“Let’s go.”
We took a taxi. It was spring. It was gorgeous. The only good thing about New York City, other than the fact that Emilia LeBlanc lived here, was what I was about to show her.
“Where are we going?” She munched on her bottom lip.
“Ice skating,” I deadpanned. “Then I want to get a giant tattoo of an asshole on my forehead because it symbolizes me.”
She laughed that throaty laugh that made my cock twitch. “I can draw something out for you,” she said with a wink.
“I’d like that.”
The cab stopped on the edge of Central Park West, and we hopped out. I didn’t bring anything with me but my story. Nothing for a picnic. Not even a fucking blanket to sit on. I hoped it was enough. Emilia flashed me a Mona Lisa smile that widened into a full beam when I grabbed her hand and led her to the blossoming cherry tree near the little bridge. The tree was in full bloom. It was especially beautiful, just like her, and she stood and watched it in silence.
I’d rehearsed this moment yesterday just before I got to the gallery. Tracked my steps to make sure I knew exactly where the tree was located, and made sure it was actually blooming. Central Park was huge, and I didn’t want to mess it up. No more messing up with this woman.
She turned to face me. “Cherry blossoms?”
I shrugged. “I guess I can see what the fuss is all about.”
We sat under the tree.
The notion of telling someone everything, even her, was crippling. The lawyer in me wanted to drag me by the collar away from this. But the lawyer in me was dead near Emilia LeBlanc. Fucking her against my office door had pretty much proven so.
She looked at me expectantly before blurting out, “Listen, you don’t need to explain yourself to me. You are who you are. I knew who Vicious Spencer was before I’d decided to work for you. Knew you’d pursue me. Knew you would ask me for things I might have a problem doing. And you were right, we weren’t exclusive. As much as it hurt, you had every right to sleep with Georgia—”
“You think I slept with Georgia?” I cut her off incredulously, frowning. “I didn’t touch her. I tried. Trust me, I did. But she wasn’t you. And I know you don’t expect me to give you answers, but I’m going to do it anyway because there’s a small part of me that thinks that maybe, just maybe, you’ll give me a chance afterward.”
But there was a bigger part that suspected she was going to call the police and hand me over. Still, I had to do this.
Silence fell between us. My eyes landed on the grass as I spoke. It was easier that way.
“After my mom got injured in that car accident when I was a kid, everything changed. My parents’ marriage was never the greatest from what I can remember, but it was after Mom became disabled when we stopped being a family. No more dinners together. No more vacations. He barely even spent time with us anymore. Drowned himself in work. When I was nine, my dad finally decided to leave my mother for Josephine. They were having an affair, but he couldn’t divorce the poor crippled wife, right? So Jo convinced him to send a man to make her go away. The man was Jo’s brother, Daryl Ryker.”
Emilia gasped, and she took my hand in hers.
I continued. “I overheard my dad’s conversation with Jo—back then she was his secretary, and because I was nine, I wasn’t sure what it meant. I let it slide. Then a few weeks later, I came home from school in the middle of the day because I was sick. Saw Daryl leaving my mom’s bedroom in a hurry. She died that day, and Josephine and my dad got married a year later.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. I still hadn’t gotten over the fact he hated me so fucking much that he’d left me with practically nothing.
“After what happened to Mom, it felt almost evil to be happy. And Daryl…he eventually became a fixture in our home. Like an old, tattered, ugly-as-hell piece of furniture you wanted to get rid of. He was a drunk, and sometimes a junkie—cocaine was his weakness—and he was sadistic as fuck. I was young and broken, and it was easy to drag me to the library and beat the shit out of me and cut me. I had no one to complain to. They’d murdered the only person who loved me.”
“Jesus,” I heard Emilia mutter as she sniffed loudly and clutched my hand in a death grip. Her eyes were already welling up. “This is horrible, Vic.”
So am I, I thought.