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Taking a deep breath, I crossed the threshold.
My father was awake and sitting up in the bed set to a reclining position. He was no longer attached to any scary-looking monitors that showed all his vitals, but rather just a simple IV bag. His facial bandages had also been changed since I’d last seen him; now much more of his bruised and swollen face was visible, though his eye was still covered. I glanced over at Luke, waiting until he made sure the door was closed before I turned to my father with a tight smile.
“I hope you’re feeling better since the last time I saw you,” I began, standing with my hands laced primly in front of me. I could only imagine what I looked like, having had a hydroponic tank spray me along with my own blood soaking into the collar of my blouse. “I meant to make my way back up here after the press conference, but something came up. Did you watch the presser, by any chance?”
“You did great, sugar. Truly, you did your old man proud.” Other than giving me a cursory glance, his attention remained fixed on Luke. “Who do we have here?”
“You remember the terrifying monster of a man with the all-seeing eyes I told you about? You know, the profiler who was trained at Quantico? Luke Keyes.” I swept a hand toward him before sitting in a chair near the foot of my father’s bed. It had been one hell of a day, and suddenly I was extremely tired. “Luke, this is my father. You’ve researched him as both Marvin Pankey and Truman Steadfast, but you should know he prefers Tru nowadays, just like I prefer Eden.”
“Eden or Ramona, it doesn’t matter to me. You’re perfect no matter what name you use.” He came to stand behind my chair, one hand curling possessively on my shoulder. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Tru. Feel free to call me Luke. Apparently it means light-giving.”
“How nice to meet you, Luke.” The measured care of his Southern drawl spoke volumes. Clearly he knew there was a game being played. Now he was waiting to find out what the rules were, probably so he could break them. “This is certainly a surprise. I hope you’ll forgive me for not getting to my feet.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Luke hates manners,” I assured him with an airy wave of a hand. “He much prefers it when people are real with him, and at the moment I can see his point. As it happens, I’m becoming a fan of being real, too. Think of the time you could save when you cut out all the phony shit.”
“Language, child.” He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before, then glanced at Luke. “Manners or not, I did not raise her to be coarse.”
“Latest studies suggest that a person’s basic personality is set by the first grade.” Luke shrugged, his hand still on my shoulder. “Romy von Krummacher was the one who did the excellent job with Eden. Not you.”
My father’s stillness was a sight to behold. “Well, well,” he said finally, while his gaze once again slid to me, and the accusation there was enough to make everything inside me flinch. “It seems you know quite a lot about me. How very interesting.”
“You want to know what I know about you as a man, Tru? I know that you didn’t show even a hint of alarm at Eden’s appearance when she walked in here just now,” Luke returned, equally measured. “Here she is, your only child, your truest legacy to the world, sitting no more than four feet away from you in blood-soaked clothing, sporting a bandage around her neck that she just picked up in the ER downstairs. Yet you haven’t even shown a goddamn scintilla of interest in whether or not she’s all right, or what happened to her.”
“My remaining eye isn’t seeing very clearly after the beating I took, so I had no idea what I was looking at, young man. Eden, sugar, what on earth happened to you? And why did you bring this man around here to meet me when I’m in such a fragile state? He’ll have you thinking terrible thoughts about me, what with all that Quantico training of his, and I don’t have the strength right now to fight my corner.”
“Wow, There’s a lot to unpack in that one statement, but I’ll give it a shot. Ready?” Taking comfort in that hand on my shoulder, I ordered my thoughts and began ticking points off on my fingers. “I didn’t bring Luke here to meet you, Dad. He came up here to your room on his own steam to be with me, so that he could offer me his support. I’m not some weak-minded fool who can be swayed to think one thing or another—even by someone trained at Quantico—though I understand why you might think I’m weak-minded. After all, you’ve been working me like a gullible mark from the moment we met. And I’m here now, even though you’re at your weakest, because I have no intention of ever seeing you again after today. There. Did I answer all your questions?”
My father stared at me in a silence that threatened to explode before shooting a vicious glare at Luke. “What the hell have you done to my daughter?”
“It’s whatyoudid to her, old man, not me,” Luke returned, unmoved and unimpressed, before giving my shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “You forgot to answer his question about what happened to you, love.”
“Oh, so I did.” I hadn’t, really. I just wanted everything else to sink in before I dug into the deepest, most rotten core that lay at the foundation of my relationship with my father. “You wanted to know what happened to me, right, Dad? I’ll be happy to tell you. Leopold Driscoll happened to me.”
Not even my father’s legendary poker face could withstand that name. He flinched, and if he’d still been attached to all that other medical apparatus, I’m sure all sorts of alarms would have suddenly gone off. Then his gaze dropped to his lap, and I could all but hear his internal gears turning.
“That name… I can’t quite place it. My memory’s just so fuzzy after that beating I took…”
“The beating Leopold Driscoll gave you?” I said, ever helpful. “Is that the beating you’re talking about?”
“I-I can’t remember.”
“Retrograde amnesia is common in traumatic brain injury, that’s true enough,” Luke nodded, again looking unimpressed. “But that’s just a fancy way of saying a person can’t recall the events immediately leading up to the trauma. With a few extraordinary exceptions, the vast majority of head trauma patients still retain memories that happened a month ago, or a year ago, or twenty years ago. Nice try with the amnesia shtick, though. I’m sure it would’ve fooled most people.”
“But we’re not most people,” I added, reaching up to gently touch the hand on my shoulder. In that moment I could feel how united we were, and it was wonderful. “Shortly after you founded HEG, you went back to Gobbler Gulch and took Leopold under your wing. Why? And don’t tell me you can’t remember, Marvin,” I added when he looked up in a vague sort of way. “If you bullshit me on this, I’ll go to the press and let them know you were the one who set up my stalking just to bring me back to lift your sagging ratings. I’ll even press charges against you to make sure everyone hears about it, so do…not… bullshit me.”
The widening of his eye was immensely gratifying. Then he changed his face almost as well as I ever could, looking piteous. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. Please forgive me for being a frightened old—”
“I said no bullshit.” I didn’t yell, but the vehement force of my words ballooned throughout the room until it felt like the walls bowed with the enormity of them. “Read me, old man. Read me and know that I’m fuckingdoneplaying games with you. Today is your reckoning, and there’s no way I’m going to let you scam your way out of it.”
For nearly half a minute he stared at me. Apparently he didn’t like what he saw, because he grimaced and pulled the bedclothes up higher. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
Score one for me. “Why did you go back for Leopold?”
“He was orphaned, or as good as, after… you know.” He glanced warily at Luke, clearly unsure of what Luke knew. “Leo’s mama had taken so much abuse from that fucker she’d married, her brain wasn’t right anymore—dementia, or so Leo said. Half the time she didn’t know who she was, much less the kid. Hell, he looked so much like his daddy, his mama would scream and cry more often than not whenever she saw him. Pretty sad, really.”
It was, and it explained Leopold’s cringing manner. He half-expected the world to scream in horror at the mere sight of him. “Why did you take him in?”
“Gobbler Gulch is a small town, and everyone gossiped about what happened to his father. Was it really suicide, or something else? I figured I’d take Leo in while he was still young and make him imprint on me like I was the parent he’d always dreamed of having. Then, once I had him, I made sure to underscore how much of a monster his daddy was every chance I got.”
