Page 79 of So Close

The feel of your bare chest against my exposed back thaws the chill that has sunk into my bones. Every word burns my throat like acid as I speak it. “Your father had a weakness, but my mother may have been the only woman able to exploit it. And it’s possible your father had a change of heart. Maybe he realized on the way to the airport that he didn’t want to leave you and the life he’d built, but my mother was too close to getting her hands on his money to let him back out. Something went wrong, Kane, and neither of them boarded that plane. She came home with the money, and no one’s seen your father since.”

The band of your arms tightens. “Are you trying to make me feel better because maybe he didn’t have the option of coming back? That doesn’t change the choices he made to leave his wife and child in the first place, to destroy his life’s work, to rob and bankrupt his business partner, and ruin the livelihoods of his employees … All for a woman incapable of loving him but capable of killing him?”

Everything about you – your posture, tone and words – betrays a festering resentment and fury. Your disgust burns like a blaze inside you, heating your body even more.

I settle against you, my spine curving to meld with the hardness of your chest, my arms wrapping over yours. I turn my cheek toward your heart, offering what comfort I can. “That doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”

“I’m not saying that.” You rest your chin on the crown of my head. “I know how it feels to need a woman more than air, but he’ll never have my sympathy, and I’ll never forgive him. I’m at your mercy because you love me. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t matter how much I loved you, I wouldn’t ruin my life or anyone else’s for you.”

“I’m sorry, Kane.”

“Don’t apologize for him.”

“I’m apologizing for not telling you sooner. You should’ve known that I believe my mother killed your father. I had no right to keep my suspicions from you, and I did it because I’m selfish. Because I was afraid that history might destroy our future.”

Your chest expands on a deep breath. “That history is why you tracked me down and “scouted” me.”

“You call me your fate. Your destiny. But it didn’t start with us – it started with them.”

“My father’s actions brought you to me,Setareh. How could I wish things had happened differently when our marriage is the result?”

“It’s okay if you do.”

“I don’t.” You urge me around to face you. “I won’t.”

Tilting my head back, I look up at your breathtakingly handsome face. The two halves of myself – the woman my mother raised me to be and the woman who loves you to death – war with each other. “I’m not going to make excuses for my mother, but you must know a little of who she was to understand the rest.

“She despised men. She believed you’re all inherently weak, easily led by your dicks and unreliable. She’d say all that with a laugh like she wasn’t deathly serious, but I realized later how severely damaged she was. I don’t think killing your father was premeditated, but I think she enjoyed it enough to develop a taste for wet work. He was the first, but he was by no means the last.”

My confession hangs in the air between us, heavy and chilling. Your pupils expand, and your tanned skin blanches. Your entire body grows taut, like the string of a bow. Your fingers flex in the flesh of my hip.

I hold you as tightly; my fingers splayed over the hardness of your back as if I’m keeping you close, which of course I can’t. “One of her marks ran a business that was a front for organized crime, so the money she took from him actually belonged to a gangster named Val Laska. It was probably all too easy for Val to track the money to my mother. People who meet her tend to remember her well. But once he did, he fell for her, just like every other man, and she found her king. Val complemented her, made her even more deadly.”

I picture them together in my mind. They had respect for each other, recognition of their true selves, and fear. The combination was a deadly aphrodisiac blended just for them.

And if we’re being honest, are we any different?

“Her marks were always good family men before Val,” I go on. “That was part of her game, seeing if a guy who had it all could still be greedy and selfish enough to want more. If they resisted her, she let them live. If they didn’t, they died. But Val didn’t need to be lured into hell – he ruled it. Human trafficking. Underage prostitution. Murder for hire. Torture was a pastime.”

“He sounds like a catch.” Wrath laces your sarcasm. “How did it affect you?”

“It didn’t really. My mother moved in with him, left me where I was and life for me went on as it always had, just with less of her in it. She gave me money, clothes, food and kept paying the rent on the apartment. I took care of myself, which I’d always done anyway. It wasn’t until I got older and started looking like her that she took an interest in me.”

I think I’m speaking and comporting myself with detachment, but something gives me away. Your eyes have softened with pity. I don’t know why I kept talking. I could’ve shrugged the question off and told you I’d obviously turned out fine. I only meant to bring you full circle to an explanation of the flower delivery. But I didn’t shut up, and if I taper off now, you’ll imagine things you shouldn’t.

Maybe I secretly wanted to tell you more.

Lifting my chin, I finish what I started. “Around the time I hit puberty, she stopped viewing me as a separate individual. It was like she thought of me as her clone, a new and improved model who would live her perfect life without the mistakes.”

My eyes sting with tears. “I loved her, Kane. I will always love her, despite what she did to you, your family, and so many others. At first, I loved her as any child loves their mother, even though she wasn’t fit to care for anything, let alone a small human being. Later, as an adult, I realized how valuable her lessons were, and I was grateful to her for teaching them. She made me strong. She taught me about people, about men. I’ve never been naïve or gullible. I’ve never been in vulnerable situations with predators.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed for how you feel about your mother,” you tell me.

“She told me I could have anything I wanted in this world, so I never set limits on what I could accomplish.Live as you please, she told me.Don’t let the world stop you.I still hear her voice whenever I’m faced with a decision, telling me what I should do, and her direction – whatever it is – is always empowering.”

You hold my gaze in the deepening darkness. “You’re not like her, Lily.”

“The best parts of me are. So are the worst.”

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