Page 14 of 10 Days to Ruin

“It’s Ariel now. You know that.”

He sighs and drums his fingers on the sink. When he looks down, his eyes narrow and I wonder for a moment if he can see the imprint of my ass on the marble. I’m so mortified by all of my terrible decisions tonight that I can’t even find it in me to care if he does.

Then he sighs and looks at me. “I’d be a father to you if you’d let me, you know. You think I like being apart from my children? You think I want to see you hurt? You think I enjoy seeing you bleed?”

He reaches for me.

I flinch.

His hand freezes mid-air. Thick fingers, gold pinky ring. God, the things I’ve seen that hand do to people who displease him…

Then he withdraws it and I can breathe again.

“You look…” His voice softens, almost imperceptibly. “… tired.”

“And you’ve lost hair,” I fire back. “Guess the universe has a way of balancing itself out.”

He chuckles and passes a palm over his thinning scalp. A beat passes. Two. A faucet drips. “You’re here to report on the event, I assume?”

I nod, not trusting myself with words just yet.

“Would you like a quote? I can?—”

“Got everything I need, thanks.”

That’s a lie, but I’ll be damned if I let him claim some leverage over me that cheaply and easily.

Leander’s face screws up in a pained grimace. “This doesn’t have to be so hard, Aria—Ariel.” He keeps rolling the cigar back and forth in his grasp. Back and forth, back and forth. “Iwantto be a part of your life. Let me help you.”

I wobble to my feet, using the wall like a crutch, and glare at him. “After fifteen years under your roof, I got all the ‘help’ I needed. So did Jas. So did Mom. So I think I’m good in that regard, too.”

“Very well.” He sighs, the sound weary in a way I don’t remember. “You’ll stay for the midnight toast, at least.”

“I have a deadline.”

“You have a life.” His eyes narrow. “One I’ve allowed you to play at long enough.”

Allowed. As if my shitty studio apartment and my coffee-stained notebooks and theGazettejob I fought tooth and nail for are just unremarkable toys he’s let me borrow.

“You don’t ‘allow’ me anything.” My voice shakes. “I walked away. I built?—”

“A pseudonym. A house of cards. All for a paycheck that wouldn’t even cover my dry cleaning.” He steps closer, cigar tapping against his palm. “Tell me,Ariel Ward—do they know everything at your precious paper? Does your editor sip his latte wondering why a mousy little nobody knows so much about the docks? The warehouses? The shipping manifests?”

“I’m a reporter,” I croak.

“You’re a ghost.” His laugh is bitter. “Chasing your sister’s shadow.”

The bathroom walls press closer. I see her everywhere now—in the auburn hair of strangers, in the smell of jasmine rice at the bodega, in the hollows of Leander’s cheeks that deepen whenever someone mentions “daughters” in the plural.

“Don’t.” My throat burns. “Don’t talk about her.”

“You give me no choice,neraïdoula mou!” he roars suddenly, rearing up from his old man’s stoop into the tall, grizzled bear who terrorized my adolescence. “Not in that. And not in what is coming next.”

The first icy trickle of dread starts winding through my stomach. It’s from something in his eyes, in the rasp of his voice, in the way that posture crumbles back down and he suddenly looks older than he’s ever looked before.

Not in what’s coming next.

I shouldn’t ask. I won’t ask. I can’t ask. Asking the question implies wanting the answer, and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of me knows that that answer that Leander will give me is nothing I want to hear.

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