Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Present

I decided to take a day off to decompress. And by decompress I meant totally compress. I wanted to get some answers and dig into the claims against my father. Before yesterday, I’d cautiously assumed Dad was speaking the truth when he gave me a blanket denial. Now, I wasn’t sure. Last night, I’d texted Louie, who’d confirmed they’d received additional discovery requests. Other women were joining the lawsuit, and the sum on the recently filed statement of damages was astronomical; it would strip my father of most of his assets if he lost.

I thought about Christian the whole subway journey from my apartment to my parents’ Park Avenue penthouse. I absolutely loathed that he was right about me taking a step back.

When I got to my parents’ apartment, my mother waited at the door.

“Thank you for coming. I was thinking maybe we could order sushi for lunch or something?” A hopeful smile tugged at her lips.

“Hmm, what?” I wanted to make sure this wasn’t a prank. She’d never offered to do anything with me. And upon getting rejected a few times during my preteen years, I’d stopped trying.

“Sushi. You. Me. I can help you dig through Dad’s stuff.”

Going all Brady Bunch with my mom wasn’t in my plans right now, but I acknowledged that she did make an effort. I patted her arm, brushing past her toward the master bedroom. “Sorry. I work best when I’m alone.”

I reached the master bedroom’s door, using the secret knock only Dad and I had. One rap, beat, five raps, beat, two raps.

“Dad?”

There was no answer. Mom appeared beside me, twisting the hem of her dress. “You know, he’s been moody all day. He wouldn’t even take his lawyers’ calls.”

“Dad!” I knocked again, ditching the secret knock. “Open the door. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. I need to understand what happened.”

I couldn’t sleep a wink during the night. To think that my father could be capable of such things made me want to hurl myself into the Hudson River.

Mom huddled nearby, serving as a curious audience.

“Go away,” Dad called out through the door.

“Dad, I want to help.”

“You do? Because you haven’t been too helpful so far.”

“I have questions,” I bit out. My growing suspicions and his attitude were a bad combination.

“If you don’t believe me, maybe you shouldn’t come to court.”

“No one said I don’t believe you.” Although admittedly, my confidence in his innocence was very wobbly. “I just want—”

“I’m not going to answer any of your questions. Leave!” he roared.

I took a step back instinctively, feeling my cheeks go hot, like he’d slapped me. My father hadn’t once yelled at me before. That didn’t mean I hadn’t witnessed him being aggressive to others. If I was honest with myself—which I wasn’t, most of the time, when it came to him—he’d had anger-management issues for as long as I could remember. But of course, anger was cancer. It touched everything in your life. The way you behaved inside the office always bled into your homelife. Your love life. Your life-life.

I turned to my mother. “Do you have the key to his file cabinets? I would like to go through his employment contracts.”

Dad was an old-school businessman. He believed everything needed to be printed out and stored for safekeeping. Any correspondence he’d had with an employee would be filed in his study. He was too cautious to keep these things at work.

My mother wrung her hands. “Do you think it can help?”

“Worth a shot.” Even if it wouldn’t help his case, it was going to help me understand if there was merit to any of the allegations.

Ten minutes later, I sat on the lush carpet of my father’s study, thirty years’ worth of documentation in front of me. Everything was there. From service agreements to personal emails and termination letters. I wondered how much of these he’d handed over to Louie and Terrance. I wondered if he’d handed them anything at all. He seemed caged up where this trial was concerned. A part of me wanted to call Christian and try and gauge what exactly they had on him. But as Christian had mentioned—his chief objective was to bang me, not help me.

“Arya?” My mother knocked on Dad’s study’s door three hours into my research, holding a tray with lemonade and cookies. Whatever had happened to the muffin tsar? Guess I was okay to eat carbs now that it was a real possibility I’d be her only family left. I doubted she’d stay with my father if he were penniless.

“I’m just going to leave these right here,” she said gingerly, tiptoeing into the room and placing the drink and snack beside me. “Let me know if you need anything.”

I needed you to be exactly like this when I was young. To acknowledge my presence, instead of resenting it.

I might not have known Aaron, but I’d always felt the loss of him. It was in the air in this house, every piece of furniture, each painting, drenched with it. The vast emptiness that remained where another family member should have been.

“Thank you.” I didn’t look up from the mountains of files surrounding me. She lingered by the door.

I plucked another cordial email printout between Amanda and Dad, adding it to my Amanda pile. I was trying to figure out where it had gone sideways between them. “Um, Mom? I’m kind of trying to work here.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She closed the door with a soft click.

“Come on. Heartbroken admirers. Moneygrubbing opportunists. Show me your true faces. Tell me it’s all a lie . . . ,” I whispered to myself, skimming through the documents.

The universe must’ve heard me, because two minutes later, a black envelope fell from one of the manila files. It was padded with paper and sealed.

What the . . . ?

I looked up, scanning the empty room, listening for noises in the hallway. The coast was clear. I took an envelope opener to it and ripped the thing clean. A batch of yellowed papers rained down on the carpet. I picked one letter up, my heart ramming its way through my chest. The handwriting looked familiar yet strange. Italic, pushed together, like the person was trying to save paper.

Dear Conrad,

I did as you told me to do. I did not answer any of Nicholai’s letters and telephone calls. I feel bad about this. He is my son after all. But you know my loyalty is with you. I miss him and would like to see him soon. Do you think I can spend Christmas with him? Of course, I would like to spend it with you, too. But only if she doesn’t come along. I cannot bear the sight of her. She doesn’t deserve you or Arya.

Love,

Ruslana

The letter fell from between my fingers. Nicholai.

Ruslana was talking about Nicholai. But what did she mean by doing what Dad had asked her to do? Why would Dad ask her not to answer Nicky after he’d moved? This was not the version Dad had given me all those years ago for what had gone down after that shameful day.

One thing that didn’t take a detective to conclude from this was their insinuated affair. I guessed “she” was my mother, who had indeed opted out of our annual Christmas celebrations in favor of working on her tan in Sydney. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Dad and Ruslana to take me someplace during the holidays, distract me from my motherless existence. But Ruslana always stayed in a separate room and barely spoke a word to my father. I picked up another letter.

Dear Conrad,

I suspect you are a liar. If you aren’t, then why are you still with Beatrice?

You said you would leave her for me. Yet it has been three years and look at us. Nicholai is a man now. He doesn’t even talk to me. I lost my connection with my only family, thinking I would join yours. Nicholai was supposed to take care of me when I grow old. Now he won’t even take my calls. There is a saying I’m sure you are familiar with. You the Yankees love it. You don’t buy the cow if you can get the milk for free.

I feel like cattle now, Conrad, and I do not like this feeling at all.

Still yours,

Ruslana

My stomach turned violently. Ruslana and Nicholai hadn’t been in contact all these years? How was my father connected to all this? He’d looked rabid that day when he’d found Nicky and me in the library, reenacting that scene in Atonement. But he couldn’t . . . wouldn’t . . .

Poor Nicky. Was my father really capable of such atrocities?

If it smells like a pig and looks like a pig . . .

I grabbed another letter. And then another. The words blurred, fuzzing behind a sheet of unshed tears.

Dear Conrad . . . I can’t eat . . . I can’t sleep . . . my love for you burns like midnight oil . . .

Dear Conrad . . . I’m considering taking matters to my own hands and talking to Beatrice . . . if you don’t tell her, I will. You said you’d leave her. Did you lie?

Dear Conrad . . . I’m desperate. When will you call me back?

Dear Conrad . . . please don’t fire me. I will be good. I promise. I will not overstep your boundaries. I’m sorry I did. I was . . . confused. I can’t afford to lose this job. I’ve already lost too much.

The last letter was the one that shattered the rest of my hope on the floor.

Dear Conrad,

You are leaving me no choice. I am telling Beatrice myself.

Buy my silence, or pay for what you did.

—Ruslana

Ruslana hadn’t quit; she’d been let go.

Fired. Tucked away where my mother couldn’t see her. Banished from Dad’s kingdom, just like Nicholai.

I still remembered what Dad had said the day Ruslana had stopped coming without as much as a call or a note. College-student me had dropped in to say hello.

“I suppose she just wanted to move somewhere where there’re a lot of Russians. Fox River fit the bill,” he’d said. It seemed so odd to me back then that our trusted housekeeper, who moaned about the winter as early as each September, would willingly choose to move to Alaska. It also struck me as weird I couldn’t get her address. Send her some flowers or a gift basket for all those years she’d helped us. She’d disappeared from the face of the earth.

Now, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place.

Nicholai.

Ruslana.

The affairs.

Amanda.

Above all—the way my father was treating me now, when he thought I was onto him. How he locked me out of his kingdom too.

I stood up, leaving the scattered papers on the study’s floor. My mother tried to stop me at the door, but I pushed past her, ran out of the apartment building, leaned into a bush, and threw up.