“Dad, no!”
“You want to know, Dora?”
“Dad!”
Wes stuck his hand in his coat pocket and withdrew a box of disposable syringes and several vials. She recoiled from his extended hand. “What is that?”
“Steroids.”
She stared at him, agape, then turned to Scott. “You’ve been giving yourself steroid shots?”
His gaze flickered to Wes, then back to her. “Not me. Mr. Ritt.”
In the silence of her stunned disbelief, someone knocked loudly on the front door.
“That will be our company.” Wes calmly replaced the paraphernalia in his coat pocket, then removed his coat and hung it on the peg near the back door. “Scott, answer the door and invite them in. Don’t be nervous. Dutch will be with them. Offer them a seat and tell them we’ll be right there.”
Scott remained where he was, looking at his mother with apology and shame.
“Did you hear me, Scott?” Wes’s voice was soft but imperious.
Scott turned and went into the living room to answer the second knock.
Wes moved close to Dora. His breath was hot on her face. “You are to act like everything in this household is hunky-dory, do you understand? This is a private matter. It stays in our family.”
She glared at him. “How could you do that to your own son? Those things are poison.”
“An exaggeration, typical of you.”
“Have you even considered the side effects, Wes?”
“They’re a small price to pay for the difference they can make in his—”
“I don’t give a damn about his athletic ability!” she exclaimed in a stage whisper, aware of the men in the next room. “I don’t care how strong he is or how much stamina he has on a goddamn football field. I care about his life.” She felt her control unraveling. Now wasn’t the time to lose it. She took several breaths to calm herself, but with fury still humming inside her, she continued. “Can’t you see how those things have changed him?”
“Okay, he’s a little moody. That can be a side effect.”
“So can aggression.”
He shrugged indifferently. “More aggressiveness would be a benefit, not a drawback.”
Even after all her husband’s other absurd rationalizations, that statement appalled her. “You are a monster.”
He snuffled a laugh. “What? I’d thought you’d be relieved, happy to learn that the changes you see in Scott are from the steroids and don’t have anything to do with that manipulating bitch. And that’s what she was, you know.”
“Was? Why are you referring to Millicent in the past tense?”
Wes leaned in until he was towering over her. “Because as far as the Hamer family is concerned, she’s history.”
Now Dora wasn’t only appalled, she was afraid. “What are you saying?”
“You want to know the scoop on why Scott and Millicent broke up? Here it is, and remember you asked for it. She was interfering with his training, calling him all the time, hanging around every practice until he was finished, giving him all the pussy he wanted. He wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wasn’t going to let that skinny cunt ruin all my plans for him. To get his head back into his game, I had to intervene. You want to know the big mystery behind their breakup? You’re looking at him.”
“What did you do?”
“Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I ended—for good—their hot little romance.” He poked her hard in the sternum. “That’s something else that stays in the family.”
Then he turned and left her alone, amid everything familiar yet feeling like an alien in her own house, bewildered by how she had arrived at this place in her life.