Alpha (34 page)

“You were an
arms dealer
!” I said. “A criminal. Why the fuck should I believe
anything
you say? How do I know you’re not a killer? How do I know you haven’t killed dozens of people?”

Roth groaned. “No, Kyrie. That was just business. It was a
business
. I sold crates of guns to men who wanted them. That’s all. It was boring, most of the time. Show up, exchange a truck full of crates for a suitcase full of cash. Go home and get drunk. Simple. I wasn’t…some sort of dangerous criminal, Kyrie. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. It was a stupid business to get into, I realize that now, but I was alone in the world then, just trying to get by, and…one lucrative opportunity led to another, and then I was in it and making money hand over fist. I didn’t go around shooting people like some sort of James Bond villain.”

“Then what happened with my father?” I had to know. I didn’t want to, but I had to.
 

He turned away. “Like I said, he was getting desperate. The pressure was mounting. I’d put him there on purpose, just to get him to sell, and then I’d make sure it all went away. For another man, it would have been threats of pictures of him with a mistress sent to his wife and the board, or whatever it took to motivate the sale. I had no interest in ruining lives, I was just…singularly focused. But your father took it personally. Instead of selling, he cornered me in a parking garage. He was drunk, or on drugs or something. He wasn’t himself. He had a gun, and he was ranting. Shouting at me, threatening me. I tried to calm him down. I told him we’d work something out. I promised him I’d make the suspicion go away. But…he wasn’t listening.” His voice lowered to a whisper. I had to strain to hear him. “He put the gun to my head. Said he was going to kill me. I watched…his finger, on the trigger. He was shaking. He really was going to kill me. I remember realizing that. I tried to keep him talking. He lowered the gun a bit, just enough for me to jump him. We struggled. I was just trying to get the gun out of his hand. I wasn’t going to shoot him, just…disarm him. I’d been shot once, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience. But he was…crazed. Then the gun went off. I thought he was just shocked at first, like, ‘shit, the gun went off.’ But then he went still, and I felt…something wet. On my chest.”
 

He clenched his fists, leaned over, and rested his forehead on the railing. Finally, he straightened, sucking in a steadying breath. “Fuck. I’ve never spoken of this to anyone.” His eyes met mine. Blue as a winter sky, earnest, a little fearful, even. Yet his voice emerged as strong and controlled as ever.
 

“I pushed him off me, and he was bleeding. God. There was blood fucking everywhere. I don’t even know how it happened. We were fighting for the gun, and then it just went off. The bullet, by some freak accident, hit him right in the heart. He was dead within seconds.” Roth dragged in a breath and let it out, pacing away from me, hands fisting in his hair. “I should’ve said something to someone. I mean, it was an accident. But then there would’ve been an investigation, and while my business was totally legal and legitimate, I did have things in my past I didn’t want getting out. The nature of my coercion of your father wouldn’t have looked good, either. So…I suppose I panicked a bit. I left him there, went back upstairs. The garage was in the basement of a building in which I was renting a penthouse. So I just went upstairs, changed, and then got rid of the clothes. There was no record of my stay in that penthouse, as I knew the owner and was merely subletting it for cash. No cameras, no records, and my friend wouldn’t talk. So I packed up and vanished. I made sure the suspicion surrounding your father went away, and by the time his body was found, it looked like a mugging gone wrong.”

“That’s what they said. The police. A mugging gone wrong. Things didn’t fit, though. It was a secured garage, but there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary, so they closed it after a while. No weapon, no witnesses, no motive anyone could find.” I looked at Roth. The image of him swam and blurred as tears welled up. “I don’t know what to think. What to believe. How to feel.”

“I don’t imagine you do.” Roth took a hesitant step toward me. “I’m so sorry, Kyrie. It was an accident. I never meant for it to happen. After that time we met, briefly, in your father’s office…I couldn’t stop thinking about you. You were so beautiful. You took my breath away, even then. I kept trying to figure out a way to meet you, but nothing ever came up. I couldn’t just approach you out of nowhere, not with the deal I had going with your father. And…when it came to women, you were far from what I was used to. I was used to taking women I wanted for the night and being done. Women were always plentiful in my life, and I never had to worry about impressing them or getting their numbers or any of the usual games a girl in your position was used to. I took what I wanted, and that was that. But I knew, I
knew
you weren’t that type of girl. I couldn’t just cart you off to my bed and discard you when I was done. And then the accident with your father happened. He only had a very small life insurance policy at the time of his death, not nearly enough to make a difference to you and your mother and brother. A few hundred thousand dollars payout, if that. I don’t remember exactly how much.”

I shook my head again. “No, see, he had a huge policy. Over a million dollars.”

Roth scrubbed at his cheek. “No, babe. I upped the policy after his death. From the inside. Made sure there was enough to help out, but not so much that it would raise eyebrows.”

I stumbled backward, tears shocked away. “You—you increased the payout? Why?”

“To see you were cared for. I took a little peek, after the funeral. Just checked on you. Your mother was…unwell. Your brother was just a kid. Bloody hell, Kyrie,
you
were just a kid, barely nineteen years old, but you were the only one capable of taking care of things. So I upped the payout amount. Paid down some of his debts. He hadn’t left you guys in a good place financially. Tens of thousands in credit card debt. A massive mortgage. Three car payments. The policy would’ve been mostly gone by the time all that was liquidated. So I smoothed things over.”

My memory of that time was hazy, but I tried to remember. I had been a sheltered kid. I’d grown up in a nice suburb, everything given to me. Not wealthy, but comfortable. I’d never paid a bill in my life. And after Dad was killed, Mom went cuckoo, so everything fell on my shoulders. I hadn’t even known where to start. Mom was no help, hiding in her room and drinking, smashing furniture, hurting herself. Losing her fucking mind. Bills kept coming, and I didn’t know what to do, how to pay them. So I took Mom’s cards and checkbook and started paying them. Forged her signature. Once, when she was in the throes of some paranoid delusion, I got her to tell me her PIN numbers for the cards and for the bank so I could see how much money we had. There was very little, I remember realizing. At first glance, a fifteen-thousand-dollar account balance seemed like a lot, but then I started adding up the car payments and the house payment and everything else, and I realized it wouldn’t go far. And then I remembered getting something in the mail about the insurance policy. I’d hunted through Dad’s office until I found the number for his lawyer, Albert Emerson. Albert was the one who helped me sort through things. He was a kindly old man, and he taught me a lot about taking care of myself financially. He advised me to put Mom in a home. He helped me sell the house and move into an apartment with Cal, helped me get legal guardianship of Cal so I could take care of him.
 

But now, thinking through what Roth was telling me, I realized things did add up. The house had sold in a matter of days, yet I remembered the house across the street, which was bigger and newer than ours, going unsold for months. Bills had suddenly stopped coming, and I never questioned it, too stressed to figure it out, just grateful. He’d “smoothed things out.” And I’d never realized it. The cars. Jesus. He’d paid off the cars, and I hadn’t put it together. I’d had car payments, three of them: Mom’s, Dad’s, and mine. I remembered the bills coming in and realizing how fast things added up. But then the funeral happened, and I’d had to put Mom in the home, had to get guardianship of Cal so I could sign him in and out of school, take him to the doctor—shit, I’d had to learn how to do everything. All the things that came with adulthood came crashing down on me at once. And then, once I’d gotten that stuff sort of figured out, I’d had to sell the house. And by the time
that
was done and Cal and I had moved into a two-bedroom apartment, the bills for the cars had just vanished. I’d gotten Albert’s help in selling all the cars except mine, a two-door Honda Civic, the same one I was still driving. I’d needed the money I’d gotten from Mom’s and Dad’s, a Lincoln MKZ and a Mercedes, respectively. I’d wanted to keep Dad’s, obviously, since it was a really nice car, but Albert had convinced me of the impracticality of that. So I’d sold the expensive cars and kept the practical one, and never questioned what had happened to the outstanding debts on them.
 

“Did you pay off Albert?” I asked.

Roth shook his head. “No. I never contacted Albert. He was on retainer for your father, just in case. Albert wasn’t involved in Nicholas’ day-to-day affairs. I know he helped you, though.”

I nodded. “He was invaluable in those early days after Dad’s death. I didn’t know what I was doing. He helped me figure out a whole bunch of things.” I let out a breath. “What about the house? Did you have a hand in getting it sold?”

Roth shrugged. “Yes, of course. The seller’s market was positively horrendous at that time. You would never have sold it. So I purchased it. Through a series of fronts, of course.”

I blinked at him in shock. “
You
bought it?” You wouldn’t have thought I could be any more surprised at that point, but the shocks just kept coming.

“Yes. And then resold it for a ridiculously low price to an employee of mine.” Roth slumped back into the chair. “Are those details really important right now, Kyrie?”

I shook my head and paced away, folding my arms over my stomach. I felt numb. Shocked. I wasn’t sure what to believe, what to think. Could I even believe him? My gut said he was telling the truth. But what did that mean for me?
 

“So that’s why you were watching me?” I said, after a long silence. It was the only thing I could think to ask. Too many thoughts were competing for space in my head.

“Yes. I couldn’t get you out of my head. After I smoothed out your financial situation, I came back to New York and went about my business. I’d done what I could, and more than anyone could expect, probably. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you. So I checked on you a few times. You seemed to be doing okay, figuring things out. That’s all it was at first: checking up on you. That’s all I ever meant it to be. And then I hired Harris. Things were really picking up for me here, my business getting bigger and bigger, so I really didn’t have the time anymore to go personally to Detroit and check on you. So I sent Harris. Told him no contact under any circumstances, and to make sure you never suspected you were being watched. I didn’t want to creep you out, but I felt responsible for you. It was my fault, your father’s death, and all the consequences of that. I couldn’t just leave you to your own devices. But I knew if you knew…who I was, what I’d done…that you would never have spoken to me. And I just didn’t know how to fake a casual meeting. As the years passed, it became…a bit of an obsession, I suppose. Making sure you were okay. Keeping you safe. But I wouldn’t let myself interfere too much. I told Harris to keep his eye on you, to keep you safe. And he did. Once a month, he’d travel to Detroit and spend a week following you, checking on your affairs, making sure you were okay.” He swallowed, staring out at the skyline.
 

“Then the insurance money ran out, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d hoped you would be okay on your own. Because…I knew if you got into too much trouble, I’d be compelled to help. You’d taken so much time off school to just take care of Cal, working during the day to supplement your insurance money, and taking care of your mother…taking care of everyone except yourself. You should have a career by now. A family, maybe. But you don’t, because of me. It was an accident, and I know that, but if I hadn’t tried to force your dad’s hand….” He shook his head. “I changed my tactics after that. Shifted to building up my technologies business, plus investments and venture capital and the like. I never took over another company after that. Not like I had done, anyway. I still buy out companies, and do mergers, but only when the deal happens…naturally.”
 

“So then my life got desperate….” I prompted. I needed to know how I’d gotten here. What his…angle was. What he’d wanted from me.
 

He nodded. “Then your life got desperate. I stayed out as long as I could. But it became clear that you were on the ropes, so to speak, and I’d discovered through various sources that you were about to be let go…I thought about just making them give you a job, but that would only have fixed things temporarily. So I sent you the first check. I hoped…stupidly, perhaps, that you would just…somehow be okay. But you weren’t. Things were piling too high, and you couldn’t ever seem to get ahead. And even if you ever did accomplish your career goals, it wouldn’t solve your financial problems. So I kept sending checks. And the more I watched you, the more I flipped through the photos Harris was sending me…the more I felt like I just…had to know you. I had to. I couldn’t pretend like I was just helping out anymore. So I sent Harris to—”

“Collect me,” I finished for him.

He nodded, fingertips pressed together in front of his face. “And I always knew this day would come. That I’d have to tell you. And now I have.”

I blinked hard. The numbness was wearing off, and the reality was hitting me: Roth was responsible for Daddy’s death. I’d suffered for years just to survive, because of him. Because of a
business deal
. I’d nearly
starved
, and he’d just sat by, hoping I’d “be okay on my own.”