by Lake, Keri
“What are … how did you …?” I stuck my head just outside of the doorjamb, peering to the left and right of him. Nothing but the gleaming marble of the hallway and the shine of the steel elevators made up the space behind him, and at the all clear, I pulled him inside, and shut the door. “How the hell did you get past the front desk?”
“I’m a thief, Lucy. It’s all distractions and sleight of hand.” His gaze swept the surrounding room. “Amazing what they’ve done to restore this place. I snuck in here about ten years ago, and everything was destroyed. Torn up, and broken. And now, it’s … fixed. Like, what happened before didn’t even matter.” He gave the slightest smile, his eyes roving me in the white terry cloth robe that I’d practically lived in for weeks after arriving there. “You look good, Lucy. Better than good. How are you feeling?”
I’d begun to hate that question. “Better.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Where is he, Dax? How is he?”
Dropping into the chair behind him, he rested his elbows on his knees and shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s just … ever since you … he’s just messed up in the head.”
“Why didn’t he come with you?”
Lips forming a hard line, Dax glanced away. “He seems to think it’s the only thing that’ll make you better, staying away. Thinks it’ll keep you safe. He blames himself for what happened to you. Tearing himself up over the shit.” He rubbed his hands back and forth across his skull. “He hit a new low this morning, and … fuck.” His hands slid down to cover his eyes. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do … with what you’ve been going through, but … I think you’re the only one who can help him.”
“I have to see him. I need to see him, Dax. I’m losing my mind in this place.” I lurched forward and knelt down in front of him, placing my hands on his knees. “Will you take me to him?”
“Yeah. I think we need to make this shit snappy, because the new kid at the front desk wasn’t buying the physical therapist bullshit, and said he was going to try your father.”
“You told them you were my therapist?” I pushed off him, the amusement of such a thing only a momentary distraction from the worry bouncing around inside my head.
“Yeah.”
“That’ll be a cold day in hell,” I said, slipping into the adjacent bedroom to throw on jeans and a sweater. For the first time in weeks, my heart blossomed with life again.
When I exited the bathroom only a couple minutes later, my lungs clamped up, and I froze in place.
My father stood flanked by two men, both of them with guns pointed at Dax.
“No!” I darted across the room until in front of Dax, blocking him.
My father signaled the two men to lower their guns and took a step toward me. “Move, zlatko.”
“No. And don’t call me that. You haven’t earned the right to call me that in a long time.”
“I’m not required to earn the rights I was granted with the day you were born. I am your father, and it doesn’t matter what’s transpired between your birth and now. It doesn’t change facts.”
“You are no father to me. Paul was my father. And when he died, so did the only man I loved as a father.” I lifted my chin. “I’m leaving with Dax.”
“Tesarik has issued a manhunt for him. It’s only a matter of time before they track him down, and you’ll be nowhere near that when it happens.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“And where will you go? The man has nothing. He can do nothing for you.” His gaze bored into me, and I studied the scars of his face, the hard and cold reality of what his life had become over the years. “He is the reason you were hurt.”
“And where were you? Huh? Where the hell were you, when they did what they did to me?”
He didn’t speak, only stared at me from across the room.
“I love him. And I won’t breathe without him, no matter how much therapy you throw at me.”
With a raise of his hand, the two men behind him exited the room, and he slid a cigar from his pocket, lighting it with his zippo. “You remind me of her. So much. I’d forgotten how much I missed her until just now.”
My mother? “For years, I defended you, while hating her.” The rims of my eyes stung with the threat of tears. “And I realize now, she was just trying to protect me.”
Bowing his head, he nodded. “Until you have a child, you won’t know the reasons why I left. The fact is, I’ve killed a lot of people in my life, zlatko, but you’re the only one I’d die for. And when I do someday, I can assure you, leaving you will have been my only true regret in life.”
Tears blurred my eyes, turning his form hazy. “If any part of you truly cares for me, let me go to him. Don’t stop me.”
“I can’t keep you protected, if you’re not with me. And if my enemies find out you’re my daughter, they’ll make what happened to you look like child’s play.”
“There was a time when I needed you in my life, but I’ve survived thirteen years without you. He’s the only one who’s ever kept me safe. And I need him, now more than ever.” I glanced back at Dax, and my shoulders dropped. “I’m pregnant.”
My father's cigar-toting hand halted midway to his mouth, his face stoic and unreadable—exactly as I remembered him from childhood. “You’re certain …”
“That it’s his?” I instinctively held my still-flat stomach. “Yes. Doctor Rutherford confirmed I’m nine weeks along. Con—” I couldn’t even say his name aloud. “I was never … he did a lot of things, but not—”
“I understand.” My father stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray on the nightstand beside him. “He has no one to watch over you like I do, Lucia. No one to protect you. No one who would lay down his life for the two of you, like Imrich.”
Imrich, or Lurch as I’d come to call him, could best be described as something of a prison wall. Incredibly loyal to my father, it seemed, and completely rigid to me.
“What the fuck? Am I invisible here, or …” The irritation in Dax’s voice carried in his words, and I caught a quick glimpse of his troubled expression. “I’ve taken a bullet for Jase. Twice. And I’d do it again.” He pointed beyond my father toward the door. “Let’s not forget the shitheads I almost beat down a moment ago.”
I turned back to my father. “I have no doubt that Imrich would stand on the front lines and defend you with his last breath. But Jase would wage a war in my name.”
“I can’t take a chance that he’d wage war with the wrong person, Lucia.” He shook his head, his jaw set to a hard line. “He doesn’t have the power to protect you.”
“Your power didn’t protect me, either! How the hell did Dax manage to sneak past your men? Had he been a threat, I’d have been dead.”
“I can assure you, he’d have been dead, as well.”
I breathed hard through my nose to calm my frustration. “I’m going. And, if you try to stop me, know that I’ll keep trying. Every day, I’ll look for a way to escape. I belong with him.”
Standing across from me, my father seemed to contemplate that for a moment, the conflict burning behind his eyes. “Should you go back to him, I have one condition.”
Hope bloomed inside of me again. “What?”
“That the two of you leave the country for a while. I’ll transfer the funds you’ll need. Payment for his services.”
Payment? I frowned. “What services?”
“It’s not important.”
“Father.” The tone of my voice reflected his—unyielding—and for the first time, I felt like his daughter. “What services?”
“For keeping you safe.” The powerful and intimidating stance he’d held suddenly softened, his shoulders falling just slightly. “You’re free to go.”
Reaching back, I grabbed Dax’s hand and led him toward the door. Pausing beside my father, I released my grip of Dax, and staring down at my father’s scarred hand, I was struck by the memory of driving him to the hospital with my mother. The fear I’d felt that day
, too young to know what his injury meant—only that I saw the blood. I'd imagined his pain and had wanted more than anything for him to be okay. In the same sense, I knew he was doing the same. Fearing for me, while hoping I’d be okay.
“I know why you left, and I forgive you.” I reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a light squeeze. “I forgive you.”
He didn't look at me, but I felt the curl of his fingers around my hand. For a moment, we stayed that way.
Then I let go.
Looking back, I caught a glimpse of my father falling to his knees before the door shut behind Dax, and I knew.
It was the second time in my life that he’d cried.
65
Lucy
My pulse raced, my body both warm and cold from excitement and the nervous churning of my stomach, as I climbed the staircase to the apartment. Dax had warned me on the ride over not to expect the same man I’d known before, but it didn’t matter what Jase had become on the outside. I knew what lived beneath.
I needed to see for myself, though.
Dax had also told me he hadn’t mentioned anything to Jase about going after me, so when he took the lead, guiding me across the dark apartment toward the bedroom, I didn’t protest. He worried that seeing me might set off the hallucinations and an unintentional attack.
Jesus. What had happened to him during our weeks apart?
We reached the bedroom, where the TV played Gladiator.
A high-pitch squeak hit my ears over the clash of armor in the movie, movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see an intimidating dog limping toward me, his front leg missing, and I realized, it was the dog we’d taken to Richard. The dog Jase had saved.
I knelt down and reached out, letting him sniff my hand. He dipped his head beneath my palm, and I pet behind his ears. “Where’s your master, huh?”
“Jase!” Dax’s deep voice boomed inside of the apartment. “'The fuck you at, man?”
Straightening, I took in the room. Black and white photographs of me lay scattered across the thick gray bedspread and white sheets. Some of them shots he’d taken during our month together, whereas others appeared to have been taken a while back. The bedroom walls, once barren and empty, had been covered in maps and images of an older man I vaguely recognized, though I couldn’t pinpoint from where. His long black trench coat, and the hardened lines on his face, told me he might be a criminal. A dozen other images had been pinned beside his, arranged in some sort of hierarchy, with two men lined at the top, one of whom was my father, three in the middle, and seven across the bottom. Some pictures had twisted to the side, the push pins standing at different angles, and I trailed my hand over the erratic wall display.
Sensing someone behind me, I glanced over my shoulder, to find Dax. “What happened to him? What is this?”
“We’ve been looking for Tesarik for months, Lucy. He’s the one behind Seventh Circle.” His eyes scanned up the wall, where a mess of notecards, post-its and pictures confessed a frightening reality I couldn’t bear to face—that Jase had become obsessed. “Your father was an advisor to Tesarik for years.”
“My father was behind the murder of those women?” I’d recognized from an early age that my father was not necessarily a good man, but I'd had no idea he was downright despicable.
“Your father arranged to have Tesarik killed. He hired Jase to do it.”
‘Why Jase?” Another glance back at the wall showed my father’s image at the top of the hierarchy, beside another man whose face was hidden behind an ‘X’.
“No one else would’ve signed up for this shit. It’s war. One that Jase was willing to wage, for his family, and now for you.” He winced and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out the way …. He’s so damn in love with you, Lucy. He’s lost his fucking mind. Won’t eat. Won’t sleep. I think if he could just see you. See that you’re okay. That you look good. He’d stop beating himself up over what happened.”
I frowned, my stomach flipping at the thought. “We have to find him.”
“He could be anywhere right now.”
Staring off brought a conversation to mind, one I’d had with him on top of the Metropolitan building a couple months back.
“Which is your favorite building?”
“Broderick. It’s where I go when shit doesn’t make sense to me.”
My heart kicked up as I snapped from the memory. “I think I know where to find him.”
* * *
I’d never explored Broderick Tower, so I was thankful when Dax led the way. We climbed the fire escape to the roof of the adjacent building, where a ten-foot-long two-by-four had already been set up, from the fire escape platform to a kitchen vent on the side of Broderick, about three stories above the alley below.
Dax scampered across the bridge as if it were nothing and hopped up to the window about four feet above him. After crawling inside, he twisted back around, arms outstretched for me. Just like that. Like falling to his death hadn't even been a thought.
Taking deep breaths, I kept my gaze locked on Dax, resisting the urge to hyperventilate as I attempted to balance beam across.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
The wood slid against the bottom of my shoe, a scream ripping from my chest, and as I bent forward, just catching myself, the three-story drop stole my focus. My breaths arrived in short pants as panic surged through my veins, stiffening my muscles. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” I muttered to myself.
“Come on, baby. I’ll catch you. Five steps, Lucy. That’s all, and I’ll pull you in. You can do this.”
I shook my head, my muscles and willpower locking up on me as I imagined hitting the dumpster below, crumpling into a pile of shattered bones.
“Eyes on me. You can do this.”
I had only a distant awareness of Dax’s voice over the swish of blood and the crisp January air that crushed my lungs, as my body went on lockdown, muscles paralyzed, and I prayed to God the narrow piece of wood wouldn’t buckle beneath my weight.
When you want something bad enough, you can’t be afraid of the fall, Jase had said to me once.
On shaky legs, I broke from my trance and ordered my leg muscles to straighten, outstretching my arms for balance. I exhaled a breath and locked my sights on the small ledge ahead of me, as with quick steps, I traversed the deadly chasm below. One, two, three, four. I jumped to Dax’s awaiting grip, and as he tugged my arms, I walked up the brick, letting him lift me inside the window.
Once through, he yanked me into his body, swallowing me in a hug. “Jesus, I had no idea you were afraid of heights, baby. Fuck. Fuck! You have any idea what Jase would’ve done to me if something happened to you?”
“I’m okay,” I said, but damn, my whole body trembled against him—an embarrassment that became all the more apparent the tighter he hugged me.
Finally breaking from the embrace, Dax took the lead once more, making his way through the room. All around us stood the crumbled innards of Broderick. Broken, decaying wood, paint-spattered sheets of drywall powdered across the floor, garbage and graffiti. We finally reached the staircase and began our ascent, rounding flight after flight, going beyond the penthouse at the thirty-third floor, evidenced by the fancier bannisters and the light that filtered in from the windows.
I trailed after Dax, until we reached a narrow winding stairwell and a door that I guessed led to the roof.
As I pushed through the door, my breath hitched at the sight of Jase’s back, where he sat perched on the parapet. Nausea gurgled in my stomach, that he could be so close to the edge, but that observation turned metaphorical when he twisted around, and my heart wilted at the sight of him.
Black circles rimmed each of his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His face appeared thinner, so pale. Jesus, I didn’t think him capable of looking so exhausted. His frame had lost some of its mass, not skinny by any means, but certainly not as imposing as he'd been a few months back.
Gaze bouncing between mine and Dax, he slid off of the parapet, holding my breath captive, until his boots safely hit the gravel of the roof about a couple dozen feet from where I stood.
“I’m sorry, Brother.” Dax’s somber voice held a gentle, reserved quality that I’d not heard in him before, like a man locked inside a cage with a wild animal. “I know you said to leave her be. But … fuck, Jase, you needed to see her. See that she’s okay. Stop beating—”
“'The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jase’s face pinched to a frown and his hands balled to tight fists at either side of him, as he lurched toward Dax. “She was safe with him. They’ll find her!”
“Jase.” As I stepped toward him, he took a step back.
To get away from me?
“How … how have you been?” I asked.
The anger plastered to his face softened to sadness, and his gaze dipped from mine. “Lucy, you shouldn’t be here.” The icy clip in his voice from moments before thawed to calm. “It’s not safe for you to be with me.” He raised his gaze just enough to glower back at Dax. “Or him.”
“I told him to bring me here. He couldn’t have kept me away if he’d tried, Jase.” Two more steps took me closer, but he raised a hand between us, stopping me in my tracks.
“Please. Just go.” The sting to my heart burned only until remorse danced across his face, in the tightening of his brow and the squinting of his eyes. “I don’t want to be a dirty bastard, but I can’t keep you safe. Not while Tesarik is still alive. He’s still out there, looking for you. You have to go back to your father. I don’t have the manpower, or the money that he has, to keep you guarded.”
“I don’t need that. I don’t need a babysitter all damn day.”
A quick glance at Dax followed by my nod, and he took the cue, exiting back through the door, leaving us alone.
Standing only a few feet away from Jase, it felt like an ocean separating us, and I tried to push away the mist of tears blurring his form, tried to be strong and act like his words hadn't sliced my heart. I cleared my throat and swallowed the lump beckoning me to break. “I’m not leaving. I’ll stay up here all fucking night with you if I have to.” Another step toward him, and his muscles flinched, his hands gripping the edge of the parapet, with nowhere to go. “I’m not leaving you.”