Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Rose

Ruby greets us outside Harry’s room in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. She still looks glamorous in ivory lounge pants, coordinating sweater, and a string of perfect pearls around her neck, but there are cracks showing that were not there before.

She hugs Brandon when he arrives, her cheek barely grazing her son’s before she pulls away. I notice the lines criss-crossing her eyelids and fanning from the corners of her eyes. Were they always there, unnoticeable behind the polished fa?ade and the permanent smile, or have they only appeared since she realized her husband’s mortality?

“Rose. Thank you for coming.”

She embraces me, gripping my upper arms tightly. To Brandon, it must look like a perfunctory hug for her new and unexpected daughter-in-law, but I sense her fragility through the slender fingers.

“How is he?” I ask.

“Impatient.” The smile is back, her gaze jumping between me and Brandon. “Grumpy. Angry with himself for being weak.”

“A heart attack isn’t a sign of weakness,” I blurt out. “It can happen to anyone.”

“Not to Harry Weiss, Rose. He has always believed that he is invincible.”

“What are the doctors saying?” Brandon looks tired.

He hasn’t fully recovered from the concussion and the semi-permanent hangover that is a vacation in Las Vegas, and I want to rest his head on my shoulder and soothe away the pain so that he can sleep.

“High blood pressure.” Ruby inhales deeply. “Stress.”

“Why didn’t the doctors pick up on this sooner? If they’d been monitoring it this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Brandon.” I touch his arm, and he doesn’t pull away, even though his mom is watching. “There’s no point worrying about what-if’s. Your dad is in the best place.”

He nods his agreement, but I’m not sure that he’ll let it drop.

Harry is sitting up in bed when we enter his room, propped up against the pillows, tubes inserted into his nose and the back of his hand, monitors attached to his bare chest.

“Have you come to take me home?” he asks Brandon.

“Has the doctor discharged you, Dad?” Brandon takes a seat beside his mom, the plastic squeaking beneath him while he tries to achieve a position that won’t send him sliding towards the floor.

“I feel fine.”

Brandon glances at the monitor standing close to the bed, the green line blipping slowly across the screen. “Then it won’t be long until they send you home. Rest. Be patient.”

“Being patient never got anyone anywhere.”

“Where do you need to be, Dad?”

Brandon hasn’t touched his father. There were no hugs when we entered the room, and Harry doesn’t look like a man who missed out on being comforted by his eldest son. Now, it’s almost like watching them play a game of chess, and I wonder if that’s how their relationship thrives, on moves and countermoves, until they reach checkmate.

But for once, I can hear the silent clock ticking on the wall behind the bed.

Time is running out. I have less than twenty-four hours to convince Brandon to pull out of the deal with Ron Valentine, and now that we’re back in New York City, I already feel as if I’ve lost him.

“How was Vegas, Rose?”

I shake myself back to the present when I realize that Harry is talking to me. “Busy. Loud. We saw Rod Stewart.”

Harry’s gaze slides sideways to his son, lingering a beat, before drifting back to me. “How did you manage that?” He doesn’t look at the rings on my finger, but somehow, I know that he has seen them.

“It was Rod or Mariah Carey.” I chew my bottom lip. “He promised me that he would wear a pair of leopard-print pants.”

“Did he fulfill that promise, Rose?” Harry asks.

“Not yet, but I’m still hopeful.”

Ruby reaches across Brandon’s lap and squeezes my hand, and I don’t know if the gesture is one of pity or acceptance, but I’m glad that I tied a chiffon scarf around my neck. Tears sting behind my eyes, and I blink furiously to contain them.

“Me too, Rose. Me too.” Harry seems to sink back into the pillows, eyes closed.

“Perhaps this is your body telling you to take a step back, Dad,” Brandon says.

Harry doesn’t open his eyes. “Next you’ll be telling me to take a cruise around the world, spend my days lounging by a pool and eating too much caviar at the captain’s table.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“I’ve been trying to convince him for years,” Ruby says. “You know your father—if it isn’t his idea, he isn’t playing along.”

“So, what do you want to do, Dad? Long term. Where do you see yourself in five years?”

I’m mesmerized by the green line on the monitor while Harry ponders the question with his eyes still closed. Is this what retirement looks like to a man like Harry Weiss? Hospital rooms and pressure from his family to relax? Is he afraid to slow down because he doesn’t like what he sees on the path ahead, or has he simply forgotten how to?

“In a house on a lake with a fishing boat out the front, and a tennis court out the back.”

Ruby smiles at her husband, reaches across to the bed and entwines his fingers with her own. “Why didn’t you say so? You know I’d love to get out of the city.”

Harry smiles at his wife, a smile that has taken a lifetime to cultivate and now has indestructible roots. “Ruby, you thrive in the city.”

“New York has two airports and more limousines than it can accommodate. You think I’m afraid to travel to dinner parties and events?”

While his parents are caught up in the dream, I’ve been watching Brandon. The color drained from his face when Harry mentioned the house by a lake, and a tic appeared in his jaw that wasn’t even there when he received the news of Harry’s heart attack.

He catches my eye and stands abruptly. “I’ll be outside.”

Ruby watches him leave. “Why don’t you go after him, Rose?”

I nod. Ruby Weiss isn’t the kind of woman you say no to, in any circumstances.

I catch up with Brandon by the vending machine, staring at the options behind the glass panel. “Brandon?”

He faces me, his brow furrowed, as if he has no idea how I got here. “What do you want to drink, Rose?”

“I’m fine.”

How can I tell him that I’m a million miles away from being fine? That I blew my opportunity this morning to give those men what they want, and now it’s too late? That I hate myself for conceding defeat so easily, but his father’s health is more important than a business deal even if it goes against everything the Weiss family stands for?

We hear voices then, approaching the entrance to the ward. Raised voices.

Brandon presses a button on the vending machine panel and a can of soda slides into the tray at the bottom, as the buzzer sounds, and the door opens.

Damon enters first, striding purposefully towards us, Kelly in his wake. She gazes at Brandon before turning her attention to me. We hug. “Rose, is everything okay? You left so suddenly…” She leaves the sentence hanging.

“Of course she’s okay.” Damon grabs my left hand, twisting it around to show her the diamond ring. “My brother had you fooled.”

“I…” Kelly’s eyes are all over the place. Finally, she says, “Not now, Damon.”

Brandon holds the can of soda in front of him, suddenly unsure what to do with it. “It isn’t what you think.”

“Brandon,” Kelly’s voice softens. “You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

“Ha!” Damon snaps. “It’s people like you buying into this shit that allows people like my brother to get away with it. It’s all for show. Give it six weeks, and you won’t even remember her name for fuck’s sake.”

I move closer to Brandon and slide my hand into his. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Damon, but your father is in that room”—I gesture to the doorway behind me— “so, maybe we can discuss this another time.”

A smile twitches at the corners of Kelly’s mouth. “How is he, Brandon?”

“Same as usual: questioning why he can’t get out of bed and go home.”

Damon pushes past us and opens the door. Kelly follows him, glancing at us over her shoulder, her gaze drifting down to my hand. She seems to want to say more, but Damon is already saying, “No more fried shrimp for you for a while, Dad.”

The door closes behind them.

“Brandon, are you okay?” I stand in front of him and force him to make eye contact. Since we arrived, I sense the barriers being raised between us again, and I don’t know where that will leave me once they reach full height.

This morning, in Vegas, on the balcony of our suite in the Venetian, I saw a whole new side to Brandon, a side that I wish I could pin in place so that it doesn’t slip away again. I understand that he’s worried about his dad, but how can I make him understand that he doesn’t need to shut me out?

“Sure. It’s been a long couple of days.” He’s looking directly at me, but the Brandon from this morning has already checked out. “Why don’t you go back to my apartment, Rose? You don’t have to stick around. Here, take my key. The concierge will recognize you.”

He slides the key from his wallet and places it in my hand along with the can of soda.

I stare at them. “I don’t want to go?—”

But he is already heading back into the room. I study the closed door for several moments and sit heavily on a seat in the waiting area.

I can’t go back to his apartment. I can’t leave Brandon. I want to be here for him, to offer him comfort, to remind him that his dad’s life might have to change after this scare, but it won’t stop him. I’m a grown woman in the twenty-first century, and I don’t need my husband’s permission to stand by his side if that’s where I want to be.

Mind made up, I slip Brandon’s key into my purse, get back up, and head over to Harry’s room, Damon’s voice rising above the others inside. He’s a showman. Everything he does and says is an act that he started as a child and has perpetuated into adulthood because he’s comfortable hiding behind it.

My hand closes around the handle when I catch a glimpse of movement from the other end of the corridor. A shudder travels down my spine, all my senses suddenly alert.

I step away from the door and turn slowly to face the corridor. There’s no one there, no nurses striding urgently towards an emergency, no visitors stepping out of a patient’s room. But I saw someone.

Or rather, I sensed someone’s presence. They were dressed all in black, and they were watching me.

Setting the soda can down on the floor, I hurry along the corridor, grateful that I wore sneakers instead of heels. I slap my hand on the exit button and wait for the door to open. Slowly. Juddering on its hinges.

Into the stairwell I stop, listening for the sound of footsteps. Silence. I descend a couple of steps and peer up and down, hoping to catch a glimpse of a hand on the banister, but there’s no movement. Nothing at all.

It will take too long to go back inside and wait for the elevator, so I take the stairs down to ground level, two at a time, stumbling at the bottom of the first flight, my heart lurching sickeningly inside my chest. My pulse is racing. I don’t know what I saw in the corridor, but my head is telling me that it’s no coincidence—time is running out, and I haven’t done what they asked me to do.

Groups of people are milling about in the hospital lobby. Visitors. Patients. Medical staff. Maintenance guys. Those in uniforms are wearing dull green, stark white, or sky-blue. There’s no one dressed in black.

I navigate the throngs and head outside into the muted sunshine of New York City. The parking lot is as busy as ever. Cars are waiting in line at the drop-off point. I wander towards the closest line of cars, skimming the lot for a glimpse of black, knowing that I’m not going to find it.

If I was right, and I’m being watched, these people wanted me to know. It was a reminder. A warning. They’re not careless enough to be found.

I’m filled with a mounting sense of frustration bordering on panic. I saw what they did to Jennifer—will they do the same to me or will they come after Brandon next? I feel sad for him that the two people they targeted to coerce him into giving them what they want, are Jennifer—a business acquaintance—and me, a woman he has barely known for a few weeks.

But at least it means that Ruby is safe. For now.

Riding the elevator back to the cardiac ward, I feel numb. It’s shit timing, but if I try to steer a conversation back to Ron Valentine now, Brandon will know that there’s more to it than curiosity, and if I tell him the truth…

Damon is leaning against the wall outside Harry’s room when I’m buzzed back into the ward. “Where did you get to?” His voice is lazy, typical Damon. His dad is in a hospital bed on the other side of the wall, but he still obviously has his own agenda.

“I thought I saw someone I know.” Not that I owe him an explanation.

He shrugs. “Sticking around in the case the old man croaks?”

I clench my jaw and hold in the retort on the tip of my tongue. “Have you heard from Jennifer?”

“Nah. Fuck her. I’m sure Brandon got his two cents’ worth in there, warning her against his untrustworthy brother.”

“Don’t you even care what happened to her?”

“Why should I? She’s not my responsibility. Probably hooked up with a sugar daddy who was flashing the cash in the casino.” He pushes himself off the wall, his gaze bypassing me and settling on someone behind me.

I turn around to find Kelly coming out of Harry’s room, and my cheeks flood with heat when I wonder how much of our conversation she overheard.

“My turn.” Damon barely acknowledges his wife as he slips back inside the room, leaving her outside.

“Kelly,” I begin. “I’m so sorry. I saw Damon in Vegas.”

She walks to the coffee machine, and I follow her. “I never thought I’d be that woman, you know, the kind who needs caffeine just to get through the day.” She stares at the mucky brown liquid pouring into the plastic cup and slides it out when it’s ready. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

She straightens, her expression deliberately neutral.

Deep breath. I don’t want to drag Kelly into this, but I can’t do it alone. “Kelly, I need your help.”

She closes her eyes briefly and rubs the skin between her eyebrows with her free hand. “What do you want me to do, Rose? I don’t understand what’s going on here, but this is between you and Brandon.”

“I know. It isn’t about this.” I cover the diamond with my right hand. “It’s about a business deal that Brandon has set up.”

Her eyes narrow, but she’s listening.

“I can’t explain right now.” I keep my voice low and check that no one else is around. “But I need him to reconsider. It … isn’t going to end well for him if he sees it through to completion.”

“Why don’t you let Brandon be the judge of that?” Her voice is cold. Gone is the woman who devised a treasure hunt with me over a pitcher of lemonade.

“They’ll destroy him, Kelly. They’ve already posted pictures of him all over the Internet. I thought… I hoped that you still cared about him enough to speak to him. He’ll listen to you. I’m scared.”

She watches me for so long that I think she’s going to head back inside Harry’s room without another word. Finally, she says, “Do yourself a favor, Rose. If you want to keep Brandon on your side, don’t interfere in business matters.”

She walks away, and I realize that I’m in this alone.