As it also happened, I had a surprise waiting for me in my bedroom, which had nothing to do with my two asshole friends.
“Evening, son.” My father turned around in the recliner by the window, his movements smooth and nonchalant. There was an unlit cigar tucked between his teeth, and a glass of something strong in his hand.
“What are you doing here?” I felt my jaw ticking with irritation.
Talk about shitty timing. The last thing I needed was another distraction. With my luck, my mother was here, too, along with the entire goddamn family.
“Sit your ass down.” He jerked his chin toward my unmade bed.
“Or?” I draped a muscular arm against the wall, challenging.
“That’s an easy one,” he sneered. “Or I will stand up and make you very goddamn uncomfortable by hugging your ass. Because that’s what you need right now, isn’t it, Vaughn?” He slanted his head sideways. “A hug?”
I sat down, resting one boot over his recliner in my small room. I’d been hugged by my dad more than a fucking tree in Woodstock, but there was something about his expression that threw me off. He knew something.
“Here. Sitting down. I’ll ask again—what are you doing here?”
“You’ve been ignoring my calls.”
“I spoke to Mom every day. You never took the phone. Gotta hand it to you. You know how to master the hard-to-get act.”
That was the strangest thing about the entire Dad ordeal, but also precisely what made me not answer his calls. He was on to something, and whatever it was, he didn’t want Mom to hear it.
Dad sat back, but he didn’t look smug. A pang of worry pinched my chest. He had the constant air of someone who’d just fucked your wife, emptied your safe, and taken a shit in your bed. Now he looked surprisingly somber. Somber meant trouble.
“We had to talk privately,” he said.
“Clearly.” I scanned his face, looking for clues.
“I figured it all out, son. I’m sorry. I’m so. Fucking. Sorry.” His voice broke midway, and he turned his face away, his jaw clenching like mine did. His throat bobbed.
No.
No.
I dropped my head into my hands, elbows on my knees, and shook it.
“Troy Brennan?” I asked. It had to be that fixer he’d hooked me up with. How the fuck else did he figure that out?
“No. I made a promise and kept it.”
“Jaime, then?” I snorted in false amusement. He must’ve told Dad I was in some kind of trouble. I didn’t even have it in me to be mad at him. It was the logical thing to do. Still, shitty as hell. He’d signed a contract.
“No,” Dad said, standing up and taking the necessary half-step toward me.
I didn’t want any of what he was about to offer—not the pity, the pain, the shame, the feeling that accompanied those things. Still, he sat next to me on the bed.
“I think Jaime was planning on telling me after the fact. But one night I got into my bedroom and your mom had fallen asleep with the lights on, an art magazine half-open under her arm. I tucked her in and was about to turn off the light when I picked the magazine up and saw an item about how all of Harry Fairhurst’s paintings had been bought by a mysterious collector. I wondered why we hadn’t been approached about the paintings in our house—everyone else had been, after all—but the answer was simple. You had access to our house, and to the paintings in it. I threw the magazine away so she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t do the math herself. I racked my brain trying to figure out why you’d want to own all this motherfucker’s paintings. Better yet, how you could afford them. So I checked your trust fund, and sure enough, it was empty.”
I swallowed wordlessly. I’d been sloppy in that regard. All I could see was the end goal, and that had backfired in my face.
Dad put his hand on my back, both of us hunched over, seated on my bed. My face was still buried in my hands. I felt like a stupid kid, and hated every minute of it.
“What could drive a man to buy an entire, eight-figure collection of paintings he’s not even fond of?” My father’s voice drifted in the air like smoke, lethal and suffocating. “There was only one answer: vengeance.”
I stood up and walked to the window, refusing to face him.
He knew.
Lenora knew.
My secret was no longer mine. It had broken free. Run loose. I had no control over it. It was probably pounding through the alleyways of every ear in my inner circle.
“You want him forgotten,” Dad said gently behind me.
I appreciated that he didn’t say outright the things Harry had done to me. It made the situation a little less unbearable, somehow. I sniffed, ignoring the statement.
I wanted to forget Harry Fairhurst had ever existed, yes, but I knew I couldn’t. So I’d settled for erasing him from the memory of the rest of the world.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
But not if all your paintings are torn, burned, and floating in the Atlantic Ocean. Then you’re just another mortal.
Dad stood up and came toward me. He planted his hands on my shoulders from behind. I dropped my head to my chest. He hadn’t ridden my ass like I thought he would for ghosting him for eternity.
…or spending a sickening amount of money on art I had burned.
“Let me do it,” he whispered.
“Huh?” I spun, my eyebrows diving down.
“I know what you’re about to do, and I’m asking you to let me do it. Not for you, for me. When we talked about your problem before, I told you I wouldn’t pry, but if I found out who was involved, I’d deal with them myself. And you agreed. We shook on it. There’s a lot on the line for you, son. Let me shoulder your burden. Let it be on my conscience, not yours. After all, I was the one who fucked up. I was the one who let it happen. I was the one who didn’t figure it out in that Parisian gallery, the idiot who sent you to Carlisle Prep when you were a young boy. My fuck-up. My mistake. My payback.”
I appreciated how, even now, he did not bunch Mom into the colossal fuck-up that was Harry Fairhurst. He took full responsibility as the head of the family. Some people thought flowers and hearts were romantic. Me, I thought being a badass who took the fall for his entire family and shouldered all their sins was far better. Not that it was really my parents’ fault. They’d prodded, asked, begged, and questioned. They’d provided me with a magnificent childhood, and not just materialistically.
“Thank you,” I said curtly. “But no.”
“You don’t know what killing a person does to your soul.”
“And you do?”
He squeezed my shoulder again, refraining from answering me. Interesting.
“You have a girlfriend.” Dad changed the subject. “Isn’t she his niece? That would complicate things.”
“We’re not staying together.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. That would be beyond awkward, now that she knew my plans for her uncle.
I’d given her all my secrets.
I’d trusted her then, and I trusted her now.
She’d never opened her mouth. And, as it turned out, she hadn’t even known what she saw back then. When I told her about Harry’s abuse, she’d confessed to me that what she saw in that room was completely different.
“I didn’t see Harry’s head underneath you. I just thought it was a girl. I didn’t know anything about oral sex. I thought you were young, and angry, and doing things you shouldn’t be doing and going to regret. I felt sorry for you. At thirteen, you shouldn’t need sex and booze and blow jobs to feel. At thirteen, you’re learning the hang of feelings. It’s life on training wheels, you know?”
I didn’t know. Harry never gave me the chance to know what it felt like to feel.
“Besides…” I moved around Dad, changing the subject. “…how do you know about her?”
“Knight sent a family newsletter,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Fucker,” I mouthed.
“Watch your mouth.”
“I was making a general statement. What do you think he does with Luna? Play poker?” I flung myself over the bed, staring at the ceiling. I felt like a real teenager for the first time in forever. My dad was on my case, offering to get me out of the shit I’d gotten myself into. I had girl trouble. I made sex jokes on my best friend’s account.
Dad stood in the middle of the room, looking a little lost all of a sudden—for the first time ever, actually.
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Vaughn. You don’t have to lose her. You don’t have to lose anything.”
“It’s a done deal, Dad. Drop it.”
“Son…”
I turned to look at him. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Mom. It would break her.”
He held my gaze, nodding gravely. He got it. He got why I needed to do it myself.
“I won’t,” he said. “I didn’t when I saw the article. This stays between you and me. What happened doesn’t define you, you hear me? Once upon a time, I held on to a dark secret, too.” He leaned down, brushing my ink black hair from my forehead and frowning. A mirror image of father and son, with nearly three decades between them.
“How did it end?” I blinked.
He kissed my forehead like I was a toddler, smiling.
“I killed it.”