was missing before, and a huge part of why I was missing it was you.” I took a breath and continued. “I will always be grateful to you for providing the opportunities for me to have accomplished what I have, but as a brilliant man once told me, you might have opened the doors, but I’m the one who worked to walk through them.”
He was looking at me with an expression of shock, and there was a part of me that reveled in it. I’d never shocked my father. I’d never stood up to him either, and now that it was happening, I wished I’d done it sooner. It felt damn good.
“So thank you for everything, but I’m done living like you own me. You don’t.”
He picked up the check and looked at it before his eyes settled back on me. He didn’t say anything. For the first time in my life, I’d struck my father dumb.
I turned and walked toward the door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he shouted, finally finding his voice.
“Home,” I said over my shoulder. “To Alaska.”
In the coming months, more and more details came out about my father’s case. The charges against him were serious, and Kendra Fairbanks—whose name was actually Catherine Nichols—
had amassed a huge amount of evidence against him. For nearly two years, my father had been fabricating data in the pharmaceutical trials. For one study, he’d even fabricated patients.
He was not alone in the crime. Half the laboratory staff in that department had been arrested alongside him, but it appeared that the driving force behind it had been Philip Prescott.
“The financials for Westbridge were released today,” I said, reading the article off the screen of my tablet while Gage washed the pan I’d used to fry the eggs for breakfast. “Seems like quite a few of the investors pulled out right after you left—I guess your exit shook their confidence in the company.”
“You think that’s why your dad resorted to falsifying data?” He set the pan on the drying rack and wiped down the counters.
I shrugged. “It’s as good a theory as any. I dunno if we’ll ever know for sure. He’s sure as shit not going to fill me in, but it’s likely the fraud was an attempt to Band-Aid the situation and it got out of hand. The company was hemorrhaging money everywhere but pharmaceutical research.”
“And you were working on endovascular grafts, right?”
“Yeah. Treatment for complex aortic aneurysms, but that trial was in its infancy when I left.”
He grabbed my coffee cup and refilled it. “With pharmacotherapy pre- and post-op?”
“Yes.” I paused, thinking through the implications of where his questions were leading. “You think he meant to fire me all along.”
“I think it’s certainly possible,” Gage said around a mouthful of egg.
“But why send me here at all? Why not just fire me?”
“Who knows. Maybe he thought it was a win-win plan. Either you succeeded in getting me to come back and he convinces his investors to put their money back in Westbridge, or you fail, and he fires you and keeps up his fraudulent trials without you nosing around the pharma division.”
I huffed a frustrated sigh. It was an impossible thing for me to process because on the one hand, he was a stone-cold, vicious asshole who deserved to rot in prison for as long as the judge saw fit. On the other, he was my father, and while I’d always known he wasn’t exactly Mr. Rogers, I’d created all these excuses for him and it was taking a ton of mental effort to rewrite my understanding of who he truly was.