RISE - Part Three (The RISE Series Book 3) (3 page)

"I had no idea," I admit without any reservation. "I didn't know my father was capable of those things."

"You never really know someone." He taps his fingers on his knee. "I thought my dad was a stand-up guy until a month ago. Now, I hope I never see the bastard's face again."

***

I
type out a quick text message on my phone to Ivy once I'm in bed. I tell her not to worry about me and that I'll call her in the morning. I had been tempted to dial her number after I said goodbye to Dane at the café, but talking about my father again today will take every ounce of strength I have left.

I feel completely spent after sitting with Dane. After he repeated that he never wanted to see his father again, he talked about Landon. He spoke of the pain that he had been in after his dad's drowning.

Landon had shouldered the blame for his father's death. He felt responsible because he'd let his hand go as they'd bobbed in the water. Their mother, Anja, had only added to the burden, Dane explained. She'd asked her oldest son repeatedly if he could go back to that day on the water if he would have held on longer.

It was her grief that fueled the questions, Dane said, but Landon absorbed the pain in his mother's voice the way any teenage boy would. He blamed himself solely for his father's death. He closed himself off from the world and his family. When he was finally able to leave home, he'd gone to college and then became a pilot, telling his brother that it provided an escape nothing else could. In the air, he needed such trained focus that everything else melted away and those memories of that day in the water didn't exist until he landed again.

I close the message app on my phone and scroll to the photos I've saved. I swipe my thumb across the screen as I glance through them quickly, searching for the one that I want to look at as I drift to sleep.

My eyes well with tears as my thumb stops and the picture I coerced my father into posing for comes into view. I took it when he was saying goodbye to me at LAX the last time I saw him. My hair is pulled tightly into a bun on my head. I look almost identical to the way I did when we took a picture together at my high school graduation.

I gaze at my father. He's beaming. His eyes lit with joy and his smile a reflection of the happiness he feels. I touch my fingers to my lips before I hold them to the screen, over his face.

My dad, the man proudly holding his arm around my shoulders in the picture, would never let me fight a battle alone. He'd push through his own pain to stand tall next to me. I owe him the same.

As I feel the tug of sleep overtake me, I hold my phone to my chest. Tomorrow I'm going to do whatever it takes to help my father. He needs me. Nothing else matters.

––––––––

T
he piercing ring of my smartphone wrenches me from a forgettable dream. I'd silenced my phone before I fell asleep, hoping that it would give me the break I needed to rest my body and my mind.

I'd woken with a start in the middle of the night, worried that my mother would finally ring me back only to have the call go to my voicemail. After checking my phone's screen and realizing that the only thing I'd missed was a lengthy text message from Ansel asking if I needed him, I blocked his number, turned up the volume, rolled over and fell back asleep.

I run my fingers over my eyes trying to chase away the trails of sleep that are still there, coaxing me to fall back onto the pillow. I try to focus on the number but I can't. I close my eyes as I swipe my finger over the screen, before I clear my throat.

"Hello?" I whisper into the darkness knowing that I'm not trying to shelter anyone from my voice. I live alone. I sleep alone.

"Tess?" His voice is deep and melodic. "Are you at home?"

I squint as I pull the phone from my face, staring down at the corner of the screen I take note of the time. "Landon, it's six. What time is it there?"

"It's six," he repeats back. "Are you at home?"

I swing my bare legs over the side of my bed. I reach forward to grab hold of the water bottle I placed on my bedside table when I was undressing last night. My plan was to take one of the ibuprofen tablets that I kept in the top drawer but the headache I had then, hadn't kept me from sleeping. I prop the bottle against my side as I try to wrestle the lid off.

"Are you home, Tess?" he repeats. "Where are you?"

I push the unopened bottle to the floor as my frustration rises. It's mid-day in Athens and he decides that now is the best time to call me? He's a pilot. His life revolves around time. He must have known there was a good chance that he'd wake me.  "Why do you keep asking me that? I'm at home. Where else would I be?"

"Let me up," he says gruffly. "I've been in the lobby for ten minutes trying to buzz you."

I bolt to my bedroom window, arching my neck to try and catch a glimpse of the front of the building. It's futile. The only thing in my view is the street, which is already filled with cars and a few scant pedestrians as dawn breaks over the city. I take a step back, my eyes searching the room for my robe.

"Are you still there?" His voice is impatient. "I need to see you. Please, let me up."

"The buzzer doesn't always work," I offer, not because it matters. It's a buffer to give me more time to absorb what is happening. "I need to get dressed."

There's a pause before he speaks. "I'll wait down here until you're ready. Call me when I can come up."

I end the call. He's here. He wasn't supposed to be back until Wednesday but he's here now and before he leaves this building, he's going to explain to me everything he knows about my father.

***

"I
t was your birthday?" I run my hand through my damp hair. I'd showered quickly after he called me to tell me he was in the lobby. It was selfish on my part to make him wait but I needed to wash yesterday from my skin. I'd pulled off my clothes when I got home last night and slid between the cool sheets on my bed.

There was no pull towards the shower then. I wanted sleep and nothing more but this morning I wanted to face Landon without any trace of the hell I'd been through after hearing about my dad.

"That day. It was the day you saw my dad in the elevator." His eyes skim over the pale jeans and black blouse I'm wearing. "I didn't tell you because I don't celebrate it."

That's a far cry from how I've lived my life. When I was a youngster, my parents made certain that each of their children had an experience to remember when it was their birthday. There weren't parties with schoolmates or cakes formed into the shape of princesses or rocket ships. It was more precious than that.

My father would drive us to school on our special day so we could avoid the crowded bus filled with our classmates. He'd always have a treat hidden in the outside pocket of his suit jacket. On my seventh birthday there were a pair of tickets to the circus in Boston and on my twelfth birthday it was an invitation to accompany him to the ballet in New York.

My mother cooked the dinner of my choice and baked the same chocolate cake she did each and every year. Even when I was in college, she'd surprise me after class, cake in hand, and a twenty dollar bill tucked into a handmade birthday card. I've kept each of those cards, along with each gift that I found in my father's pocket.

"Why don't you celebrate it?"

He sits on my sofa, his long legs bent at the knees as his shoes tap an uneven beat on the floor. "I stopped when my dad died. I stopped caring about it."

I study him for a moment. He's dressed in black pants and a white shirt. At first glance, almost any woman passing him would stop to take a second glance. He's handsome in a way that suggests that he's comfortable with the man that he is, but it's a carefully honed façade. He's struggling with demons that have consumed him for years. Guilt has worn him down. It has stolen things from him. Things he may never get back.

––––––––

"I
asked my father to come to my apartment that night because it was my birthday," he stops to swallow. "I knew that he wouldn't resist. I also knew that he'd never suspect it was a trap."

It was a trap. The word itself conjures up images of a man standing alone with his hands pointed at the ceiling as dozens of armed and shielded policemen close in on him. It wasn't that way with Frederick.

His face was calm when the elevator doors flew open. He was smiling at Landon. It's no wonder considering he just spent time with the son he must have cradled in his arms exactly thirty-two-years before that day. It was the same son who had held onto him desperately when their boat capsized. The son who was so lost in his grief that he stopped recognizing his own life as vital and important.

Frederick had taken much more than the trust of his family when he disappeared. He'd taken the person Landon was that day with him.

"I went to see him that next day at the police station because I wanted answers but he refused to talk to me."

He'd told me that when he found me on the street in front of my office talking to Ansel. "When did you talk to him again?"

"Not until that Saturday afternoon when I saw him with my mother," he stops to run his hands over the thighs of his pants. "Dane was there too but he didn't say a lot."

I'm not surprised by that. I'd spent less than an hour with Landon's younger brother but I could sense his quiet strength. They were similar in ways neither likely recognized. Even the motions of their hands as they speak are hauntingly alike.

I nod. I know that he's trying to explain, in a very long winded way, how his father ended up in a position in which he could offer information in exchange for a plea deal. It would all be fascinating if not for the fact that Frederick threw my dad to the wolves as one of his bargaining chips.

"How does your father know mine?" I blurt the question out as my hands fly to my hips. "Were you helping the police by getting close to me? Have you been seeing me so you could find out more about my dad?"

"What?" His neck turns suddenly so he's looking directly at me. "You think that? How can you think that?"

"How can I not think it?" I throw the words back at him as I lean forward. "Your dad told the police things about my father. He knew my father."

"Jesus, Tess." He pushes himself to his feet. "I don't know what the fuck went on between your dad and mine. I don't give a shit about any of that."

I do give a shit. He may not feel the same love for his own father that I do for mine. I admit that I have no grasp on what's going on in a legal sense, but I know my dad has always told me that a person's actions reveal more about them than any words they may say.

My father didn't take me out in a boat and then risk my life so he could swim to the shore and disappear. He has been there for me each and every day since I was born. That alone speaks of his character. If he did do bad things, he didn't flee. He stayed in plain sight.

"Frederick told the police things about my dad." My words are pointed and stiff. "Don't tell me it's a coincidence that I met you right before all of this happened."

He takes a heavy step forward but I don't retreat. I won't be intimidated by him, or anyone. I'm still hell bent on honoring the vow I made last night to help my father. If Landon is the first person I need to challenge to get to the bottom of what's going on, so be it.

He exhales audibly as his eyes skim my face. "I told my mother about you a few weeks ago. I told her that I met the woman of my dreams."

I fidget slightly on my feet, my hand leaping to the front of my neck. They're words that I've longed to hear but not now. I don't want to know about his mother, or his brother, or anything other than how we ended up entangled in this mess with our fathers.

"Yesterday, after the news broke about your father, she called me in Athens." His eyes squeeze shut and his hands clasp together in front of him. "She told me that your dad was the reason she'd lost her family."

The words bite. I expected them from people who don't have a clear vision of who my father is. I know that once someone is arrested, their reputation is tarnished forever. I anticipated the uneducated wrath of strangers who think it's acceptable to insults others based on what they've read in the papers or online.

"He's not the reason," I whisper under my breath.

"You're right." His hand leaps to his chin. "My mother tried to tell me that I need to stay away from you. She said Otis Marlow's daughter couldn’t be any better than him."

I've always considered it a compliment when anyone has compared me to my father. Obviously, Anja's comment wasn't meant that way.

I look up at him, my eyes riveted to his. I want him to tell me what he said. I want to hear, from his own lips, what he told his mother when she said those words to him.

He can sense my need. I know that by the touch of his hands on my forearms and the way he reaches forward to glide his full lips across my brow. "I warned her not to make me choose. I told her she couldn’t win that fight. I can't be without you."

I feel as though the room is spinning as I try to find truth in what he's saying. He arranged for his father to be apprehended by the police. He came back from Athens early to see me. He just told me he'd choose me over his own mother.

I lean into his chest. "I don't know what's happening anymore. I don't know what to believe."

"I'll help you find the answers." His arms circle around me. "I'm not leaving your side, Tess. We'll get through this together."

––––––––

"Y
ou don't need to go to Boston, Tess. I strongly suggest that you stay here in New York."

I stare across the table at the man sitting in front of me. His hair is jet black, his eyes a pale shade of blue. His jaw is strong and chiseled. At first glance, one might think he's in this restaurant, dressed in an expensive suit, for a photo suit.

The thought crossed my mind when I first stepped through the entrance and caught sight of him. His profile reminded me of an image I saw hung on a wall at the office of the casting agency I had used for the Liore fashion show. If I had needed a male model to complement the women I hired, the man in the photograph would have been my first choice.