I stop talking and the room gets quiet—deadly quiet.
I brace myself for impact. Dad always was a scrappy son-of-a-bitch. I can’t imagine how mad this must make him. I’ve seen him level a grown man or two in my day. This might make him mad enough to hit me.
“Really?” he finally says. It’s not so much a question as it is an accusation. Putting his hands on his hips, he hangs his head. Exhaling loudly, he lifts it seconds later. “Well, it’s about damn time.”
My mouth can barely move. “Wait…what?”
“King & Sparrow was my business, my child. And you…you are my son, my flesh and blood. I knew that one day the sibling rivalry would be too much. There’d be no way for you and King & Sparrow to coexist in the same space. Life just doesn’t work that way.
“You fought King & Sparrow—the family business—more than you fought your own sister. But let me tell you something. That boardroom full of pricks… That used to be my boardroom. My kingdom. I’m a no-good, arrogant, condescending bastard, and I know it…but I was still ruler.” He smirks. “Ruler of the dicks. And there really wasn’t enough space on the throne for two dicks anyway.
“I’ve been waiting on you to realize your full potential. And I guess I always knew it wasn’t sniffing up my ass. Sure, I wanted you to take the reins of King & Sparrow once I was done, but that was before. When you were floating around, resting on your laurels” His gaze grows serious. “I have been keeping an eye on you, son, over the years. And you’ve changed. You went out into the world and wound up a man…” He snorts softly. “A better man than me.” He stares absently at the floor. “A man whose own business partners were trying to kill him…”
“Jesus, Dad. What the hell are you talking about?” I try to step forward. But my dad stops me with his voice, glancing up at me, a rare quiver in his tone as he starts to talk.
“In my hospital room, after I woke up.” His weathered face contorts from confusion. “A man named Steven Randall called. Said he wanted to confess. Said he was hired by Chris Jackson to stalk Violet Keats. Apparently, she was next on Chris’s ‘Hit-List’…after our firm decided not to represent Chris, leaving him with second-rate lawyers. I called police. They picked him up an hour ago.”
“And David King?” I ask.
“Guilty of being nothing but a dickless asshole.”
Recognition reaches inside the recesses of my mind, making me think. Of course Steven Randall’s face was familiar when he slinked into the break room with me and Jesse.
I’d seen it on TV screens.
He was the slimy bastard lurking in Chris Jackson’s personal entourage. In a delivery uniform and hat, he’d looked different than the deferring asshole that had followed Jackson like a shadow everywhere he went. It was even more confirmation of the man that Chris Jackson was.
Abuser. Fiend. A fraud.
I’m livid it didn’t occur to me until now. But my father breaks my stupor.
“It’s not your worry, son,” he whispers, sending my skin into a flush. “Your priorities were in the right place. Keeping the woman you love safe. Now, it’s time to go get her back.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Until I turn. And find Violet gone.
The scent of her strawberry scent is still lingering. But with David King’s confession still ringing in my ears, I know that of all that I have gained—a firm, a family, maybe even a father—I’ve lost the most important person.
And I may have lost her for good…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
VIOLET
Christmas Day
The lobby of the SparrowHead is a freaking madhouse. But then again…so is the inside of my mind.
Christmas Day in Manhattan is one big oxymoron. In a city where business is always booming and the population never sleeps, the holidays aren’t a time for rest.
If anything, the borough kicks up another billion notches, and I can’t reconcile the vision of snow-white winter with the darkness that’s just inside my head.
But I’m trying my very fucking best.
In the middle of a mild Tuesday afternoon, I stroll up to SparrowHead building, my resignation in hand.
I prepare to flash my badge at Security Guard Sam when I realize that this will be the last time, and I reach over, suddenly needing to shake the black-coat wearing teddy bear’s hand. I smile.
“Working on Christmas Day, Sam?”
“Always working, Ms. Keats.”
“Here,” I say, fishing out every last dollar from my wallet. I hand them to him. “Merry Christmas. You might not get the day off. But this might ensure that you take some time next week.” I wink. “It was nice meeting you, Sam.”
He blinks slowly, thanking me. Confusion washes over his face, but I keep walking.
“It was nice to meet you too!” He calls out.
I open the elevator, strolling inside. Pressing the white button for the seventieth floor, I wait silently, my heart karate-chopping out of my chest.
I hope I don’t have to see Heath. And I hope I do.
In a simple red blouse, skirt and jacket, I swear I almost sweat the fabric through, my pulse racing a mile a minute as the lift stops, letting me out.
I envision a lot of images when I step out onto the King & Sparrow floor. But the scene in front of me…is the last thing I thought I’d ever see.
My mouth drops as a team of decorators props up a stream of glowing white lights. My jaw unhinges at the glittery sight of the office.
I watch as people set up a slew of bobblehead Santas and enough snow globes to glitterize the southern half of New York. I stumble on shaky legs through the decked-out halls of the office, making note of the ten different types of tinsel hanging from each doorway.
Christmas, indeed, came to town and exploded in King & Sparrow on its way out. The place is transformed.
I can’t focus on any one item. There are too many.
I can’t focus on the busy decorators adorning each door. I can’t focus on the inflatable Nutcrackers being placed in every corner.
I can’t focus on any one item…but him.
My brilliant boss. My Christmas partner-in-crime. My lover.
My Adonis with irises the color of freshly brewed coffee, tall and tempting. The vision of his face is tap-dancing on my brain, and if it weren’t for that simple fact, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess at all, I’d have corralled the decorators right out of there, cancelled the Christmas Day surprise the second I looked up and saw the first person amble across the hallway in those frilly socks I picked from the department.
I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now…which is anything to distract myself from one inarguable, undeniable reality…
Realizing that the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen wasn’t mine. And as I saunter past the gaudy decorations and an even gaudier decorators, that feeling of vulnerability, of being naked and exposed, follows me—much like it had done last night when that asshole David King tried to assault me, and the man I now know as the “the worst man on Earth” came in and saved me.
I could call him. Could use any person’s phone in this holiday heaven to reach out, but shame, thick and inexplicable, stops me. The sickly sweet smell of candy cane and sugar-dipped pixie sticks floating through the stale air does nothing to make my mix of emotions better and before I can head towards the exit, the apparent head honcho of the decorating team, a Mister Maximillian Major floats in my direction, waving an insistent finger in front of my face.