He probably paid off the family of the young girl from the hotel, along with the staff there, to support his disgusting lies. No doubt threats were involved too, so that people would be too frightened to come forward with the truth at any point. Once all that was taken care of, he embarked on a citywide smear campaign to discredit James. It didn’t just discredit him, though. It ruined his life. Thanks to my father whispering in the right ears, he lost his job and was blackballed everywhere else.
Poor guy. In trying to do the right thing, he’d essentially taken a wrecking ball to his career and future. He would’ve had zero recourse against all the retaliation from my father because he came from a lower class family with no connections or resources.
On the contrary, my father had everything. Money. Power. Influence. Destroying enemies and brainwashing people to take his side was probably easy for him.
I was brainwashed just like everyone else. Trained from birth to hate James Holland and view him as a nasty, vindictive degenerate.
So what other lies did my father spread about that man? Was he really a raging alcoholic and drug addict before all that shit went down two decades ago?
I doubted it. Now that I’d stumbled upon the truth, I had a sneaking suspicion that the drinking and drugs actually started for Jamesafterthe events of 1998 as a trauma response. My father had destroyed everything in his world and left him a broken man, and he stayed broken for the rest of his life.
Wait.
I sat up straight with a sharp intake of breath. Something wasn’t adding up.
If Kinsey wasn’t aware of the things that were being done to her at night, why didn’t she deny it when I accused her of having an affair with my father? All she did was glare at me and tell me it was none of my business.
I cast my mind back to the conversation, brows furrowing. Kinsey hadn’t denied my accusation, but to be fair, I never actually made an official accusation. All I did was call her a gold-digging whore. I was going to say more and accuse her of sleeping with my father to get revenge forherfather, but before I could say any of that, she cut me off to ask why I called her a whore. I responded to that by telling her I’d overheard the conversation between her and my father before I walked into the room.
She didn’t deny that the conversation happened, and she didn’t deny the fact that she was lying to her mother about it, either. But what if we were talking about two completely different things and neither of us were aware of it at the time?
Clenching my jaw, I picked up my phone and dialed.
“Jax?” My father picked up on the first ring. The mere sound of his voice made bile rise in my throat. “I’m a little busy right now, so can you—”
I bluntly cut him off. “I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“Okay. Hold on a second.” I heard papers rustling in the background for a moment, along with a few faint, unintelligible voices. “All right, I can talk now. What is it?”
“I overheard a conversation between you and Kinsey a few weeks ago,” I said stiffly. “I want to know what it was about.”
“Oh. What did you hear?”
“You were saying that something would be your little secret, and Anna would never have to know.”
Dad laughed. “Oh,that. It’s a long story. Nothing serious, though.”
“I’ve got time.”
“You really want to know? It’s quite boring.”
“Yes.”
“All right. Kinsey used to have a part-time job back in Oakland, and she wanted to get another one after she moved here so she could earn some pocket money. But Anna told her not to do that because she was concerned it would interfere with her studies, seeing as CPA is far more rigorous than other schools,” he said. “I could tell Kinsey was worried about losing her income, small as it was. This town isn’t the easiest place for a teenager to fit in, and a lack of money compounds that difficulty. So I offered her an allowance.”
“How much?”
“The same amount you get each month.” Dad cleared his throat. “Anyway, she turned me down. The idea of getting money for nothing made her uncomfortable. A class difference, I suppose. So I thought she’d be more comfortable if I offered her a way to earn the money.”
My brows furrowed. “How?”
“She excels at her French classes, and I’ve always wanted to learn the language. So I made her a deal. I said I’d give her the allowance in return for three one-hour French lessons every week. That way she’d make money by providing a service instead of having it handed to her for nothing.”
“Right. So why couldn’t Anna find out about it?”
“Like I said before, she was concerned about Kinsey not having time to study if she got any kind of job here, so she told her she wasn’t allowed to. She was quite serious about it.” Dad paused for a beat and let out a short sigh. “Personally, I found it a bit over the top. Kinsey wasn’t happy with it either. She said she’d be able to handle the lessons easily enough, seeing as it’s only a few hours a week. So we decided not to tell Anna about it. We knew it would only upset her to discover that we were defying her wishes and going behind her back.”
I sagged in my chair, scrubbing a hand over my face. “So it was French lessons for cash. That’s all.”