“Wait, Dad, hold on…”
“Darrell! Man of the hour, good to see you!” the Attorney General himself approached us before I could get the rest of my protest out.
I piped down, not wanting to embarrass my dad, who enthusiastically introduced me to the federal appointee. But to my horror, we were getting closer and closer to the entrance.
“RhIDS! That’s a good school!” the Attorney General boomed. “You must be very proud, Darrell. Very proud!”
“Sure am,” Dad answered with a straight face.
“Maybe you can draw us a picture,” Dad suggested to the Attorney General. “Something to commemorate the evening. She used to draw pictures for me all the time when she was a kid.”
“That’s not really how animators work—” I started to answer.
“I’ve got to wait until my wife gets here to go inside, but no need for you to wait in this line,” the Attorney General boomed again, cutting me off. He led us straight toward a guy with a clipboard. “You’re the guest of honor.”
“Thanks, man,” Dad says, like he and the Attorney General are best buds, even though I was pretty sure he hated the current administration.
“Darrell Kingston,” he said to the guy with the clipboard. “And this is my daughter, Dawn. Not sure if she’s on your list of RSVPs, though, since she just showed up as a surprise.”
“We’ve got her on the list,” the guy assured him. “And your plus one is already inside.”
My stomach turned to concrete at his announcement. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh no.
“You brought a date?” Dad asked, his genial smile turning into a full-on beam.
No. I didn’t bring a date! I wanted to scream. But I didn’t know how to extract us from the situation without embarrassing my father on his big night.
“Must be serious if you invited him to meet your brother and me,” Dad said, throwing me a significant look as we walked into the ballroom’s front lobby. “What’s his name?”
Instead of answering, I came to a complete stop.
Victor…
Victor was waiting inside for us. The devil, in a tailored suit.
33
DAWN
I stopped when I saw Victor standing in the museum’s lobby. My father did too. Behind Victor, there were several closed double doors that I could only presume led to the museum’s main event space.
“Is that…?” Dad started to say beside me.
I rushed to Victor before he could finish the question. Not because I was happy to see him. I rushed to my monster of a husband to plead, “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
Had I thought his eyes cold before?
The memories of his other gazes seemed warm in comparison to the way he looked down at me now. And his eyes were circles of black ice above his hands as he signed, “I promised you an 8 o’clock date.”
Then, before I could answer, he took my hand in his.
Not out of affection. No, not at all.
He raised our arms together in the air to meet my incoming father wedding ring first.
My dad stopped short. Then he reeled back as if someone had shot him when he saw the black onyx and steel band wrapped around my most significant finger. It didn’t look like a traditional American wedding ring. But Dad immediately recognized it for what it was.
I could tell because storm clouds moved in over his formerly sunny expression.
He stepped closer to us and took my hand in his.
To everyone else looking on, it probably appeared as if he was admiring my ring. Only Victor and I could hear him whisper, “What the fuck is this?”
“Dad…” I whispered back, my voice pitiful and apologetic. But I didn’t finish that sentence. How could I? How could I explain Victor’s presence or any of this?
The sets of doors I’d noticed earlier were suddenly thrown open, and an overhead voice announced that we could all go into the ballroom now.
“You don’t want to make a scene, do you?” Victor signed as people started filing past us into the event space.
I wasn’t sure if he was addressing my dad or me. Either way, the result was the same. Dad and I somehow ended up following Victor into a room filled with round tables covered in white linens and surrounded by Chiavari chairs. We were stiff actors in Victor’s kabuki play.
Victor was wearing a suit, but like the last time we came to D.C., he decided not to pair it with a tie. So his dragon chest tattoo peeked out, along with a new skull tattoo on the back of his left hand. It glared below his matching wedding ring.
He did not look at all like someone who would be invited to a ceremony honoring international law enforcement. Quite the opposite. He belonged in the collection of mugshots that would surely run before the Attorney General gave my dad his award.
Victor went out of his way not to let anyone take his picture. But he didn’t have to be a known criminal element for people to sense his danger.
