Chapter Twenty Nine
Istoodoutsidethe setting of my childhood, looking up at the grotesquely large white door of the house that was reminiscent of a stately home.
Ivy grew up on either side of the door, framing the entranceway with different shades of green foliage that sometimes had fairy lights placed throughout depending on the season.
If you didn’t know what happened behind that closed door, you could be forgiven for thinking the house was beautiful, elegant and the perfect place to grow up. You would, of course, have been wrong.
Every window was dark, except for the small circular porthole style one at the top of the door, indicating the hall light had been left on for when he returned home.
I took a calming breath and walked up the light grey Monoblock, splitting up the middle of the manicured lawn with warm white solar panelled lights that led the way to the house like lights on an airport runway.
“Have you checked the perimeter?” Alex asked, popping out of the hedge that ran along the length of the living room window. I jumped, reaching up to my holster and angling my gun in the direction of the fucking moron who thought it was a brilliant idea to sneak up on me.
“Fucking hell, Alex,” I breathed, clutching my chest with one hand as I returned my gun under my arm. “You know better than to sneak up on me. What are you doing here?”
“Did you really think I’d leave you to come here alone?” he questioned, lowering his hands from the defensive state they were in and stomping over some gardenias that flanked the hedge. Alex looked down, lifting one foot in the air, watching a sad-looking flower stem hang off the sole. He shook his foot, freeing the flower, and it fluttered to the ground. “Oops.”
I shrugged, not really caring about the mess made of my father’s flower patch. He probably wouldn’t even notice. He never maintained the pruning and overall care of an aesthetically pleasing front garden.
“No one’s home. The lights are all off, but if it will make you feel better, you can quickly run around the house to check.”
Alex nodded and took off around the back to ensure the house was deserted. I didn’t need him to confirm; I knew it would be. Will wasn’t the only one who kept tabs on his habits, though they should have been able to do a better fucking job at it.
Dad, being a creature of habit, would be at his Malt Whisky Society, smoking rich Cuban cigars and drinking expensive scotch, living his best life as he’d always done every Thursday for as long as I could remember. Those nights were always the worst, with scotch fuelling his aggression and enabling his abusive behaviour. Those nights were always the ones I’d tell Chris to lock herself in her room and to not let anyone in unless it was me.
Alex reappeared at my side, barely out of breath, and gave me a cheeky smile. From behind his back, he produced a single pink rose and handed it to me, looking all shades of embarrassed and cute. I sucked my lips between my teeth and rolled my eyes.
“Always a charmer, Mr. Jones,” I said, sniffing the flower.
“Couldn’t not keep up the tradition of stealing one from the neighbour and bringing it to your room when I used to sneak in,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his and then jerking his head toward the front door. “C’mon, let’s get ready before the bastard comes home.”
I fingered my door key as we stood on the welcome mat on the semi-dark porch. This would be the first time I had been home in eleven years, but the nervousness and fear that used to follow me home from school seeped from deep in my soul as I looked at the keyhole.
I turned the key once more between my thumb and forefinger just as Alex took it from my hand.
Looking up at him, I dropped my hand to my side. His deep brown eyes displayed so much: love, compassion, understanding, but never pity. Alex was my strength when I needed more, my shoulder to lean on. And he was right; I needed him here with me more than I knew.
He turned the lock, and the door opened with a snick. I sucked in a breath and took one tentative step forward.
He had redecorated. I don’t know why I thought it would have been the same, but it wasn’t. The large table he had used to concuss me was gone, along with that stupid Persian rug. He’d even ripped up the tiled flooring in favour of oak hardwood.
This place was no longer the scene from my nightmares. It almost looked inviting in a show home kind of way.
Alex closed the door and locked it, then slid my key into my back pocket and pulled out my gun. He took my hand in his and gently placed the cold metal in my palm, wrapping our hands together around the grip.
With a reassuring nod, he removed his hand from mine and squeezed my shoulder before leaning in and placing a tentative kiss on my temple. Taking a step further into the hallway, he took out his own gun, pulled back the barrel with a sharp click and started walking further into the house.
I stood like a statue, looking around the space, noting all the photographs from my younger years were gone too, including the ones of Chris and Ronan. Even the photos of mom were long gone. The house was so barren and void of any character that it sent a shiver of unease down my arms. Perhaps this is how dad always wished it had been. Childless and lifeless.
Alex was about to walk into the kitchen, but I cleared my throat. He turned, and I pointed up the stairs to where his study was. Dad would come home and have a nightcap of Macallan Reflexion, an imported whisky from Scotland that cost over one thousand British Pounds and was ”part of the Macallan Masters Decanter Series” I’d heard him tell Ronan one night.
That is where we would wait for him to return home.
The grandfather clock in the study chimed midnight, and the front door opened. The high-pitched click-clack of dress shoes sounded as he walked through the hall, dropped his keys on his new side table, and then jogged up the stairs.
I was sitting on his office chair, ears straining, as I listened to his every move. I could picture him unbuttoning his suit jacket and loosening out his tie but not taking it off, then he’d uncuff his gold cufflinks and roll up his sleeves as he walked down the corridor toward his office door.
My heart rate spiked, and my palms started to sweat. I closed my eyes and breathed in for three and out for three, counting each second.
The door opened a crack and paused. My eyes snapped open, unable to look away from the sliver of light shining through the gap as I waited for him to enter the room. More seconds ticked past, and the sliver failed to get any bigger. Why wasn’t he entering the room?
“I was wondering when you’d show up.”
His voice was deep and still, the sound making my skin burn as if he had just thrown a vat of acid at me. The door opened completely and there stood my father, basked in the hall light, not exactly as I imagined.
His hair was more grey than black, but he still had the funny little cowlick at the front of his thick strands. His eyes were heavier and there were more wrinkles that came with ageing, but they were still the same piercing blue I’d dreamt about. His body, though, was different: toned, almost athletic, and the suit he donned fit perfectly, as if it had been tailored specifically for him. I will be the first to admit my father didn’t give me much, but my appreciation for a good suit was definitely something that rubbed off on me. It was clear as day that the man that stood before me was a stark contrast to the borderline alcoholic dad I’d left behind.
He shucked off his jacket, propping it on a chair, and walked over to his built-in drink cabinet, turning on a few lamps that were dotted around the room as he made his way to a makeshift bar. I was almost astounded at the man before me as I watched him make his nightcap so calmly, without addressing the danger in his presence.
“Alex, would you care for one?” he asked, not looking in the direction of where my best friend had been hiding behind a bookcase. Alex stepped out and glanced at me, silently asking what was going on. “C’mon on now, son, I know you were always stealing little nips here and there when you thought I wasn’t looking.”
Dad dropped a cube of ice into two glasses and held one out for him to take, shaking it, and the ice clinked the sides. Reluctantly, Alex took the glass from his outstretched hand and peered at the liquid.
Dad sidestepped Alex and walked to the black chesterfield, ridding his trouser pockets of his wallet, phone, and cufflinks on a table by the arm. He dropped onto the sofa and crossed a leg over his knee, then spread his arm along the back of the chair.
“So, to what do I owe this visit?” he asked with the level of smugness I’d been met with growing up. He may look different from the asshole I used to know him as, but he was still just as much of a self-assured, bullshit peddling bastard in a nicer suit.
I cleared my throat, finally finding my voice. “I’m here to tell you I don’t work for you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t do your dirty work.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have any power over me.”
“Of course.”
“And I will not help you hurt Jake in any way.”
Dad moved his foot from where it perched on his knee and sat his glass on a glass table before leaning back and laughing. The fucker actually had the audacity to let out a full-on, head back, belly-clutching laugh at what I’d said.
I stood up and slammed my hands on his desk, cutting his laugh off short.
“I’m not fucking around, Dad,” I sneered, placing my gun on the desk so he could see how deadly serious I was. “I’m not the little girl you can scare and beat into submission anymore. You can’t use me to take down those you think are lesser than you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, darling daughter,” he said, standing up and moving to the front of the desk. The uncanny sensation of my past coated my skin like a fine mist as my father stopped to face me, his large frame towering from the other side of his desk. I swallowed down the hard lump that had formed in my throat, my eyes wide as I looked into the face of my abuser.
“You are just like your mother, more interested in filling that hole between your legs than anything else,” he sneered, curling his lips up as he dragged his eyes down my body in disgust. “Just like her: manipulative, vengeful, and trying to make your way in a world you don’t belong in.”
“I am nothing like her,” I spat through gritted teeth.
“So you didn’t leave, did you?” he questioned, a flicker of something passing across his blue eyes. The question made me pause. Why he would even care that I took Chris and never came back. It’s not like he was ever a great father figure in our lives.
“I left to protect Chris. To protect me.”
His lips moved to a smirk and his hands fisted on the desk as he leaned closer. From the corner of my eye, I saw Alex slowly creep forward, his eyes trained on my dad with every step. Suddenly, Dad grabbed my gun from the desk and swirled it around on Alex. Alex stopped moving and raised his hands in the air.
“Stay right there, Mr. Jones. This is between me and my daughter,” he said, pointing the gun at me, then back at Alex. He gestured with it to a chair in the corner and Alex hesitantly took a seat, panic crossing his features.
“I see you still have him trained like the good little puppy he is.”
“What do you want?” I asked, annoyed that my voice wavered when I spoke. My heart hammered in my chest, blood pumped loudly in my ears, and my mouth went dry. Familiar fear induced tingles danced up from my fingertips, my body preparing to be berated or hit for whatever lame-ass reason I had disappointed him that day.
“I want to tell you a little story,” he said, shaking the gun twice at the seat behind me. I slowly lowered and rested on the edge of the chair. “Good girl.”
My dad walked around his desk and leaned over me to switch on the lamp, his aftershave and the smell of expensive cigar smoke flooding my senses.
“Your mother was happy once. Before her father, your grandfather, decided her fiancé wasn’t good enough for her, or to take over his company. He had him… let’s just say, he had him removed.” I glanced at Alex, who was focused on my dad as he circled the room like a master of storytelling. “I fell in love with your mother and took on her illegitimate son, but I wanted some children of my own. My own precious babies I could raise and love.” I almost laughed at that; that man was incapable of love. “My firstborn daughter brought me so much joy. And then to be blessed with another, well, I was complete. I had your mother, my beautiful daughters, and a son I grew to embrace as mine. We were happy for a time. Your mother would play music and dance around the living room with Chris in her arms while you laughed and pirouetted around them.”
I noted the far off look in his eyes and the slight upturn on his lips as he wove a story that was sure to be so far from the truth. I had no memories of a loving childhood, with both parents filling the house with music and laughter.
“Then one day, she changed. She no longer wanted her perfect family. As long as she had her son, she had no use for her daughters.”
“You’re lying. You were the one who didn’t want daughters, not her,” I interjected, unable to accept his versions of events. “I found a letter addressed to Chris and me years later from mom saying as much.”
He laughed, an empty, jarring sound.
“She always was the best liar in her family. Made to fit a blueprint of the perfect daughter by her father. It’s funny how much you take after her in so many ways, Stevie,” he replied, the look of wistfulness dying as quickly as it appeared. “I loved having girls. Sons are more hassle than they’re worth. Your father can probably attest to that, Alex, considering how quick he was to take my daughter away from me.”
“My father never took her away from you,” Alex growled from his position across the room. “He treated her how a father should have. So if anything, you pushed her to him.”
“I guess you still suck his cock, then,” he sneered as he gestured toward Alex, who was white knuckle clutching at the armrest. My hands twitched at the vulgarity that came from his mouth about his own daughter. His gaze landed on my throat. “I guess my little slut of a daughter likes it rough too?”
“Fuck you,” I snarled. Fury blazed across his eyes, and he was on me in a second, grabbing at my hair and drawing me to his chest. The sharp bite of his hold and the pull from my ribs had me gasping. Alex jumped to his feet, pointing his gun at my dad, who also had the gun he’d taken from me trained on him.
“Not so quick, son,” he said, swinging me around to cover his body and jammed the barrel into my ribs. “I am still telling my daughter the story of her existence.” Alex’s hold on his gun faltered, and he took a small step towards my dad, whose attention was firmly back on me.
“I am trying to protect you,” he whispered into my ear with the gun still pressed into my side.
“You don’t know the meaning of that word,” I whispered back, my voice barely audible as I fought the tremble of my bottom lip as his grip tightened on my hair.
“For someone who lies as their profession, you aren’t very clever at seeing when others do the same to you, are you?” He snorted some whisky-filled air in amusement. “I always did find it funny how Alex and his brothers came into your life. It’s not as if you went to the same school or had the same friends. Have you ever stopped to think about why those boys took interest in a little girl with no mother? A girl who wasn’t particularly very special?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, glancing at Alex, who stood confused. Dad’s hard body shifted behind me, and he started to speak.
A loud bang and the buckling of my father had him falling onto my back. Alex lunged toward us, grabbing the dead weight as he dragged me to the floor. I snapped to look at the door where Will stood, gun in mid-air and palpable anger pulsing off him.
I turned my head to look at my dad with a bullet wound on the side of his head and an exit wound out the other side. I screamed, a deafening, agonising sound as his lifeless eyes peered down at me. Alex hauled him off me, and I launched myself at Will, clocking him right in the jaw.
“He was mine!” I yelled, punching his chest as he reached to grab my biceps to stop me. “You took that away from me! He was mine, my fucking kill.”
“Stevie,” Will growled, holding my arms and pushing me away from him. “Calm down.”
“You ruined everything,” I spat in his face. I wrapped my hands around his arms and brought my knee up to his groin. He doubled over and dropped his grip on me with a groan as he went down to one knee.
“Fuck you, Will,” I snarled into his ear, then removed my dad’s pistol from my waistband and tossed it to the floor by his dead body. “And fuck you, Alex, for telling him.”