Everything was going fuzzy around the edges. I could see the bloody court papers in my mind.
“The truth that you never even wanted her, but you thought you could save your failed marriage and repent for the sin of our affair if you adopted the perfect baby girl.”
“That’s a lie!” she seethed.
“The truth that when the baby’s biological father learned he had a daughter and demanded to know his child, you denied him at every turn.”
I was the baby from the petition.
A chill went through me as the “truth” froze me to the spot.
I could barely process the ramifications of his words, let alone the obvious pleasure he had in telling this twisted story.
“He abandoned her—”
“He didn’t know she existed,” he said icily. “I told you he’d come back for her!”
“Her mother was mentally unstable, she couldn’t take care of her,” Jane said. “As the appointed Guardian, I did what I had to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Ruby was in danger. The biological father was gone! It wasn’t my fault that Kelly overdosed.”
My lungs struggled for air. An invisible fog was suffocating me.
“You pressured her and lied in your reports. You wanted Ruby from day one, and you did what you had to do to get her,” Martinez said.
“Ruby was found alone in a crib when the neighbors called the paramedics! That woman overdosed right in front of her own two-year-old child. What more evidence do you need that she was being neglected? I saved Ruby!”
“Oh, Jane,” he said, “your argument would be so much more convincing if that wasn’t the night you had Kelly Bracken served with the petition to terminate her rights.”
The world started spinning. Their words kept flowing into my consciousness, but I was being taken back to the crib, to apartment 4E, to the sound of a woman’s weak sobs just out of reach, to the feel of the bars, to being trapped and abandoned. The sketch at the fair, the picture on the wall of the burning apartment. It was her—my real mother. I could almost see her face in my mind. Not how it looked in the pictures, but in real life. Her long blonde hair, her soft skin, her smile.
Somewhere deep inside, I’d been holding on to her.
“I gave Ruby a good home,” Jane Rose said. “An education, resources, things she never would have had in those seedy University apartments. Things I never had but fought to earn.”
“That wasn’t your call to make. She belonged with her mother—her true mother.”
“No, she belonged with us! Jack and I tried for years to do it the right way. We paid thousands of dollars in fertility treatments for a baby of our own. That woman had a fling for a few months, and oopsie, here was an unwanted pregnancy. Kelly didn’t want a child. She wanted sorority parties, football games, and hot young military men to screw on the side.”
“Do you really want to talk about women who like to screw on the side?” he warned.
“I’m not the only one at fault here! Kelly contributed to the problem, and though I know postpartum depression must be truly horrendous,” she said with all the sarcasm she could muster, “it didn’t give her an excuse to neglect her own baby. I wasn’t the one who called Child Protective Services on her. It was her neighbors, her friends.”
“Odds are, she would have figured it out without your threats and sabotage. You backed her into a corner. You are responsible for her death. You are responsible for too many crimes to count. Not only in letting criminals walk free because of your incompetence, laziness, and selfish pursuit of political power, but in neglecting, abusing, and turning your back on everyone you’ve purported to love. You manipulated Kelly, just like you manipulate everyone else in your life. Like you manipulated Jack into marrying you, like you manipulated me into an affair that was going nowhere, like you manipulated the voters into electing you—and last, but certainly not least, like you attempted to manipulate Ruby’s biological father to keep him away from her. So tell me, Jane, what did that get you?” His smirk widened as his voice rose. “Besides a dead husband?”
The world spun cobwebs of imaginary fog around me, cocooning me too tightly, constricting me too forcefully. I couldn’t breathe. Was he saying that my father killed Jack—the man I’d always believed was my dad?
Suddenly, he put his hand to an ear-comm unit as if he was getting an urgent message.
“Speak of the devil,” Martinez said with an evil edge. “It appears that the man of the hour, Commander Damon Silver, has returned to Grissom Island—and he is most eager to finish what he started the day he killed Sergeant Jack Rose.”
D for devil.
D for D. S.
D for Damon Silver.
D for Dad…
CHAPTER 30
I felt him before I saw him.
He entered from the door behind Martinez, also wearing a bulletproof vest. I recognized his groomed salt-and-pepper-stubbled beard from the school surveillance photo. But unlike Martinez, he wasn’t wearing a helmet or neck guard, and he didn’t seem to be armed.
“Welcome, Commander Silver,” Martinez said, his body turned midway between the door and us, his weapon firmly pointed at my heart. “You’re a little behind schedule, but at least the introductions have already been made. All except for the formal father-daughter one, of course.”
Silver said nothing. He just moved slowly to the edge of the scaffolding’s cover where a dash of light spread across his face.
The way he looked at me didn’t speak of anger or insanity. He was calm, steady, and maybe even—sad? His strikingly pale eyes creased around the edges, like he was trying to communicate something without words. He wasn’t the raging lunatic I’d imagined him to be. Instead, his expression and body language spoke of submission and surrender. He even looked a little beat up.
Why did it feel like I knew him? Like his face, his manner, his eyes, were familiar to me. Not just because of that grainy surveillance picture, or because we were biologically connected—but because I’d seen him face-to-face. I couldn’t find the exact memories, but I was sure they were there.
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” he said quietly. “This isn’t how I dreamed of meeting you.” A heartbreaking grimace formed on his face. Why was he pretending to be decent? Where was his sadistic grin? If his strategy was to sedate me with his gentle approach—good cop/bad cop style with Martinez—it was working. I didn’t know what to make of him.
“Very touching,” Martinez mocked. “But we must be getting down to business. Despite the fact that Jane might want to kill herself after witnessing this little family reunion, I doubt she will. Mr. Violet will have to do it for her.” Martinez shifted his weapon in Violet’s direction. “Are you ready to make your choice, Mr. Violet?”
“Wait, no!” I raised my weapon, not knowing in which direction to point. “Don’t do this.” I looked at Martinez with his self-satisfied smirk. “Why? Because my mom chose my dad over you? Because he turned you in to Internal Affairs? Tell me why you’re doing this!” The barrel of my gun settled on him.
“Oh, Ruby, do I really need to spell it out for you?”
“Martinez, no—” Silver started.
“If it weren’t for you, Ruby,” he said, “none of this would have ever happened. Jack would’ve walked away from the marriage, Jane and I could’ve been happy together, and Damon Silver never would have been involved. There would’ve been no need for all these lies, all these cover-ups, all these deaths!”
My jaw dropped. He blamed me for all of this?