Page 70 of Ruthless Daddy
“It is,” I said. “I’m glad I testified, but Daddy, I didn’t do it soon enough. I was scared.”
He nodded. “You’re brave.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. I was terrified.”
He smiled, the sad smile. “That’s what makes you brave. You do it anyway.”
The heat pressed in, sticky on my skin, but the conversation made it tolerable. For once, I wasn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We walked on, into the Fern Room. The air in here was different—cooler, somehow, but thicker. Moss blanketed everything, even the walls. A little stream cut through the dirt, ringed in stones. There were benches, but nobody sat; it was too beautiful to be still.
Pietro slowed, then stopped. He looked at the water, then at me.
He said, “It’s my turn to tell you something.”
I said, “Yeah?”
He breathed out, long and slow, like he was letting go of something heavy.
“When I was twenty-four,” he said, “I worked for my family. I was undercover at the port in Catania. I was working my way into this other organization, so we could bring them down. They were bad people. Drugs. Guns.” He paused a moment. “Women, too. There was a warehouse, and one morning they brought in a group of girls from Ukraine. I knew what was going to happen to them. I could have done something. I don’t know what, but something. Even if I had blown my cover, even if I ended up getting killed, I should have done something right there and then.”
The words hung there, cold as anything.
He went on. “I got word up the chain, but not fast enough. By the time the police hit the network, most of them were gone. The girl who looked at me—she was never found. I’ll never forget her.”
He stared at the ferns, at nothing.
“After Catania, I promised myself I would never let another vulnerable woman down,” he said, voice almost a whisper.
It hurt, hearing it. Not because I thought less of him, but because I saw the way it bent him out of shape, the way he was marked by the guilt, just like me.
He looked at me then, eyes shining with a kind of resignation I recognized from my own face.
“You think I’m a bad person? That I let them down? I shouldn’t have told you.”
I said, “You can tell me anything. You’re not a bad person. You’re a human being.”
He nodded, but he looked away, down at the bench, then at the floor, then at me again.
We moved into the Orchid House. The air was sweet, almost cloying, thick with the perfume of a hundred flowers. The benches in here were wood, curved to fit the small space. We sat side by side, coats abandoned on the bench next to us. My hands were damp, and I wiped them on my jeans, but it didn’t help.
I put my hand out, palm up. He took it, no hesitation.
I lifted his hand, pressed it against my cheek. He closed his eyes.
We sat like that, quiet, for a long time. The only sound was the drip of water and the faint hum of air.
I said, “I think we’re the same.”
He smiled, but didn’t open his eyes. “We’re not. You’re so much better than me.”
“No,” I said. “You are perfect.”
We stayed that way, side by side, silent in the green light, until the world outside faded into something unreal.
Aftersittingpeacefullytogetherfor what felt like hours, we left the glass house blinking, half-dazed by the sun and the leftover heat trapped in our shirts. My hair was damp at the scalp, my skin felt like I’d just walked out of a fever. Pietro didn’t even look rumpled. I hated that, a little.
We didn’t say anything for a minute. I let the cool air sting my face, the cold washing off the sticky bloom of orchids and confession. Outside, the park was nearly empty, the kind of cold that made your jaw ache.
