“Claire, what the hell are you doing?” Serena demanded.
Claire didn’t look back. She stared down the sights of the gun at her father and walked toward him step by step, slowly, until the gun was an inch from his eyes. Serena saw Claire’s whole body trembling. There was hatred in her face and a world of hurt gushing out like oil from a well.
Boni didn’t even seem to notice the gun. His blue eyes and her blue eyes were locked in a duel. Claire was crying, and she struggled to keep the gun level.
“Now you know what it felt like for me,” she said. “Powerless.”
“What do you want, Claire?”
“Tell Blake the truth,” she said. “You owe him that.”
“I don’t owe him anything,” Boni snapped.
Claire shook her head. “You murdered Amira, didn’t you? Because she had the fucking gall to try to get out from under your thumb. Because she didn’t want to be owned and controlled anymore.”
“I loved Amira,” Boni told her.
“Everything you love gets hurt,” Claire retorted.
“I can’t talk about it.”
“It was forty years ago,” she insisted. “No one can touch you now.”
“You may as well kill me, Claire, if that’s what you want. I’m not going to say anything about Amira.”
“Is that what you want? You want me to pull the trigger?”
“For God’s sake, stop this,” Serena pleaded with her. She started to move toward them, and Boni held up one hand to stop her.
“It’s all right, Detective,” Boni said. He focused on Claire. “Kill me if you want, sweetheart. I just wish you wouldn’t throw away your own life to do it.”
“Does my life mean more to you?” Claire asked. She tilted her head back and shoved the barrel of the gun under her own chin. “How about now?”
“Claire! No!” Serena shouted.
Boni looked at his daughter. Serena thought his eyes were filling up with tears. “You’re so beautiful. Just like your mother.”
“Do you think that kind of shit will work on me now?” Claire asked. “What’s next? You’ll tell me how much you love me? That doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I do love you.”
“Do you think I won’t do it?” Claire demanded, pushing the gun harder against her skin. “Is that it? I’m your child. You know I will.”
“If you thought it would give me enough pain, yes, I know you would.”
“Look at us!” Claire said. “This is the family you’ve built. Look at your son on the wall. That’s what you did to him. And you know damn well what you did to me.”
Boni recoiled as if he had been struck. “Please, Claire, don’t go there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I airing our dirty laundry in public? Am I embarrassing you?”
“Claire,” Boni begged her. “No.”
It was as if Claire smelled a wound and steered for it like a shark. “You knew what that bastard did to me.”
Serena didn’t know who Claire was talking about, but Boni obviously did. He was visibly shaken.
“It was a terrible misunderstanding,” Boni said.
“Misunderstanding? You accused me of being drunk. You said I led him on. You knew that was a lie.”
“I didn’t want to believe what he had done to you.”
Boni raised his arms, reaching out to her, trying to touch her. Claire stepped back and flung the gun into the pool, where it splashed into the opaque water. She screamed, “He raped me!”
“Claire, we can’t talk about this. Not here.”
“Oh, no, no, of course not. It might endanger the empire. It might hurt him. My God, he raped your own daughter, and you covered it up.”
“I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”
“You had a choice. Me or him. But that was never a choice, was it? It’s always been him. Everything you’ve ever done, it’s been to protect him.”
Who, Serena wanted to shout.
“We talked about this,” Boni said. “You told me you understood.”
“Of course I understood. I was asking you to expose a lifetime of lies. You would have lost everything. Gone to prison. So I was the good girl, and I shut up. I shut up, even though I had nightmares for years. I shut up, even though I was sick and scared every time I saw his face. I shut up, and I saved you.”
“It was more than ten years ago, Claire,” Boni asked. “What can I do? How can I finally make this right?”
“You can never make it right. But just once in your life, you can tell the truth. You can face up to something you’ve done. What happened to Amira?”
Boni looked stricken. “I can’t talk about that.”
“Why not? You say you don’t owe Blake, but you sure as hell owe me.”
“I know I do, but you can’t ask me that, Claire. You can’t.”
Claire looked as if she would explode in frustration. If the gun were still in her hand, Serena thought, she would have killed Boni. Or herself. Or both. She turned away, and her shoulders wrenched as she sobbed.
Boni closed his eyes. His daughter’s pain seemed to stab him and open up old wounds. “It was him, Claire,” he said quietly. “Back then. With Amira.”
Claire swung back in disbelief. “No.”
Boni nodded. “That was when it started between him and me. I made him. Like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Mickey killed Amira?”
Boni’s face contorted as if Claire had thrown open Pandora’s box and all the demons had flown out and scattered. As if, by saying the name, she had taken the gun and shot him.
Serena’s mind raced, and she mouthed the word at Stride. Mickey?
Claire stepped forward and slapped him across the face, so hard that the old man lost his balance. “You knew what kind of monster he was. How could you let him near me? How could you ask me to go out with him?”
“So much time had passed, Claire. I thought he was different. I thought I could trust him.”
“He’s still more important to you than I am, isn’t he? After all these years. Of course he is. This is still about the empire. The Orient. The capstone to your life, and every brick of it built on suffering and violence and death.”
“Stop it, Claire.”
Claire shouted in his face, her lip curling in contempt. “Mickey! That’s our big secret, Daddy. He’s been hung around your neck—and mine—for forty years.”
Boni shook his head. “He’s still there, Claire. This doesn’t change a thing. You know that.”
“Yes, it does. It’s over. There’s going to be a trial. Blake’s trial. It’s all going to come out. Amira. Mickey. You. Everything.”
“I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s out of your control now.”
Boni’s voice was weary. “Nothing is out of my control, Claire.”
He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a pack of European cigarettes. He slid one into his hand and then hunted in another pocket and emerged with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter.
“Nothing,” he said.
He flicked the lighter, and even in the wind, it threw up a tiny flame.
A second later, on the ledge, Blake jerked up like a toy dancer jolted with electricity, his eyes growing wide. Serena saw him stagger in confusion. A stain of red opened up on his shirt, dripping in trails down his chest. Another instant later, the sound wave of a distant crack rolled across the terrace. Blake seemed to fold in on himself. He sagged, his face went pale, and he vanished backward on the long fall that led to the parking lot below.