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“Are you sure?”
AmI sure? Had she ever once felt anything but contempt toward my father? Was it possible she might’ve seized the opportunity to lock him away for the things she became privy to throughout our marriage, and while working as his bookkeeper? And what wouldn’t she have done to pay for Isabella’s mounting hospital bills, because surely, anyone willing to go after my father would’ve offered a nice sum of cash. “That would mean that … Calvin was hired by my ...” Shaking my head can’t erase the possibility in all of this, the thin shred that makes all of this plausible.
“I told you. Calvin is a bad man who has done bad things.”
Hands balling into fists at my side, I fight the urge to latch onto the brewing anger toward Ivy, the only link I have at the moment. The only thing attaching me to this chaotic mess hammering against my conscience. A living, breathing catalyst to my pain. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t know it was your family. The husband was Anthony Savio Jr. There’s nothing on him.”
“I changed my name after the murders. I joined the priesthood to start over. To get away from the rage and this … life.”
“I’m sorry Damon. If I hadn’t given him that file, he wouldn’t have found your family. It’s my fault.”
Another spike of anger rushes through my blood, and I tamp it down for the pieces of this story that don’t match up correctly. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would Calvin go to the hospital to find out where the guy was staying? How the hell would he even know he was there?”
“One of the security guards saw him enter on camera. I told you, he’s got ties to police and security. Eyes all over the city. He doesn’t deserve to live for what he’s done. Who he’s hurt.”
Which is probably why the police lied to me. Why they played it off as a simple break in, and closed the case as if it no longer warranted further investigation. As if my wife and daughter had died for something insignificant and meaningless. “And you didn’t know it was me? Right. You planned this all along, Ivy. You strung me along, so I’d do your dirty work.” I can’t even bring myself to look at her, for fear I’ll do something ungodly, something I’ll regret when the shock of all this settles in my head. “And now you’re making up some fabricated story, so I’ll kill him for you. You’re manipulative and a liar. So full of shit, it’s leaking out your eyeballs.”
In my periphery, she leans toward me, and at the brush of her hand, I wrench my arm away, not wanting her to touch me.
“I swear to you on mygrandmother’s grave, I didn’t make this up. Not this, Damon.”
“Get out.”
“Damon.” The quaver of tears carries on her voice, but doesn’t draw a single ounce of empathy from me. “Please. Don’t do this. I’m sorry. Please don’t shut me out.”
“Get out!”
The moment she exits my car, I hit the gas and take off down the street. Buildings pass in a blur. The sudden need for whiskey tugs at my chest, and it isn’t coincidence when I pull the car into the liquor store parking lot. I buy a fifth and leave the twenty bucks in change on the counter, letting the wrath whisper its dark and chilling assurances in my ear. Whispers that promise pain and revenge—all the things to which I vowed never to fall victim again.
Isabella.
Her name echoes inside my head as, once outside, I tip the bottle back, letting the warm liquor burn my chest and straighten the thoughts beating against my skull in punishing cadence. In the center of the storm is a woman with bright green, hypnotic eyes, the kind designed to draw a man in and make him forget everything. A potent dose of lust that overwhelms the senses and weakens the mind. Even with all this anger, all this reason to hate her, I still want the woman behind those eyes.
The sinner. The manipulator. The unforgiveable starlet in every fantasy I’ve had over the last few weeks. She lied to me, and I was right about one thing all along.
Ivy really is poison in my blood.
17
Ivy
Parked on the floor of my apartment with a bottle of wine and a cigarette, I open the letter from Mamie. Probably a bad idea to read it now, of all times, but I need her words more than ever. What I wouldn’t give to have her sitting beside me, stroking my hand with her warm, wrinkled skin, telling me everything will be okay.
Everything works out in the end, she always said.
Maybe it doesn’t, though. Maybe that only applies to the woman who didn’t betray the only man who made her feel something.
It wasn’t a lie, when I told Damon that I didn’t know Valerie and Isabella were his family. Very little was known about the husband, at the time, as he seemed to go off the grid. Just disappeared. The news never once captured a picture of him, not even in the brief minute he was named as a suspect early on. And in a city like Los Angeles, where murders happen every day, theirs didn’t hold anyone’s attention for very long before it became old news.
When Mamie told me what her friend who worked at the hotel had divulged, I couldn’t eat for a week. I wanted to go to the police and confess everything, even if that meant turning over myself, but Calvin had already threatened to torture Mamie, if I spoke a word about the record, and with so many police on his side, I didn’t trust any one of them to take my confession.
Hands trembling, I put out my smoke and read the letter.
My Dearest Ivy,
Your entire life has been riddled with pain and guilt. The sorrow of having a mother walk out on you. Your father, too. The guilt of carrying around another man’s sin on your shoulders. Fact is, people make choices every day to do right or wrong. And sometimes they do wrong in the name of something right. I want you to forgive yourself and learn to accept forgiveness from others. It is not a sin to love someone so unconditionally that you would do anything for them. But the gravest sin of all is not allowing God the opportunity to forgive you.
