“Fine,” I was surprised to hear myself say. “But don’t think we’re going to be cool with each other after or something.”
He took me to the Met Cloisters, to see medieval art and architecture. We strolled shoulder to shoulder, silent the whole time.
“You know,” Dad said when we got to the tomb effigies, “there are more of those in Westminster Abbey. My favorite one is of Queen Elizabeth the First. I could take you to see it, if you’d like.”
“When?” I demanded haughtily. At some point during that year, being awful to him had become like eating. Just another thing on my agenda.
“Tomorrow?” He lifted his eyebrows, offering me his cunning Conrad Roth smile. “I’m free tomorrow.”
“I have school tomorrow,” I supplied, my voice thawing considerably.
“You’ll learn plenty in London. Lots of history.”
And so, after a year, I cut a corner and added Dad back into my life.
We made the Cloisters a monthly thing.
London didn’t change me.
Neither did the trips to Paris, Athens, and Tokyo.
I was still obsessed with everything Nicky, hungry for crumbs of information about him.
I changed tactics from constant preoccupation with him to spurts of questions and pestering. I could go weeks without speaking about him, then spend a few days asking about him nonstop.
Ruslana explained that Nicky was happy in Minsk. That if he didn’t answer, it was because of his busy schedule. Dad was supportive, but every time I tried to ask him to check on Nicky through his private investigator, he refused, saying he was doing it for me. That I needed to move on. That he hated seeing me all wrapped up in my fixation.
Maybe there was something wrong with me. Could love make you sick? I supposed it could. I’d watched my mother mourning my brother my whole life and didn’t want to pine for someone who’d never return.
Still, when I turned sixteen and got my second first kiss from Andrew Brawn, all I could think about was that he wasn’t Nicky.
But I knew pushing Dad into doing something was impossible. Besides, I had to pick my battles. Mom was barely with us anymore. My only steady family was my father, and I didn’t want to ruin it by fighting over a boy who didn’t even bother writing back to me.
The years flowed like a river, drowning me in all kinds of firsts with boys who weren’t Nicholai Ivanov. First seven minutes in heaven (Rob Smith). First make-out session under the bleachers (Bruce Le). First boyfriend (Piers Rockwysz) and first heartbreak (Carrie and Aidan from Sex and the City, because let’s admit it, Piers was great but not Aidan great). Nicky always sat there on the sidelines of my conscious, making each boy I dated fall short. I wondered how many girls he’d kissed over the years. If he still thought about me when he touched other girls, his hands slipping under their shirts. It felt crazy that I couldn’t ask him. But maybe lucky, too, because a big part of me didn’t want to know.
And so, when I turned eighteen, the first thing I did was make a call to Dad’s private investigator. David Kessler was the best in Manhattan.
David came back to me four weeks after I asked him to look for Nicky, informing me of his death.
I didn’t get out of bed for three days, after which the fear of turning into my mother outweighed the misery of knowing he wasn’t alive.
From that point forward, I vowed to forget Nicholai Ivanov had ever existed.
If only it were that easy . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHRISTIAN
Present
Arya arrived at the courtroom the first day of the trial.
Clearly, she’d decided to give my friendly advice a nice, long middle finger with a side of mind-your-own-business clapback.
At least she opted to take a seat in the public seating area and not the family bench, where she’d be visible. Conrad Roth never had hired a female litigator like I’d suggested to his daughter. Whether it was out of pride or because he knew he couldn’t worm his way out of this mess was anyone’s guess.
Five victims, accusing Roth of six counts of harassment each, seeking $200 million combined in compensation, $40 million each.
Unlike other sexual predators of his position and wealth, he’d done a piss-poor job at covering his tracks. I estimated it at four weeks before Judge Lopez would ask us for our closing statements.
I stood in front of Judge Lopez’s bench for my opening statement, clad in my Brunello Cucinelli suit and grave expression. It took everything in me to rip my eyes from the woman in the last row of the courtroom. Arya sat with her back ramrod straight and her nose tilted up. The picture of poised elegance. She’d stopped hitting the pool, so I’d had a week to stew on our last encounter, in which she’d pretty much told me to go shove it when I’d offered to take her for dinner. Naturally, it made me want her even more.
I wasn’t sure when, exactly, the line between wanting to screw her over and screw her, period, had begun to blur. But I knew I was straddling it like an eager stripper performing at a bachelor party for tips.
No matter how irrational, how illogical, how dangerous (and there was no denying that touching her could complicate my case, my partner prospect, and my life in general) it was, I wanted Arya.
Deserved her too. After everything she’d put me through, having her in my bed was the perfect consolation prize.
She could go her merry way after I was done with her, probably to marry beneath her pedigree, now that Daddy dearest would be banished from the hedge fund company he managed and exiled from polite society.
Unfortunately for Arya, and maybe for myself, my opening statement included a presentation showing a dick picture of her father, which he’d sent a twenty-three-year-old intern, and which was enlarged on a screen in the middle of the room, pubes and half-mast erection intact.
I tried hard not to look at Arya while I explained to the jurors that her father had sent an image of his penis to someone younger than his own daughter, feeling sick to my stomach. And then ignored her after that, too, when my client tearfully explained on the stand how scarred she was by the (quite literal) revelation that her boss was a dick.
The first day of trial proceeded smoothly. The plaintiffs were compelling. The jurors warmed up to them. I gave an Oscar-worthy performance, making a show of listening and bunching my eyebrows together in concern at all the right places.
When Judge Lopez banged his gavel and said the court stood in recess, I turned around to Arya’s seat and found it empty.
I proceeded with the plaintiffs and Claire through the double doors of the courtroom, out to the foyer, breaking the day down to digestible bullet points for my clients. I descended the courthouse stairway, slipping between the grand columns. Rain clung to my suit. Across the street, a flash of rowdy chestnut hair I’d recognize anywhere disappeared behind the door of a coffee shop.
Arya.
“I’ll catch you back at the office.” I touched Claire’s arm, just as she turned toward me, saying, “Would you like to grab some coffee on our way so we could talk?”
She stopped, swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes. Yes. Of course.”
With my eyes still glued to the coffee shop’s door, I crossed the street and strolled inside. Arya was already seated, cradling a cup of coffee at a high window-facing table, staring into it. I slipped into the stool in front of her, knowing full well that I was playing with matches next to a six-gallon barrel of explosives.
“How’re we feeling today?” I recognized on impact that it was the wrong thing to ask. How the heck did I think she was feeling? I’d just spent the last seven hours nailing her father’s metaphorical coffin closed before dumping it in the ocean.
Arya looked up from her coffee cup, a little disoriented. The rain knocked on the window in front of us.
“Aren’t lawyers supposed to be good with social cues? Take a hint,” she groaned, rubbing at her eyes.
“I’m more of a straight-shooting kind of guy.” I placed my briefcase between us.
She put the rim of her cup to her lips, nibbling on it. “Is that so? Here’s a truth bomb for you, then—I don’t want to talk to you, Christian. Ever.”
“Why’d you come here today?” I asked, ignoring her words. I didn’t make it a habit to harass women, or even give them the time of day unless they vied for it. But I knew Arya’s defense mechanism was pushing people away—we were cut from the same cloth—and wasn’t completely certain she wanted to be alone right now. “He didn’t even acknowledge you.”
“There was a picture of his penis the size of a movie screen in the middle of the courtroom. A little hard to look your child in the eye after that.”
“Exactly. You can’t possibly believe he’s innocent after that.”
“I’m not sure he is innocent at all.” She set her cup back on the table and spun it with her fingers absentmindedly. “I’m in the reasonable-doubt zone. But you are right. He has been ignoring me. He wouldn’t even take any of my calls.”
“That’s a form of guilt admission.” I grabbed the cup from between her fingers and took a sip. She took her coffee with no sugar and no milk. Just like me. “Which brings me to my original point—why are you here?”
“It’s hard to let go of your only family. Even if said family is horrible. It’s worse than if he’d died. Because if he died, at least I could still love him.”
Being the son of two asshole parents, I could relate.
“What about your mother?” I asked.
“She’s not much of a mother, to be honest. That’s why I think I managed to overlook the glaring signals from Dad. You said you’re not close to your parents, right?”
I smiled tersely. “Not particularly.”
“Only child?”
I nodded.
“Do you ever wish you had siblings?” She propped her chin on her fist.
“No. The less people in my life, the better. What about you?”
“I had a brother,” she mused, staring at the rain, which was coming down harder. “But he died a very long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes I think I will always be a half of something. Never a whole person.”
“Don’t say that.”
I’d never met anyone as whole as you, imperfections and all.
Suddenly, Arya frowned, cocking her head sideways as she studied me. “Wait, are you even supposed to talk to me?”
“You’re not a part of the case anymore. You no longer provide professional services to your father, and your name is not on the witness list.”
Though ethically, my speaking to the defendant’s daughter was unorthodox at best and a dumpster fire at worse.
She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t?”
I shook my head. “He removed all mentions of your company from his websites a couple days after I visited your office. At your request, I assumed.”
Arya’s thickly fringed eyes flared. Obviously, my assumption had been wrong. She shot up to her feet, knocking her coffee over. Brown liquid spilled over the table and floor. She righted the cup with shaky hands. “Have a nice evening, Mr. Miller.”
She slapped the door open, running off to the street. I grabbed my briefcase and followed her, recognizing how goddamn thoughtless I was. At this point, I was begging to get in trouble. Judge Lopez would have every right to dismiss me from the case if he found out what I was doing.
History repeats itself.
“Arya, stop.” I shouldered past the Manhattan evening crowd. Rain came down in sheets on both of us, weighing her crazy hair down. She picked up her pace. She was running. From me. And I was chasing her.
My legs moved faster.