Page 13 of Broken Vows

And yet, as a glutton for punishment, I tap open the article.

“Dr. George K. Astor, Dean of the prestigious St. Benedicts University in Boston, New York Times bestselling author, and credited for his groundbreaking studies on neurodiversity and corporate leadership, will be signing books and taking audience questions at Columbia University…”

The words blur. Everything blurs. Since seeing Lexie last week in the flesh, smelling that vanilla on her skin, reveling in the way her freckles faded over the years and how her thick red hair begged to be wound and fisted in my grip, I’m pushed into a different reality. I need to fucking focus.

I tap off the article. I already know what it will say. The public adores this version of my father. The charming, gifted scholar, who can seduce a room of students and professionals alike in a single hour.

They don’t want to know about the father who, when I was a child, was only present in my life when I was useful to him—when my behavior could be observed, corrected, or folded into his research.

They wouldn’t want to hear that he demanded obedience and that the alternative was something far worse. Children expect yelling, anger, noise when they’re in the wrong. What they don’t expect is to be treated as though they no longer exist. When I was ten, he went an entire month without speaking to me after I said I didn’t want to attend a conference with him, as if refusing to perform had rendered me obsolete.

They’d be appalled to learn that the doctor celebrated as a beloved family man was the same person who perfected cruelty behind closed doors. I was never a child, but a subject.

I thought he only did the fucked-up mind games on me. But as I grew older, I realized I wasn’t the only one.

I’ve waited years to expose the truth. Building a case against my father, uncovering the rot beneath the world-renowned scholar and the lives he’s destroyed, has cost me time, money and more energy than I care to measure.

The need to burn his reputation to the ground, to show the world who he really is behind the cloak of degrees, bestselling books, and my mother’s powerful lineage, has consumed me. And finally, I’m close.

There’s too much riding on this for any kind of distraction. And yet, ever since I saw Lexie six months ago in that coffee shop window, my focus has been fractured.

Lexie cannot jeopardize my mission.

She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Where I had the kind of education money buys, hers came from the street and a sharp instinct for learning. When I overheard her talking shit about me and Anna at her work, it was a reminder—I can’t let that happen again. I’ve worked too hard to quietly expose my father’s atrocities, and I refuse to let Lexie—the woman who chose him over me—blow up everything I have planned.

The call I’ve been anticipating comes in. “This better be good news.”

I don’t hold back the fury in my voice and I can almost hear my assistant Michael’s heavy sigh through the receiver. Having been on our family’s payroll since before I was born, I quickly learned Michael is a man who can do anything. Things that need to be swept under rugs, he sweeps. Evidence of wrongdoings, buried. Whispers and gossip, stamped out with blackmail and threats of retaliation. Michael is the man that gets shit done, no matter what it is.

So, that’s why, right now, I don’t understand how hard it is to get me one goddamn studio apartment.

“It’s fifty/fifty,” Michael says. I immediately grit my molars. I’m a doctor. Fifty/fifty is unacceptable. Fifty/fifty means an equal chance of living or dying. That’s bullshit. And if those odds aren’t at one hundred by the end of the week, someone will pay.

“A west-facing one bedroom opened up—”

“East facing.” I exhale fire through my nose. “It has to be east facing.”

A long pause follows. “The west facing has better views, more space, is available immediately—”

“This is non-negotiable.” I push myself from the chair and pace my small office. What the hell does Michael not understand? He needs to make this happen and right the fuck now. My neck is hot. I hook my finger in my collar and tug.

It’s been three months of apartment hunting, and my patience is running thin. The need to be close to Lexie again after so many years apart was eating me alive and, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t rest until I did something. So, I settled on getting a place close to her. But then the engagement happened—the perfect excuse to be in her presence one last time before I get married. I told myself I’ll get my fix and finally get her out of my head for good. With so much standing in my way, I realize how badly I need this one space to help quiet my spinning thoughts—especially after hiring Lexie as our wedding coordinator last week.

I have the means, I have Michael, and patience has never been my virtue. I get what I want, when I fucking want, and I despise being told no. But I’m desperate.

And I’m never fucking desperate.

“Listen to me. I don’t care what you have to do. Find dirt on the landlord. Grab the west facing one and bribe one of the renters in the east-facing apartments to switch. Threaten a tenant. Do you understand me? This gets taken care of this weekend.”

“You’re going to be married this summer,” Michael says. “I don’t understand why—”

“It’s done. This weekend. Understood?” My grip is so tight on the phone that I might crush it. I hang up before he has the chance to push out an exasperated sigh and give me his version of a fatherly scolding. Michael has never let me down. He will get this done. He has no choice. I have no choice.

A knock on the door snaps my attention. I drag my hands down my cheeks and exhale. Fuck. “Come on in!”

The door cracks open and Erica, the bubbliest of the RNs in my unit, pops in. “Hey Dr. Astor, do you have a second?”

Right now, no.