He shrugs. “She met Parnell through me. A business meeting at the country club and she just happened to be there with her friends.”
Kiln drops into another seat, pulls out his cell phone, and begins to scroll through it. Lips in a tight line. Eyes downcast with the pretense of distraction.
“Kiln,” Dad says in an unyielding voice.
His jaw is so tightly clenched, I listen for a tooth to pop, but it doesn’t happen as he squeezes out, “Sir.”
Satisfied that he’s completely fucked off Kiln, Dad grins and drains his glass. He sits it on the table.
“I thought a bit of different entertainment would take the boredom away.”
He isn’t letting it drop. “She’s a complication I don’t need. She’s fucking married.”
“As if that’s ever stopped you, motherfucker,” Kiln snarls.
Not allowing me to respond, Dad digs inside his suit pocket and pulls out a piece of folded paper, tossing it to me. I pick it up and stare at a cheaply printed photo of me leaving the hospital where Georgie is admitted.
“It’s already all over the internet. I’ve checked so I know who you were visiting.”
My eyes snap to his face. Anger flushes his cheeks and he narrows his eyes.
“Do you know the damage you can do?”
“She’s my fan,” I bite out coldly. “Spin it however the fuck you want to.”
“How about I spin it as the man who murdered his sister. Slept with his brother’s wife. Od’d.”
The pounding of my heart is loud in my ears and I feel as if I want to throw up. If I’ve never hated my father—which I do on a daily basis—I would now.
Lost in his lies, he began to believe them years ago. Even if he hadn’t, it would ruin the story that I’d killed Steffie if he continued to embrace me as the love child my mother gave to him.
“I didn’t kill her,” I repeat for the millionth time.
“As they live, so, too shall they die,” Kiln says casually.
I shoot to my feet, incensed. “You’re the last fucking hypocrite who should quote the bible. Money grabbing motherfucker. Avenge Steffie. Report me. Retaliate for your fucking wife, Kiln.”
His eyes speak volumes. He hates me.
“I hate you. I pity you. I scorn you. I wish you would’ve died that day with my big sister.”
Steffie always belonged to him and Jaeger. I was never good enough, according to them, to have any part of her.
“Or, even, in her place,” he continues. “Everything I’ve ever loved has been tainted by you. Even you.”
The implication that he ever loved me hangs in the air.
He hated me, “the wild, undisciplined, little prick”, on sight, and regretted the day Dad walked back into their lives.
“You’ve always been a spoiled fucker with your head up your ass.”
Well aware of these feelings, I don’t flinch. He saw himself as the dragon to burn me to bits and pieces.
“Jaeger and I made a pact. We’d torment you and humiliate you every chance we got. Steffie didn’t agree.”
I know. She liked me. She loved hearing my music and felt honored having such a talented family member.
For whatever reason, my mother wanted the kids to “get to know one another”, hence the reason for Dad reemerging in their lives. “You thought it would be the beginning of my downfall when Dad showed up. You believed our father would decide to include his two, older sons in his life and his legacy.”
We’re speaking as if Dad isn’t here, as if this bullshit hasn’t been rehashed forever and a fucking day.
Our lives entwined and gripped us in a chokehold. To this day, Kiln blames me for Steffie’s death, but he wasn’t there. Still, he insists it wasn’t a fucking accident.
According to Dad, I killed her because she was the easiest target after Kiln’s and Jaeger’s years of torment to me.
When it happened, I was sixteen and I was afraid of going to jail, so I stayed silent, eventually losing myself in music, sex, and drugs.
“When I went to college and met Dietrech, my world turned over.”
Kiln hangs his head, but Dad is unaffected. As much as I hate Kiln, seeing his heartache, knowing where the words are leading, I feel like shit for the agony I inflicted on him. Even before he refused to believe me about the facts of Steffie’s death when I started proclaiming my innocence after Dad brokered the deal between me, Kiln and Jaeger, he tormented me. I wanted him to feel the same pain, so, in this I chose the easiest target. His wife.
Her unusual name matched her unusual eyes. Golden, like a cat’s. Like her generously-framed body and her short, curly hair. We seem to have that in common—attraction to girls with odd-colored eyes, although I didn’t know it then, too busy losing myself in music and pussy and dabbling in drugs. Dad was using his money and power to catapult four snotty little fuckheads—myself, Maitland, Adam, and Quint—to the pinnacle of success.
“Shut the fuck up,” I order, “or challenge Dad and go public with the story.”