Chapter 120 120
Chapter 120 120
I take the opportunity to drain the rest of my gin. Then I set the glass down so hard that a crack spiderwebs around the rim. “One call is all it will take for me to destroy you. Your reputation as well as your fledgling career.”
“K-Kolya… we’re… we’re family—”
I ignore his stammering. “In my opinion, June is better off without you. But I’m going to let her come to that conclusion in her own time. Until then, the only thing you have to do is treat her well.”
He looks perplexed. “And th-that’s all you want from me?” he asks tentatively. “You won’t rat me out?”
“That’s all I want.”
The poor bastard is pitiful. He looks far more worried about the threat I pose to his career than the revelation that his campaign is being carried on the backs of women sold into sex slavery. Men like him disgust me. If it weren’t for his daughter, I’d ruin him just to rid the earth of one more preening, self-important son of a bitch.
“Very well,” he says. “I’ll be a good father.”
I snort. “You’ll try, if nothing else.”
Whether he’ll succeed is an entirely different question, but I’m not concerned with that right now. It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for Geneva, too. Almost.
I get to my feet and shoot him one final warning glare. “One more thing before I go.”
Luke freezes in place. “Y-yes?”
“Did you ask him any questions when he approached you?” I ask bluntly. “Or were your eyeballs just seeing dollar notes the whole time?”
His cheeks blot red with anger, but he knows better than to voice it. “I… he… believed in my vision.”
“He must, to rise from the dead just to back you up,” I say with a dark smirk. “Well, if you speak to him anytime soon, give him a message from me, will you? Tell him that this has gone on long enough. It’s time he and I had a conversation.”
I walk towards the door, stop at the threshold, and look back at Luke over my shoulder.
“And if he doesn’t come to me in the next three days, tell him that I’ll find him. He won’t like what will happen when I do.”
40
JUNE
I think about home as I walk up to the front door of Geneva’s duplex.
It’s strange that I haven’t missed my own space in the last few months. Every now and again, I try to picture the house I shared with Adrian. The nook where I used to read, the room I used to dance in, the kitchen where I spent my mornings nursing a cup of coffee between my palms.
The images don’t carry any emotion. It’s just a place now. Nothing more, nothing less.
I ring the bell. Geneva opens the door a few seconds later. She’s wearing a long maxi dress and her hair is tied up in a high bun.
“Going someplace?”
She shivers. “Uh, no.”
“So you just got dolled up for me?”
She rolls her eyes and laughs anxiously. “I was trying to—shoot, I don’t know. Get this conversation going on the right foot, I guess.”
I instantly feel more at ease. If we both want the same thing, it’ll all be so much easier. “Well, you look great,” I tell her. “I like the dress.”
“Says the girl in the Ralph Lauren,” she mumbles back, eyeing my white cotton sundress with envy.
“Everything doesn’t have to be a competition between us, Genny,” I say gently. “Mom and Dad are the ones that encouraged that. But we’re adults now. I think we can rise above it.”
Her eyes fall to her feet as she twists her bracelets around her wrist. “Sorry,” she says. “Habit.”
“I’m not criticizing. I do it, too.”
She smiles, and I feel myself relax a little bit more. An unclenching of a part of me that’s been cinched up tight for a long, long time. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Just water would be lovely.”
I follow her into the kitchen and sink into a bar stool as she goes rummaging in the cabinets for glasses. After filling two of them with water from the refrigerator, she comes and takes a seat next to me.
It’s quiet for a few ticks of the clock on the wall. “This place must feel tiny to you now, huh?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I’ve always liked your place. Living with Kolya hasn’t changed everything about me.”
There. I’ve said it, the forbidden word. Kolya. Might as well get it out of the way early. She stiffens at the mention of his name, but she doesn’t tuck tail and flee the way I might’ve expected.
I’ll take that, I guess.
“Genny,” I say, resting my hand on top of hers, “I want to say that I’m sorry for everything that happened between us. It wasn’t exactly a misunderstanding. It was more like a… lack of communication. But you have to know that Ravil was a bad man, and Kolya was only trying to protect me. If you believe just one thing I ever tell you, believe that.”
She absorbs that, bobbing her head silently while she runs the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass again and again. Then she sighs and looks back up at me. “I’m sorry, too,” she says heavily. “I didn’t realize that Ravil was going to… to do all that. I would never have signed off on anything so horrible.”
“He wouldn’t have listened even if you’d tried.”
“D-did he hurt you?” she asks, gulping and paling.
“He tried,” I admit. “But Kolya got to me in time.”
I decide to leave out the part where I had then run from him. As far as I’m concerned, it’s unimportant now. Geneva picks up her glass, but she doesn’t seem interested in drinking.
I wish I could tell her to relax, that the worst part of what I came here for is over. But there are so many skeletons in our closet to unearth. So much water under our bridge we could drown in it.
I inhale and dive into the next part. “The night you brought the cops to Kolya’s place… I said some things to you that I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for that, too. I was just tired and emotional and—”
“You asked me not to trust Ravil and I did anyway,” Geneva interrupts. “I told him secrets that you trusted me with. It’s okay, June. I get it. You don’t owe me anything. Definitely not any apologies.”
“Sometimes, I think we don’t know how to love each other like family.”
“Well,” she snorts, “we didn’t have much of an example to follow.”
“Forget Mom and Dad. It’s about time we set our own example,” I say. “Because I do want a relationship with you, Gen. I want my daughter to know her aunt.”
Geneva’s eyes go wide. “‘Daughter’? You’re having a girl?”