My father could be ruthless if he found a person lacking. Jillian had been fucking terrified the first time I’d brought her to family dinner, and she said it never got any easier. And this was the nice version of my father—she’d been handpicked for me by him.
Before his downfall, he’d had aspirations of sitting on the board of the Federal Reserve, and since Wayne Lambert golfed with the president twice a month, my father was sure uniting our families would help both his goal and my political career.
I still remembered the family dinner where he’d told me to seduce Jillian.
It didn’t matter she wasn’t single at the time, or how she’d had a one-night stand with Royce—my freaking brother—a few years prior. My father and Alice had discussed it, he’d said, and made this decision for me. I’d tried to hide my look of betrayal as I turned to my stepmother. We’d been having an affair for months at that point, and even though she’d said sex with me meant nothing, I hadn’t truly believed her until that moment.
So, I’d caried out my father’s orders with flawless precision, and to prove to Alice that sleeping with her meant nothing to me as well, I’d let the whole family catch me with Jillian in the back of a limo, balls deep inside her.
It was stupid and childish—not to mention—dangerous.
I hadn’t realized how unstable Alice had become, and it was likely my stunt had helped push her over the edge. Her first attempt on Marist’s life was yet another item to add to the long list of things I felt guilty about.
After prison, my father moved out and turned the estate over to Royce. When my brother became the head of the household, he’d resumed the family dinner tradition, although it was infrequent. There was a marked change in the tone of the dinners as well. There was no agenda or proposals, and Marist forbid cell phones at the table, forcing everyone to have actual interactions and conversations.
I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but I . . . didn’t hate attending.
It was kind of nice to know what everyone had going on in their lives, pretend for a few hours our family wasn’t broken, and that I wasn’t a big part of the reason for that.
But the way my father had been at the office left me feeling anxious. If he had returned to his former self, it was likely he’d go on the attack toward Emery, and I wasn’t going to allow that. It was past time I learned from Royce and started to push back.
Had he known I was thinking about him? A text message rolled onto my phone’s screen.
Royce: Can you come into the library?
I didn’t bother responding because it was faster to simply walk down the hall and turn in to the room that shelved some of my family’s most prized possessions. The walls were lined with books, many of them rare printings. Marist’s mythology-themed chess set usually sat on the desk so she could play my father whenever he came to visit, and Royce or Sophia would watch from the reading chair. But tonight, the chess board had been moved to the side table under the window.
It was because my father sat behind the desk, a leather portfolio pinned beneath his hand resting on the desktop. Royce was by the window, looking out at the grounds and the sprawling hedge maze that was a source of pride for our family. My grandmother had started it, and my father had doubled its size, making the tall hedge maze more complex and challenging.
Royce had his back to me, but he heard my entrance. “Shut the door.”
Unease gripped me like a vise and made a cold sweat bloom across my skin. Royce had been trying to get me to talk to our father for months. “He can’t forgive you if you don’t apologize,” he’d lectured me.
He was absolutely right, but still, I struggled. So much time had passed since Alice had cruelly thrown the affair in our father’s face that it had built up and added another layer to my guilt. I didn’t visit my father when he was sent away because he’d asked me not to. He’d claimed he didn’t want me to see him like that, but I knew better.
He couldn’t tolerate seeing me after what I’d done.
When he got out two years later, he was a different person, and I didn’t know how to navigate the situation with him. I’d wanted to apologize but didn’t have a clue how to go about it. Still, I’d tried once. The day of Sophia’s accident, I’d brought fresh clothes to the hospital for him as a peace offering. I’d planned to use it as my opening, but everything went . . . sideways.