Page 95 of Forbidden Dark Vows

I don’t know what I’ll do with the information when I eventually find it.

One thing I do know is that I will never allow anyone to hurt Ruby again. It scares me sometimes, the intensity of my feelings for her.

I don’t recall this kind of all-consuming love between my parents. Admittedly, my father has a real aversion to showing his emotions. But even in quiet moments at home during my childhood, the kind of moments when they would sit in the kitchen drinking coffee, my dad reading the newspaper, my mom either sewing or mending a hole in the knees of my school pants, I never saw them touch. Never saw them speak with their eyes or heard them share a private joke.

Knowing what I know now, I wonder if he ever loved her. Or perhaps he did in his own way, but that love paled in comparison to whatever he felt for Celia Jackson. I have to believe that he loved my mom. Because the alternative…

I can’t imagine spending my life with the wrong person.

Now that I’ve found Ruby, I understand that I would kill for her. I would spend the rest of my life in jail if it meant that she could live her life unharmed. Just thinking about someone hurting her makes my fists clench and my pulse race.

Because what is the point of love if it isn’t at the heart of everything you do?

At midday, I meet Carlos at the site of an old tenement block in a prime Manhattan location. With the joint venture preparing to take off, he is thinking of relocating, building another tower taller and sleeker than the first, and splitting it fifty-fifty between the two companies. Weiss Petroleum has outgrown the space it currently inhabits in Russo Tower, so it would make sense, and when I see the plans drawn up by the architect, excitement hums through my veins.

Everything that I want to give Ruby is within touching distance. This is everything I’ve ever dreamed of but bigger, grander,way beyond even my own expectations. I’ve never enjoyed extravagance, but I can already see Ruby surrounded by opulence, wearing designer labels, expensive perfume, getting her hair styled in celebrity salons; she’s a gem, and she deserves the best setting. You wouldn’t stick a diamond inside a plastic clasp.

I’ve already started making inquiries about buying a private plane too. No more busy airport lounges and economy class for my Ruby.

Wandering around the empty offices, I don’t see the grimy flaking walls around me but the view from the windows overlooking the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center. One day, perhaps, I’ll grow bored with this skyline, but right now, it fills me with a sense of pride: this is what I’ve achieved since taking over the family business.

Peering outside, I scan the sidewalks for a man in a black overcoat loitering around and trying to appear inconspicuous. There’s no one there. I haven’t spotted him in a while, since Ruby came back to New York with me. Perhaps I’ve been too preoccupied to notice, but I’ve not even felt as if I were being followed. So, perhaps I did imagine it after all.

My thoughts instinctively drift back to my father. I haven’t spoken to him since that night in Chicago. I don’t even know if he is back in New York or if he and Celia have finally gotten what they wanted. Each other.

Part of me can’t help wondering if reality will live up to their dream. Do they even really know each other after all these years spent apart, after everything that happened?

When I think of Ruby, I wholeheartedly believe that love will see us through a lifetime of ups and downs, of cold winters and baking summers, of children and grandchildren, vacations and Thanksgivings, chaos and peace. But when it comes to my dad and Ruby’s mom, I think that they will get what they both deserve in the end.

On a whim, I ask the taxi driver to take me to my dad’s house. He has already lost my sister; guilt will rest heavily on my shoulders for the rest of my life if I don’t invite him to my wedding. I realize that I’m doing this as much for myself as for him, but it doesn’t matter. I will have tried, and the rest will be down to him.

The house, when the taxi pulls up on the curb outside, appears lonely, sad windows overlooking an unloved porch. The trees are spindly and bare awaiting spring’s revival, and the steps littered with mulchy leaves.

I pay the driver and watch him pull back into the traffic before I climb the steps and ring the doorbell. No answer. I try again, listening for the sound of my dad’s footsteps and hearing only car horns, tires on the street, and raised voices from somewhere nearby.

I realize with a sharp pang of disappointment that this is the first time I’ve felt uncomfortable letting myself in with my key. It’s almost as if I never fully moved out until I met Ruby. As if I’d left half of me behind in case I ever wanted to move back in, and now that I’m getting married, I no longer belong here.

Even the key feels strange in my hand.

I glance back at the street, at the silver-blond woman carrying a chihuahua on the opposite side of the road, watching me withnarrowed eyes like I’m about to break in. Deep breath. I slot the key into the lock.

Inside, I close the door behind me, and stand in the narrow hallway, listening to the sound of the house breathing. “Dad?” He doesn’t answer, but a sick feeling of dread starts to congeal in my stomach.

Pocketing the keys, I make my way through to the enormous living room, half expecting to find him slumped on the floor, one hand curled around an empty whisky glass. Now that I’ve got the vision in my head, I can’t shake it, and I make my way through the house, opening doors and peering around rooms with my heart hammering inside my chest.

Eventually, I find myself standing outside my dad’s study. It’s the only room I haven’t checked, and now that I’m here it makes sense that this is where he’ll be.

I grip the handle and push the door open, the breath escaping my lungs with a whoosh when I find the study empty. I shake my head, scattering all sorts of grim images from my mind. He isn’t here. From the deathly silence and icy chill, I guess that he didn’t come back to New York after all.

With relief battling with pictures of him and Celia inside my head, I go to close the door when I spot the open file on his desk.

My dad has always been fastidious about keeping things tidy. He keeps every invoice he ever received in chronological order in a drawer in the filing cabinet. He could recite every transaction that passed through his bank account over the last three months. He can’t even eat a slice of toast here without spreading napkins across the desk surface to catch crumbs.

Anywhere else, I’d have ignored the file because it’s obviously personal, closed the door, and walked away without a backward glance. But because my dad has done something so out of character, I can’t turn around and leave it there.

I step inside the study, recalling all the times I would come in here to show him school assignments at the end of the day when I was a kid. It was the only time he ever gave me his full attention, and even then, it was always followed by a comment like, “You could’ve done some more research,” or “That was too easy, move onto the next level.”

The document is typed. Official. But not something I recognize.

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