Page 94 of Courage, Dear Heart

My father grins. And that’s the grin of every movie villain ever made. It’s the kind of smile that always precedes bad news, berating, and accusation. I grew up with those smiles.

My father sets the glass down and leans his elbows on my desk, steeples his fingers, and the smile turns into a thin line of disapproval.

What have I done now?

“You’ve had this deal on your desk”—he taps the folder that he must have dug out from my drawer—“for weeks now and we still don’t have that damn building.”

I really don’t want to deal with him right now. I want to bask in the afterglow, but there’s no way around it. And at this stage, excuses won’t work. I can’t put him off anymore. “The deal will not happen. Mrs. Caruso is not interested in selling now, not a year from now, not ever.”

My father rises abruptly, pushing the chair backward against the wall. “I don’t give a fucking rat’s ass about what that woman wants or doesn’t want. I gave you a job. You have one job and that’s to get me the fucking building.”

No, I don’t have one job. Acquisitions is not even my job,but I keep quiet about that. “What do you want me to do? Kick her to the curb? Drag her by the hair like a caveman? She’s an old lady set in her ways. It’s her building, and she doesn’t want to sell it.”

“We need that building for the Sunrise expansion project.”

I take three steps toward my desk and drop my briefcase on the chair. “Well,Dad, you’re gonna have to move along without this building. It’s not for sale.”

“I will not move along. You either make her agree with it or you won’t like the consequences.”

I rear back. “Are you threatening me?”

“Don’t make me dig up dirt, boy. I don’t want to get my hands dirty.”

I frown. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t get to be in this position by playing by the rules every single time. There are times that you have to man up and do what needs to be done whether you like it or not.”

Alarm bells are ringing inside my head. “What do you mean, man up?”

He smiles that vicious smile again. “You think I don’t know about your little affair?”

Everything goes cold inside me.

“At first, I thought you were being smart. Get into her pants, convince her to sell the store, get the fuck out, so the old bird doesn’t have a reason to hold onto the property.” He walks around my desk, stops halfway to the door. “But that’s not what happened, is it? You had to get yourself attached. To a widow. With a dumb, mute kid, no less.”

My hands fist at my sides and I hold still because if I move an inch, it will be to rain punches on my father. And Ican’t protect Jillian if I’m in jail. I have no doubt my father would send me to jail if that meant getting me out of the way so he can get his hands on what he wants.

“Are you keeping tabs on me? What I do? Where I go?”

“Of course I am. Do you think I’d allow you to get away with it? To try to undermine me and all I’ve worked so hard for? My legacy for you. Not that you deserve any of it, but being that you’re my only son, what choice do I have?”

I want to tell him to take that legacy and shove it up his ass, but I know that any confrontation now will only enrage him more and he won’t take it out on me. No. He’ll go after Jillian and Mrs. Caruso. I try to calm myself down. Maybe I can still salvage this. “Father, I’d never do anything to hurt this firm. I don’t understand why getting that particular building is so important for the Sunrise project. If you’d tell me, then I could understand it and?—”

He walks to the door and stops with his hand on the handle. “You don’t have to know my reasons. I told you to get it done. And that’s the only thing you need to know.”

I take a deep breath and try again. “Help me understand.”

He pulls open the door. “I don’t care what it takes or what you have to do. You have one week. You won’t like what will happen if you don’t get me the fucking building.”

FIFTY-TWO

Jillian

“You have one week.You won’t like what will happen if you don’t get me the fucking building.”

The angry voice stops me in my tracks. I retreat behind a huge Ficus tree. The leaves are wide enough to hide behind it. I wait until I no longer hear steps. Then I approach the open office door and peer through the glass panel that flanks it, cautious, half-expecting some kind of monster to jump out of it. What I see is no monster. Elliott is standing inside the room, hands so tightly fisted at his sides, his knuckles are ghost white. An expression I’ve never seen on his face. His jawline is tight with tension, his skin is flushed, and there’s a band of sweat on his forehead despite the chill in the air from the air conditioner. He looks through the opening without seeing me.

I stand there quietly, debating if I should go back or push forward. The phone in my hand rings and breaks whatever trance Elliott was under. He looks at me.Blinks a few times like he’s physically trying to free himself from the hold of whatever had him so tense.

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