“Yes,” Conrad said, looking a lot like that man with the pale, sweaty expression I’d met at the Cloisters shortly before everything had unfolded. “There was a lot of pressure to be there for you. To keep your mom in check. I needed an outlet.” This was the way he constructed it in his sick mind. That he had to keep my mother on a leash and be both my parents, so he had the right to abuse others. He continued, “And when you found out . . . well, it was too much. You were the one person who always looked up to me and the one woman I actually cared about. I didn’t want you to witness everything I did. I pushed you away. Amanda’s lawyer was a great excuse.”
“He had nothing to do with this,” I said hotly. I wondered if there would be a time when I wouldn’t defend Nicky like my own life depended on it.
My father smiled. “Sweetheart, I know.”
“Know what?” My pulse escalated, my heart hiking up to my throat.
“Who Christian is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I straightened my spine.
“My PI, Dave, was onto him shortly after the trial had started. There was something about him. A hunger I recognized. Those damn blue eyes.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “You kept asking what made him act the way he did.”
Conrad shrugged. “I stopped the minute Dave came back with the information.”
“But . . . but . . . if you knew, you could’ve . . .”
He looked away, at the floor. “And then what, Arya? Nicholai would get disqualified, disbarred, and his story would come out. The story in which I ruined his life, detailed and time-stamped. It would have looked even worse for me. He was just another victim of mine. Amanda and the rest would have gotten another lawyer, and I’d still be found guilty. All paths led to the same destination. And it had to be said”—he grinned sardonically—“I appreciated his coming full circle. He did good, that kid. If I went down, I wanted to go down in style, and he delivered. It’s why I told Terrance and Louie not to file an appeal.”
“You wanted to ruin his life,” I repeated, dumbfounded. Even at our worst, the year following what he’d done to Nicky, I’d thought my father had anger-management problems, not that he was malicious. “Why?”
“Because he touched the only pure thing I had in my life,” he said simply. “You.”
“You can never tell anyone,” I warned, feeling every nerve in my body on fire as I took a step toward him. “You hear me? No one. Promise me. Promise.”
He stared at me intently. “You never stopped loving him, did you?”
No. Not even for a moment.
I stepped back, pulling myself together. But he knew. In that moment, he knew. He pressed his forehead to the doorframe. Behind him, I could see the apartment was only half-furnished. Someone must’ve taken most of the stuff out. I waited to feel the pinch in my heart, but the truth was, home had never been a place for me. It was a feeling. A feeling I’d only ever felt with my father before what had happened, and with Nicky.
“Will you ever forgive me?” His eyes were screwed shut as he spoke against the doorframe.
“No,” I said simply. “You took the one person I loved more than anyone else in the world, and you ruined him for me. You need to leave the city. It’s for the best.”
“I am.” He gave me a little nod. “Next week.”
I didn’t ask where to. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t trust myself not to contact him again.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
“Goodbye, honey. Stay safe and take care of your mother.”
“She is never going to answer me, is she?” I smashed my phone against my desk, barely containing my rage. “It’s absolutely like her to go MIA after the ship has sunk. Classic Beatrice Roth for you. I wonder what she’s going to do, now that she doesn’t have the penthouse and the funds. She’s too old to get a sugar daddy.”
Jillian eyed me over the edge of her teacup, her pointed look telling me I’d forgotten to tuck my crazy in this morning. I’d been told you stopped giving a crap about what others thought about you when you turned forty. Maybe I was an early bloomer, because I just didn’t care.
“Ever considered she might not want you to fix her problems this time?” Jillian suggested. “She knows that if she answered you, you’d go into damage control mode and fix it all. I mean, you always were the grown-up in that relationship.”
“I didn’t even have a relationship with her until a month and a half ago.” I stood up and began shoving items into my bag. It was half past seven, and I’d made Christian wait long enough outside my building. He came to see me every day now.