Ruthless Vow

Chapter Four

The One Question

"My question is about my father."

I said it before I sat down. Before I'd even unbuttoned my coat. He was at the desk this time instead of the window, which meant he'd been waiting for me and had already found somewhere to put his hands.

"Ask me something else," he said.

"No."

"Then ask it. But I've told you what you'll get."

"Try me."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

"Your father was my father's business partner for four years," he said. "That's the extent of what I'll say about him tonight."

I stood with my coat still on and my bag still on my shoulder and didn't sit.

"Why won't you talk about him?"

"Because you'll hear it wrong." He said it without any particular kindness. "You're tired. You've been up since five. You've spent the week being told no by men in cheap suits. If I tell you what I know about your father right now, you'll hear it as an accusation, and then you'll walk out and I'll never see you again."

I wanted to argue. I couldn't, because he was right about most of it.

"Then when."

"When your sister's surgery is paid for and scheduled, and you've slept more than four hours." He tapped his pen once against the desk. "Then I'll tell you anything you want. Not before."

I sat down.

"Why do you have a file on my family?"

"That wasn't your one question."

"It's a follow-up."

"There are no follow-ups." But he answered anyway, which told me something. "My father kept files on everyone."

"Including us?"

"Especially you." He set the pen down. "He died when I was twenty-six. I inherited his office, his papers, and about four hundred folders of things that should have been shredded. Yours was one of them."

I sat with that for a second. Four hundred folders. A dead man's office. A whole life organized into a cabinet somewhere.

"What did your father do?"

The question landed differently than the others. His shoulders stayed where they were but his face went a little emptier, like a door closing a second time.

"He built things," he said. "And then he stopped being able to."

The lamp hummed. I didn't say anything, because I'd been on the receiving end of that kind of sentence enough times to know you don't push it.

A small silence went by. Then he stood and picked up a phone on the side of the desk.

"Two of the usual," he said into it, and hung up.

"I didn't ask for anything."

"I know."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then it'll sit there."

I stood up to leave and my stomach made a sound loud enough that there was no pretending it hadn't happened. He didn't smile. But something moved in his face for half a second and then got put away.

Four minutes later the door opened and the woman in black came in with a tray. Soup in a white bowl. Bread. A small plate of chicken and rice. She set it on the corner of the desk nearest me and left without a word.

I hadn't eaten pretzels since two o'clock.

I didn't thank him. I picked up the bread and ate it standing there with my coat still on, and Damian Cross sat behind his desk and read something on his phone and did not watch me eat, which is somehow the reason I was able to.

"Everything on that note was already old news to you," I said, with my mouth half full. "The hospital. The doctors. Six years of my family."

"Yes."

"So you've known about Mia the whole time."

"I knew she existed. Not the details. Not until this week."

That stopped me. I put the bread down.

"What changed this week?"

He looked up. "The note."

I stood there holding a piece of bread with my coat still on and something started clicking into place. He hadn't paid attention to my family this week because of anything I did. He'd paid attention because somebody put my name on his desk.

Somebody dragged me into his line of sight.

"Why would anyone do that?" I said, mostly to myself.

"I don't know yet." He set his phone down. "That's what I'd like to find out."

He picked the phone back up off the desk and glanced at it. "Go straight home tonight."

I stopped halfway to the door. "Why."

"Because somebody watched you walk in here two hours ago." He set the phone down. "Same reason you're asking me about a voicemail."

I didn't have an answer for that.

"What I said before your one question," I said. "About my father."

"I meant it."

"Then I'll be back tomorrow."

"No," he said. "Tomorrow you rest. The day after, eight o'clock."

I walked out without answering him.

The woman in black walked me back down the hallway without a word. The man at the front opened the door and didn't look at me as I passed.

The night air hit me on the steps and I stopped for a second and just breathed. Then I walked to my car at the end of the block, dug my keys out of my purse, and unlocked my door.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

One missed call from a number I didn't recognize. One voicemail. The call came in at 8:14. I'd been inside at 8:14. My phone had been on silent in my purse the whole time.

I pressed play.

A man's voice. Calm. Not old, not young. Nothing about it I could place.

"Ms. Marchetti. You don't know me, but I know your mother. I've been trying to reach you for nine days." A short pause. "I see you found the club. Good. That saves us time."

I looked up and down the street. Empty. Streetlights. A taxi two blocks down. Nothing.

His voice came back.

"You're standing next to a silver Corolla right now. Don't look around. Get in."

My hand closed around the keys so hard the metal cut into my palm.

"Drive home. Lock your door. And when you go back to that building, ask the man inside one thing for me." Another pause, longer this time. "Ask him what his father was doing the night yours disappeared."

The voicemail ended.

I stood on the sidewalk with the phone still against my ear and the streetlight humming above me and didn't move for a long time.

Somebody had watched me walk into that building. Somebody had watched me walk out of it. Somebody had been counting the days since before I knew I needed to be here at all.

I got in the car and locked the

doors and sat with my hands on the wheel, shaking.

The one question I'd been saving for him was about my father.

Somebody had beaten me to it.