If he touched me again, I knew somehow my throat would let me scream.
His arm fell to his side, and he eyed me warily.
I didn’t want his comfort, or his acidic scent, or his damn handkerchief. I wanted my father, and not this stranger who profited off history that wasn’t his own. Not this stranger who was amurderer.
But whoever I thought my father was, whatever I had believed, was lost to me forever. All it took was a few seconds, the time it had taken him to remove his appalling disguise. It was incredible how life could pivot so sharply. How someone you thought you knew could turn into a stranger in the space of a breath.
“How long have you been Basil Sterling?” I choked out, my throat still too tight. “How long have you been acriminal, Papá?”
He must have read the disappointment in my face because with every word, he became more and more withdrawn. My parents never argued in front of me, but I certainly had raged against them. In anger, Mamá became coldly stern and unmoving. If pushed, she was a screamer. Papá never shouted, never raised his voice above a moderate tone. He would use logic to wear down my arguments. He would reason and coax and turn factual or quote literary giants to support his arguments. I learned early on that it was hard to fight with someone smarter than you.
“How long have you beenhim?” I said at his stubborn silence. “How long?”
“I have played the role of Basil Sterling for many, many years,” he said. “At first, it was because I grew increasingly frustrated by the antiquities department’s inability to staunch the flow of artifacts leaving Egypt. As a government agent, I witnessed firsthand the corruption, and I vowed to stop it—from within.”
“How noble of you,” I said scathingly.
He ignored my tone. “As I acquired many relics of historical value, Ideveloped quite a name for myself. I knew real power.” His eyes gleamed. “Suddenly, dignitaries and collectors wanted whatIhad. At first, I sold anything chipped or defective in some way. Then duplicates, redundancies. Multiple statues of the same god—that sort of thing.”
My father always had an eye for business. “And so the money came in.”
“The money came in,” he affirmed. “I was down a road I never thought I’d travel, and one day I realized that I couldn’t turn back.” He sat down on the sofa, hooked his foot around the leg of my chair, and dragged it forward. We faced each other as we normally would when we’d discuss our favorite plays or the latest performance at the opera house. I used to ache for his attention, for his love, but looking at him now, I only felt a deep repulsion. “By then, it was too late. I’d done too much, and there was no going back,” he said softly. “I had no choice but to keep up the persona.”
“There’s always a choice—”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said sharply. “I didn’t want to turn back.”
“So you founded the moving gate,” I said bitterly. “And turned away from everything you taught me—respect for our histories, never to cheat or steal or commit murder. Was Mamá a part of it from the beginning?”
He leaned back against the sofa, folded his arms across his chest. The line of his shoulders was tense, his jaw rigid. “Not at first, but she caught on eventually. When she did, I had to loop her into my plans. She had a knack for bringing people together. Forging connections. She persuaded me to grant favors, give discounts.” His lips twisted. “Soon, I had the most influential people in my pocket. That was all your mother.”
“Then what happened?”
“She proved untrustworthy.”
Once again, I thought of the man my father had sentenced to death for making a mistake. Someone who was probably in over his head, not knowing he dealt with the devil.
I was suddenly sitting too close to him. This room felt too small with him in it. But my mind spun with questions, and I wanted to know more. “You mean the affair.”
“It was more than that,” he said. “But essentially, yes. She failed to report back regularly, failed to show up when I needed her. She became too busy for me, and her visits to the excavation sites were infrequent. When she did turn up, her behavior was unacceptable.”
“What do you mean?”
Papá looked at me steadily. “That part will have to remain between me and Lourdes. Suffice it to say, I found her cold demeanor off-putting. During her last visit, I followed her back to Cairo and discovered the affair.” His fingers dug into his arms, knuckles turning white. “I learned of her little family, complete with another daughter. It wasn’t until I met her here in Alexandria with you that I put together who she was. A charming little reprobate. Isadora was her name, wasn’t it?”
Mutely, I nodded, noting his use of past tense. Briefly, I wondered how he had known what happened to her at the lighthouse. But an event like that would not have gone unnoticed for long.
“Well,” Papá said with an icy smile, “I can’t say I’m sorry she’s dead. How did she die? Does it have something to do with the bruises on your neck?”
I remembered the way Isadora had wrapped her hands around my throat and squeezed, the panic I’d felt the moment I realized I wasn’t getting enough air. “She fell,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“She fell,” he repeated. “And the bruises?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said.
“It does to me.”
I brushed this aside. If his words were supposed to reassure me of his fatherly devotion and protection, it was too late for that. I didn’t want either of those things from him.
