She sneers. “I came looking for my daughter.” Then, her eyes go hard and she adds, “Who’s doing pretty well for herself these days. At least, she took one advice from me and stopped her bitching about men looking at her too much.”
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t hit her.She’s a woman, first and my mother taught me better than that. Second, it would be too easy for her. Getting punched in the face and bleeding a little. I have a better plan, which is why I’m here.
“You’re leaving town,” I tell her.
“What?”
I look at her a beat. “For a very, very long time. Possibly for life. But we’ll see what the judge says.”
She looks at me with confusion before glancing back at my brothers who are collectively standing in a battle stance. Coming back to me, she goes, “What is this? Some kind of a threat? Because let me tell you I’m not?—”
“Not a threat,” I say, shaking my head, keeping my eyes steady. “Just a courtesy heads up. Cops are about ten minutes away.”
“Cops for what? What?—”
I lean forward then. “For the fact that you have evidence against your husband that shows he’s a fucking pedophile. But you chose not to disclose it to anyone.”
At this, Reed holds up a file with all the photos that his guy found after he went through their house yesterday. Apparently, it’s extremely easy to snoop into the house of a drunk who’s perpetually passed out. Plus, she actually works for a living these days instead of hitting up her daughter and loan sharks for money.
Reeds tosses the file on the coffee table and a few photos spill out. Her eyes widen when she sees what’s in them. I’d say she looks like her daughter, with green eyes and red hair. But she possesses none of her beauty and I don’t think it’s a trick of time. I think she’s always been this way, hateful and harsh.
Anyway, I haven’t seen what’s on the photos but from what my brothers tell me it’s a bunch of teenage girls in various state of undress. Just the thought of it made me throw up in my mouth a bit. Ledger did throw up. Reed couldn’t look at them either and both Stellan and Conrad took one look and left the room for a little bit, angry and seething. I’m not sure if these photos were taken while my father was in the room or did these girls have no knowledge of them being photographed. That’s for the cops and the prosecutors to decide.
All I know is that I want him andherput away for life.
“This is the last time you’ve fucked with her, do you understand?” I warn with a calm voice because I want her to understand me. I want her to absorb it in her bones that if she tries again, I’m going to kill her.
“That’s your father,” she says, watching me with hatred but I do think there’s a slight fear in her voice. “You’ll be putting away your father. Your own blood for a slu?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence. Or you won’t get a chance tolivebehind bars because I will strangle you right here.” Even though her expression is defiant, I can see her swallow. “And to answer your question, he’s not my father. He may have had a hand in my birth but these guys here, they raised me. So yeah, I’ll do that to my drunk, waste of space, piece of shit, so-called father. I’ll do it to anyone who hurts her.”
She opens her mouth to say something when we all hear a creak coming from the hallway. I already know who it’s going to be before I turn around and see him standing by the stairs. He’s blinking his eyes open as if he just woke up even though it’s the middle of the day, trying to figure out what’s happening and why is his house suddenly swarmed with all these people.
Who look like him.
Although I don’t think he’s able to put even that together. Our father looks like us, me, Stellan and Ledger. Or rather we look like him, dark hair, dark eyes. Tall and built bodies. I wish I could say I don’t remember what he looked like when he was with us but I do. He looked large. He looked big. He looked intimidating and mean when he’d come home drunk. I hate to admit it but he would scare me. I thought if my father ever laid a hand on me, I’d die. I thought I could never win against him.
Now as I walk toward him, all I can feel is immense hatred. With maybe a little pity mixed in. Not only because he looks like a husk of a man he used to be, hunched shoulders, bony chest, hair almost all gone and a haggard face, but also because if he wasn’t such an asshole, a criminal pedo asshole, he could’ve been a part of something. He could’ve been a part of our family. Family of good and loyal men.
I’m sure my brothers are all thinking the same thing,feelingthe same thing but they still make way for me to approach him first. He watches me come closer but there’s very littlerecognition in his cloudy eyes. Until I stop a few feet away from him, breathing in his reeking stench.
“You’re…” he says, his voice distorted and scratchy unlike clear and thundering from back in the day, his eyes going back and forth between mine. “Are you my?—”
“Unfortunately,” I say.
His eyes flare wide before glancing behind my shoulders to my brothers. “What are you…” Then, coming back to me, he asks, “Which one are you?”
I bark out a laugh, my anger overtaken by pity. “It doesn’t matter which one I am. I’m here to tell you that you didn’t win. You leaving us was a blessing. We were happy without you. We had our moments yes, and tragedy had a way of finding us, but we lived. And we grew up and wegrew. We’re still growing. We’re still flourishing and our name will live on. People still tell our story to this day. I want you to know that. I want you to think about that when you sit behind bars without your precious alcohol, without your wives and your kids being your punching bag, without those young girls you traumatized and violated. I want you to think about how we’re living our life to the fullest and how you’re dying a little every day.”
His frown has thickened, and he doesn’t look so sleepy anymore. Although, he still looks pathetic. I take a step back from him and turn around. But then change my mind and face him again, before rearing back and laying a heavy one in his face. It pushes him so far back that he crashes against the opposite wall and slides down, unconscious.
So apparently, my anger wasn’t gone anywhere. She’s going to be pissed, my Little Strawberry, when I tell her I broke my promise but at least, I didn’t kill him, just knocked him out. Her mother screams from behind me and rushes over to see to him but I don’t want to stay here a moment longer. I have things to do. I stride back out, my brothers in wake, just a cop car ispulling up. I march over to the rental car that we got at the airport and slide into the driver’s seat. We just flew into town to take care of our parents but now, we’re flying back to the city where everything fell apart.
“Any luck?” I ask Conrad as I start the car.
His jaw clenches and he shakes his head. “If Wyn knows where Jupiter is, then she isn’t telling me.”
I grip the wheel tighter as I pull out and Ledger chimes in from the backseat. “She knows. They all know. But they aren’t telling us.”
