Chapter Ten

Nina

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.

“Pink Dragon,” a sultry female voice came on the other side of the line. “How can I help you?”

“Finally,” I breathed into the receiver on the Paper Treasure landline.

I’d spent the past three days rifling through the accounting books for this store, trying to hunt down its major contributors and coming up with nothing again and again. Phones that would ring and ring and never pick up. Answering machines that were perpetually full. Numbers that were disconnected. How was I ever going to prove to Eli that my father was an innocent businessman if I couldn’t find any evidence of his patrons?

But Paper Treasure was my body of proof. My father ran this bookstore before he gave it to me when I graduated. The records went back for years. This store made hundreds of thousands of dollars from one year to the next. There was no way that he could be in charge of so many flourishing storefronts and also running a crime ring on the side. Please! There are only twenty-four hours in a day!

“Could I speak with your manager?” I asked politely.

“My manager,” the sultry voice repeated. “I don’t have a manager, honey, but I’m the madam of Pink Dragon. What services are you looking for?”

The madam? “I’m the owner of Paper Treasure, and I’m looking for a Denise Hardstone. She donated almost forty thousand dollars to my store this year, and I wanted to thank her personally and verify the contribution.”

“Oh,” the voice said. She still hadn’t given me a name, and then there was a hesitation and a click.

I jerked the phone from my ear and glowered at it. What the hell? Wasn’t there any way to verify any of the entries to these records?

Wednesday night, I didn’t go home at all. The light kept burning in the upstairs office at Paper Treasure as I dug relentlessly to exonerate my dad. My hands fumbled over bookcase shelves and deep into safes until I discovered a book I had completely forgotten existed: the original set of accounting books for Paper Treasure in 2017, the year I was given the store. Will transcribed the records into a much bigger log that same year, and I hadn’t seen the book since. Before Dad gave me the store, he told me that Will was the best accountant, and he wanted him to stay at his post.

As I flipped through the old 2017 log, I scowled down at the year-to-date accumulation. The rent on this place alone was almost twelve grand a month, but the year-to-date accumulation last March was only eighteen thousand. That wasn’t even enough to pay the rent. April… thirty thousand. We shouldn’t have even been able to stay open.

It was after four a.m. when I dug out the new, thicker, leather-bound logs that Will purchased for us.

“Th-th-they weren’t cheap,” he had said, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his slim nose. “B-b-but it’s a wr-write-off.”

He should have transcribed the records exactly, but March was three pages longer now. The year-to-date accumulation was transcribed as $120,000.

The rows all blurred, and I swayed. It’s late. You’re seeing things. You need to sleep.

I curled up on the back office couch and fell from one nightmare into the next until sunrise. I woke up with my arms wrapped around the leather-bound log like I was clinging to keep it from someone else trying to pry it out of my hands.

I woke up late, the bookstore already opened by Will downstairs. I hid the two different logs in a knapsack slung over my shoulder and marched out, barely looking at Will as I went. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I’d thought he wasn’t simply my coworker. I’d thought he was my friend. Now I didn’t know who he was.

More importantly, I didn’t know who my father was.

I went to Masters Heights to shower and change into something more presentable than my wrinkled blouse and leggings. Even now, with trembling fingers and an upset stomach, I still zipped up a formal gray tweed pencil skirt and shrugged into a delicate cashmere sweater in pale blue. Pale blue was Dad’s favorite color on me. “It brings out your eyes,” he always said. “You have such pretty eyes.”

Still. I fastened the pearl necklace around my throat and slid matching studs into my earlobes. Still, I rolled panty hose up my thighs and found the perfect heels in my closet.

Pretty and perfect.

You always have to be, I thought to myself numbly, staring out the back window of the taxicab. Night was falling out there, and I had only worked up the nerve to hail that cab to take me to Redhead.

Redhead was Dad’s shorthand for his corporate office, where he managed all of these smaller businesses. I thought the registered name of the business was Redman Corporation, but I couldn’t swear to anything. There was never a sign out front, and Dad always called it Redhead. It was a nondescript but fancy building in a mosaic of bricks.

I still had the two different accounting logs, but they were no longer in my knapsack. They rested on my knees. I drummed my fingernails on the leather, impatient and a little nauseated.

The cab let me out at Redhead and I walked inside, practicing a slow, rhythmic breathing to keep myself from passing out or anything. Even my stride was strange, like it was the first time I was walking in heels all over again.

I had never stood up to my father before. I had never questioned him.

He always seemed above those gestures, until now. I never even criticized his absences. Never.

As I crossed the first stairwell, I recognized a long-time employee of my dad’s, Marvin Hershel, whom I had been instructed to call “Uncle Marv” ever since I was ten. I nodded and waved, demure.

“Hey, pumpkin,” Marvin called to me as I continued climbing the stairwell. “Here to see your daddy?”

“He always works late before the weekend,” I called back with a fake, shaky laugh.

At the top of the stairwell, there was an empty desk where his secretary would sit before five. Sometimes, anyway. The gleaming, copper-colored double doors waited for me. A cold sweat sprang out of my palms, and I swallowed.

Here we go. Here we go.

I stepped over the carpet in slow motion.

I stopped at the doors and took a deep breath.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Who the fuck thinks that they can walk into Redman Corporation Headquarters after fucking six o—” I pushed the office door open and Dad’s tirade ceased. His fury melted away, and he smiled at me warmly. He sat at a desk with another book open in front of him and a pen in his right hand. They were more financial records. “Oh, it’s my princess. What are you doing here, darling?”

“I need to talk to you,” I forced myself to say. My words sounded like they were coming from a pit deep in my chest.

Dad frowned and put his pen down. “What’s going on? You look beautiful, as usual. So, it can’t be anything too bad.”

He smiled, but I couldn’t summon the will to smile back at him.

“Dad.” I showed him the records I was carrying. The thin, paperbound 2017 records for the store. And the thick, leather-bound 2017 records that Will transcribed. I didn’t even say anything. I let him see what I was holding.

And that was enough. His eyes changed. They turned cold and dark in a flash. They were the eyes of my father one second, and the eyes of a shark the next.

“Nina,” he said, drawing himself to a stand. “What is that?”

“Took me a few hours,” I confessed, “but I found the old book in this hidden shelf in my office. It’s weird, because you would think that I would know about all the shelves in my office. But I found a new one.”

“Huh. I’ve never seen the paper one before.”

“That makes sense. They were records I took before putting Will on them.”

His eyes went from the records to me. He stood up and braced the desk with his hands, leaning on them. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not seeing your point here.”

“The numbers are way off,” I rasped. “Way off.” I’m going to throw up. “I can’t even track down anyone known to be associated with the store for tax purposes. Employees. Donors. Vendors. Nobody is there.”

Dad shook his head. His jaw worked beneath his skin. “I don’t understand why you’re bringing this to me.” His voice was quiet and thoughtful but dangerous anyway. It reminded me of a rattlesnake. It was soft, but it still gripped my guts. “Is the store not doing well? How much money do you need?”

I ignored the change of subject. “We should be out of business, based on revenues. But somehow we ended last year with an extra six hundred thousand dollars.”

Dad grimaced and stretched out a hand. “Let me see the book. Let me see what you’re talking about.”

I took a step toward him and paused. Some small voice in the back of my head told me that if I gave him these books, I’d never see them again.

“I would rather not.” My voice stayed measured and ladylike. “They’re my books.”

Dad surprised me by sliding around to the other side of the desk and striding toward me with purpose. “I said,” he repeated, “let me see them.”

I bound my arms tighter around the books and stepped back again, shaking my head.

Dad lunged toward me, and I shrieked. His hands gripped my jacket, and I tore out of it, bolting down the stairwell with the books jammed under my arms.

“Marv!” Dad hollered out into the building. His voice echoed. “Grab her!”

By the time I reached the landing on the first floor, Marvin was already standing, waiting to block me. I came up short and my breath jammed in my throat. Uncle Marv?

“I don’t want to hurt you, cupcake,” Marvin warned me, and Dad’s footsteps came down the stairwell to collect me from behind.

I tried to dodge around Marvin, and he got his meaty fingers around my arm, but I shrilled a scream in his face and thrashed my legs hard. The tweed pencil skirt ripped up the back, and I cocked my heel, planting it into Marvin’s thigh.

“Ack!”

Marvin released me, and, for a split second, I was hanging between spaces. Then gravity took over, and I crashed down the last flight of steps, spilling onto my face at the foyer.

But I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t feel a single bruise. All I felt was sunlit relief splash through my heart. That was the exit right in front of me.

I collected the books against my chest and bolted in my heels, twisting my ankle in my desperation and slamming against the glass doors. My weight still let me out, but I had to limp now. I didn’t feel it yet, but the stairwell and bannister had decorated my lip and cheek with cuts and bruises. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. Ripped skirt, no coat, didn’t care.

I hobbled through the city night without even seeing the blur of storefronts or the shadows lingering around them. The cold air and my speed felt good. My face was throbbing now, and my ankle sang, but I didn’t take off my heels, and I didn’t think too hard. I was in so much shock that it was probably the most fucking Zen I’d ever been.

I don’t know how long it took me to get to Toasty’s. I didn’t pay any attention. I wasn’t afraid. I panted as I finally hit the front doors of the rundown Montclair bar, shoving my way in and limping toward the front.

“Wh-what h-happened to your window?” I asked, shivering.

I didn’t make it to the bar before Eli vaulted over it and was on top of me. “What the hell happened to you?” he barked, barely touching me before charging at the doors. I kept limping toward those stools. I needed to sit down so bad.

Even as I settled onto one of them and let my body finally rest, I could hear him outside, bellowing for everyone to hear. “You want to fucking hurt someone half your goddamn size, you weak, cowardly piece of shit? I will break you in half for her so it can be a fair fight, motherfucker.”