Page 6 of Keeping Ruby

I start speaking, the words rushing from between my lips to fall between us. “My father owns a shipping company. He delivers goods all around the world, but he also delivers to countries that are dangerous, some war torn. It was dangerous for us to be associated with him, so he took precautions to keep us safe. We—I don’t see him often. He works a lot.”

“A shipping company?” The man raises an amused brow. “That’s what he told you?”

“Yes, he delivers goods?—”

“Ivan Popov specialized in the trade and transport of human beings.”

His words crash into me like an icy wave. I’m jarred, as though his words were a physical punch, knocking the very breath from my lungs.

It takes a moment, but I gather enough control to muster a weak, “I don’t know who Ivan Popov is.”

“He was your father.” I shake my head, but the man continues, “Ivan Petrov was an alias. A shit one, at that.”

I’m still shaking my head. “No.”

The man leans forward. He flips open a laptop, tapping keys. Then he spins the laptop to face me and—I. Can’t. Breathe.

My father’s face stares back at me, looking colder than I’ve ever seen it. The man presses a key and the picture changes. The shot is candid, and although it’s taken at a distance, I can clearly see my father where he stands, his hand on his hips, as he stares into a sea can full of?—

“Oh my God.” I touch my fingertips to my lips as though I might be able to keep the bile in.

I’m a fool to think such a thing.

I’ve clearly been raised a fool.

I’m just—a—fool.

The vomit lands on the hardwood with a sickening splat. My mind races. Images of the man I’d grown up loving, adoring, looking up to—they soar through my mind like fireflies, winking in and out, flashing with that image of the bodies in the sea can—and the way he’d stood over them with that hard look on the face that was so familiar and yet entirely unrecognizable.

Memories land on the lash of a whip. Daddy holding me close, kissing my hair. Cotton candy and the scent of salted butter on popped corn. Daddy watching as I screamed to the sky on a colorful ride. The scent of hot sand and a salty sea, stretched out on my belly on the beach of the private villa Daddy had splurged on. I’d been pretending to be asleep, but behind the shaded lenses that covered my eyes, I watched as he spun her around, bare feet in the sand, and a kiss between lifelong lovers. The memories connect like a whip again and again, splitting my skin, bleeding me of the love I’ve always carried for a man I thought I knew…

“Oh, God,” I sob. I don’t realize I’ve stood from my chair until my knees hit the hard floor. My vision blurs, sick rolls in my belly, my sobs turn to a wail. Despair feasts on my soft, exposed, stripped raw, soul. “Nononono. Noooo.”

Something strong wraps around me. Arms. His arms.

I fight.

My limbs fly.

My soul bleeds.

Everything hurts.

“Stop.” His command falls on deaf ears. I’m beyond caring what happens to me now.

My mind can’t cope with the horrors I’ve learned. The truths I’ve uncovered.

He barks something in a language I don’t understand. I know it’s Russian. I don’t understand it, but it’s familiar. Too familiar.

My head whips from side to side.

The office door opens. A man enters.

I buck in the arms of my captor. He grunts but doesn’t release me.

I scream. It’s ear-splitting.

My head hurts.

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