“The fuck is this shit?” I inquired through a tight, gentlemanly smile.
“T-t-that’s your work area. R-r-right outside your father’s office, so he can overlook your p-p-progress.” She said the entire sentence like it had been rehearsed a thousand times over.
I turned to stare at her, frowning. So that’s why she was scared. She thought I was going to kill the messenger. In truth, I would maybe choke her while letting her jerk me off in the communal restrooms if she was into that kind of stuff. As I’ve said, I’m not a violent man.
She cleared her throat, straightening her spine.
“Y-y-your father said if you have an issue, you should take it up with HR and t-t-then—”
Instead of waiting for her finish the sentence sometime next year, I saw myself into my father’s office, flinging the glass door open and stepping in briskly, a pleasant smile on my face. Blondie ran after me, stuttering her apologies to Da, Syllie, and Cillian. Both men sat in front of Da at his desk, hunched over a blueprint.
I waved Blondie off. “Show’s over, sweetheart. You can go back to watching The Masked Singer under your desk, thinking nobody knows what you’re doing. It’s been real.”
I wanted to slam the door in her face for effect, but it was one of those fancy, slow-moving doors, so we all stood there for eight seconds, watching it anticlimactically slithering its way shut. Behind the glass, I could see shock and horror on her face.
I turned around to my father, opening my arms with a fake smile. “Athair,” I said. Father in Gaelic. “So happy to see you. And by happy, I mean why would you continue pushing me when you’ve already taken everything?”
I didn’t care that Cillian and Syllie were there. Syllie was practically family, and Cillian was family. Regretfully, that is.
Current mood song: “Greek Tragedy” by The Wombats.
“Ceann beag, I see celibacy is eating at both your brains and manners.” Cillian arched an eyebrow a shade darker than mine.
Everything about the fucker was darker than me—soul included. I’ve always thought it ironic that Cillian and villain contain so many of the same letters.
“He never had brains to begin with, so don’t waste your time worrying about them being eaten.” My father returned to frowning at the document spread on the desk, blueprints of the new refinery everybody was talking about downstairs. He pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose, his Sharpie hovering over the paper. “What’s the matter now, ceann beag?” he asked.
Ceann beag meant little one in Gaelic, which would have been endearing if it weren’t for the fact that I wasn’t the baby of the family. That was Aisling. I was the middle child. Way I saw it, I simply got the smallest chunk of my father’s heart out of us three.
“Is your roommate not to your taste?” A hint of a smirk tugged at the side of my father’s mouth as he made notes with a red Sharpie all over the blueprint.
I didn’t take the bait. He was waiting to hear how much I hated straight-laced, ball-busting Sailor. Which, granted, I did, but why give him the satisfaction?
“Sailor? She is grand. Fucking hot, too. Shame I’m celibate these days,” I tooted, draping a shoulder over one of his glass walls. I knew it was the ultimate taunt. If my father was under the impression that I was fucking Sailor while I was not fucking Sailor, and Sailor denied it vehemently—which she would—Da would have to continue honoring his deal with both of us.
Troy Brennan, Sailor’s da, supposedly gave the Grim Reaper a run for his money. That meant Sailor was going to walk away with all that was promised to her, and I with all that was promised to me. Even my father wasn’t dumb enough to poke a guy like Brennan with the insinuation that I’d screwed his baby girl.
I hadn’t had the displeasure of meeting Brennan yet, so it was easy to use his daughter as a pawn.
My father’s face fell as he tore his eyes from the blueprint, scanning me.
“If everything is grand and dandy, why are you here, in my office, uninvited?”
I pointed at my station outside his door. “A dog bed would have been more fitting.”
“Perhaps, but not in sync with the general design,” Da finished, putting his Sharpie between his teeth and clamping on it with a smile.
“Am I also to get the catering scraps after the rest of the team is done eating lunch?”
“Provided you behave like a civilized gentleman and not a Girls Gone Wild dropout.”
He was enjoying this exchange, and all the fucks I hadn’t given throughout the years were starting to mount into an impressive sum. I cared, and I was furious. Specifically, I cared about how much my family hated me. It was bad enough I had zero friends in Boston and avoided my family like the plague, now I had to spend my days sitting in a permanent naughty spot outside Da’s office.