“I’m here if you need to talk,” she suggested. But there was no point in talking to Claire. She wouldn’t understand me. She never did.
I hate you, Arya had told me this afternoon in my office, and by the way her lower lip had trembled like it had all those years ago when she’d talked about Aaron, I knew she’d meant it.
The good news was that I hated her, too, and was all too pleased to show her just how much.
You’re a vile man.
With that, I had to agree. Especially after I’d taken this case.
With a low growl, I tossed the tumbler of whiskey onto the double-glazed window, watching the golden liquid slosh along the glass and crawl to the floor, where twinkling shards of crystal waited to be picked up by whoever cleaned up this place.
This was the person I’d become.
A man who didn’t even know the names of the people who worked at his apartment.
So detached from the reality I’d grown up in that sometimes I wondered if my early childhood had been real after all.
Then I remembered the only thing separating me from Nicholai was money.
Arya Roth was going to pay in the currency that was the dearest to her.
Her father.
Days later, it was everywhere. The filing of Amanda Gispen’s complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. As soon as the EEOC had given us our notice of right to sue, I’d had the complaint hand delivered to the clerk’s office. The national newspapers were all over it. News channels broke the story, making it the first headline. I had to take an Uber home and slip through the garage to avoid the press. Claire and I had been paired together for the case. Claire’s parents sent a huge bouquet of flowers to the office to celebrate, as if she’d gotten engaged.
“They really want to meet you when Dad visits from DC.” Claire dropped the bomb when I complimented her on the flowers. “That’s next week. I know you have depositions on Wednesday and Thursday . . .”
“Sorry, Claire. Not gonna happen.”
Amanda was under strict warning not to talk to anyone about this. She went off the grid, moving to her sister’s place. I didn’t want Conrad Roth or his toxic daughter to pull any strings. That night, for the first time in almost twenty years, I slept like a baby.
CHAPTER TEN
CHRISTIAN
Past
There was a lot of hot anger afterward.
Hot, impotent, what-the-fuck-do-I-do-with-it anger.
At Arya, who’d probably set me up so her dad would catch us and pretty much ruined my life as a result.
And at Conrad Roth, the obnoxious, abusive, piece-of-shit billionaire who thought (no, scratch that, knew) he could get away with what he did to me, just like he got away with everything else.
And to an extent, even at Mom, whom I’d stopped expecting much of but who somehow managed to surprise me with each betrayal, no matter how big or small.
But there was nothing to do with this anger. It was like a big, fat black cloud hovering above my head. Unreachable but still real. I couldn’t get back at Arya—she had Conrad. And I couldn’t get back at Conrad—he had Manhattan.
After Conrad delivered his final punch, I managed my hasty, bloodied escape from the Roths. I bled all over the bus’s floor and attracted uncomfortable looks, even from New Yorkers, who were used to pretty much everything. I stumbled back into my apartment building, only to find out when I got there that I didn’t have a key. It had stayed with Mom back at the Roths, probably burning a hole in her handbag while she cleaned her son’s blood off the shiny marble floors.
So I found a temporary solution for my rage.
I punched the wooden door.
Once, twice, three times before my knuckles started bleeding.
Again and again and again, until I created a hole in the wood and fractures in my bones.
And then some more, until the hole became big enough for me to slip my blood-soaked hand into it and unlock the door from the inside. My fingers were twice their original size and wonky. Wrong.
This was the thing about broken stuff, I thought.
They were more exposed, easy to tamper with.
I vowed to fix myself up real fast and put my feelings for Conrad and Arya Roth in my pockets.
I would revisit them, later.
I couldn’t stay in New York after that. That was what Mom said.
Granted, she didn’t say that to me. I was just a useless kid, after all. Rather, she shared this piece of information with her friend Sveta over a loud, heated phone call. Her screechy voice carried through the small building, rattling the roof shingles.
I only heard shards of the conversation from downstairs, where I was flung over the Vans’ plastic-covered couch, pressing a bag of frozen peas to my jaw.
“. . . will kill him . . . said I made him a promise, I did . . . thinking about, what you call? Juvenile institution? . . . told him not to touch the girl . . . maybe a school somewhere else . . . never have kids, Sveta. Never have kids.”
Jacq, Mrs. Van’s daughter, who was seventeen, stroked my hair. I was lucky Mr. Van had been there, delivering me his hand-me-down Penthouse, when Mom had kicked me out, or I wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.
“Your nose’s broken.” Jacq’s long fingernails raked over my skull, making frissons run through my back.
“I know.”
“Shame. Now you won’t be pretty anymore.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t. Everything was too puffy. “Crap, I was counting on this moneymaker.”
She laughed.
“What do you think is going to happen to me now?” I asked, not because I thought she’d know but because she was the only person in the world who was speaking to me.
Jacq mused, “I don’t know. But honestly, Ruslana seems like a bit of a shit mom. She’ll probably get rid of you.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.”
“Should’ve kept your lips to yourself, lover boy. Hey, anyone ever told you you have pretty eyelashes?”
“Are you hitting on me?” I would arch an eyebrow, but that would make a wound open again.
“Maybe.”
I groaned in response. I’d sworn off girls for life after today.