After the guard took Adam, I was left in the apartment alone and with more questions than I had started with even before all of this began. Everyone was gone, Michael…Julian…Adam, and I was left here alone in the deafening silence of my thoughts.
Everything was wrong, and I didn’t know how to make it right again. I didn’t know what the guard had been talking about, and from Adam’s reaction, whatever it was wouldn’t be good. Instead of sitting here waiting, I decided to get dressed and go see my father. I wanted answers, and if he wanted me to parade around in front of the press today like some sort of puppet being held hostage, then he would need to answer at least a few of my questions.
I walked across campus to the administrative office building and thought about all the ways that I would kill my father if I ever had the chance. I had almost settled on choosing to slit his wrists so that he could suffer what my mother had suffered. But then I remembered that he deserved to meet with a much more painful death than that. I wondered how many people my father had killed or been responsible for ordering the kill order on. I also wondered how many people were actually loyal to him and how many were just afraid. It was sickening that one man could have so much power and generate so much fear. My mother must have been ever braver than I thought to go up against him; as far as I knew, she had been all on her own.
Marta, on the other hand, was a coward. I watched her pour my father’s coffee into his cup as he sat at the Headmaster’s desk and smoked a cigarette, blowing foul-smelling puffs into the air. No wonder his teeth were so yellow.
“There’s no smoking in here,” I said as I walked into his office and sat at the furthest chair from his desk that I could find.
He laughed, and it distracted Marta enough to overflow his cup, just a tad.
“You’re a real pain in the ass,” he said to me.
“So, I’ve been told.”
Marta hurried around his desk to grab a napkin and wipe up the small spill before he noticed it had happened. She seemed more like a personal assistant now than a Headmistress. I thought back to seeing them holding hands and that visual, along with the smoke-filled room, made me want to gag.
“I have to say, I’m surprised that you came to see me today,” he said. “I figured that I’d end up having to send someone to drag you out of that apartment and bring you to me.”
“Like you did with Adam?”
He looked over the bridge of his thick nose at me.
“You don’t know that boy as much as you think you do.”
“Then please,” I said. “By all means, tell me about him. It’s why I came.”
“Is it? You came here this morning to see if I would tell you what you want to know about one of your lovers?”
My father’s choice of words made it sound like I was some sort of goddess with men falling at my feet, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Instead, I was some ridiculously conflicted girl that found herself torn between three very flawed, albeit gorgeous guys. Although I guess Julian wasn’t that flawed, at least not that I knew of…my world seemed to change colors every day lately.
“If you expect to parade me around in front of the cameras without calling out the fact that you are a murderous bastard who is bleeding the top two colleges in the city dry of all their old money, then I want you to give me some answers.” I sounded much braver this morning than I felt.
My father didn’t seem to find that as funny as the last thing I said. He curled his lips around his words as he sneered at me.
“If you so much as put one dainty little finger of yours out of line, I will make those three boys suffer more than you can imagine.”
I felt my face drop, and all the courage that I was pretending to have was immediately sucked away.
“I don’t need to tell you anything,” he said as he smudged the tip of his cigarette out on the top of the desk. “It’s amusing how you think you can threaten me when you have no idea how much of this city I already own. My hands aren’t just in these two schools; I have my fingers dipped in this whole town. There is a rushing pulse of illegal trade beneath almost every building here that you know. The aquarium, the police station, hell even that stupid halfway house of your mother’s. I own everything and everyone here. So, don’t think you can threaten me, girl. You can’t.”
If what my father was saying was true, then he was planning to bleed the entire city dry, not just Goldshire and Lineage Academies. He was going to suck the wealth and inheritances from every source he could by funneling it all right below everyone’s noses. And then when he had bled it dry, he would kill off everyone who knew about it. I bet he even planned to have all the board members killed as well. You know, once he had taken all their money and used them to further his plans. The sickest part was that they actually thought he was helping them.
It was obvious that he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I was a fool to have thought that he would have. People don’t get away with faking their own death and hiding from the public for this long without being extremely careful and prudent about who they talk to and what they say. He must have had some help, though.
“Can I have some coffee?” I asked.
Marta looked at me with disdain as my father waved her on as if instructing her to serve me.
I might as well at least enjoy the small things that I can, like watching Marta serve me coffee.
“You must feel pretty shitty about yourself, huh?” I said with a patronizing smile as she poured the black coffee into a cup in front of me.
I saw her face turn red and her lips purse, but she didn’t say anything in retort, and it was delightful to watch her squirm.
I snickered. “I mean, to think that all these years, you’ve been taking care of my father instead of taking care of your own son.”
“I haven’t been taking care of him, you little twat!” she hurled as she slammed the coffee pot down against the wood surface of the desk. “You think you know everything, just like your mother thought she knew everything too. Well, smarty-pants, why don’t you go ask your other boyfriend what his parents have been up to this whole time?”
Marta looked at me with satisfaction as though she had done a fantastic job of telling me off, but as soon as she realized what she had divulged, she turned a fearful face toward my father.
“Your big mouth is exactly why I had Julian’s parents hide me this whole time,” he snarled at her. “Leave.”
Marta scurried out of the room, taking the coffee pot with her.
Julian’s parents? They were the ones who helped my father remain hidden all these years? How could that be true? Granted, I never knew much about them, and they always seemed so busy with “work” that they were barely ever around. But, they were high-ranking board members at Goldshire, and they were friends of my mother. Right?
At least I thought that they were.
“Did my mother know?” I asked as I tried to show as little emotion as possible.
“About Julian’s parents?” Dad asked. “No, I don’t think Pauline knew. It was one of the few things that even she didn’t suspect enough to stick her nose into.”
I wondered if Julian knew. He couldn’t have. It would have killed him. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him, but I also thought that he needed to know. I was very familiar with what it felt like to find out that your parents weren’t at all who you thought they were. And as much as it sucks, it’s better to know the truth than to live in a lie. My mother used to always laugh at that old saying, “the truth shall set you free.” She said it was a bunch of garbage and that the more accurate saying should have been “the truth shall set you on fire.” Now I knew how right she was.
“Tomorrow is your publicity event,” my father said as he lit the tip of a fresh cigarette.
Who even smoked cigarettes anymore? It was disgusting.
