“Not as well as you do, but yes.”
My smile was sharper than a shard of broken glass as I accidently slopped wine over his hand and then turned to him. “Then you’ll know it’s fucking hilarious that you think you’re so scary because, Javier, I’ve seen scary. I’ve fucked scary and I stared him right in the eyes as I did it so let me tell you, you don’t have his smile.”
The chime of the doorbell sounded throughout the house, stilling conversation because who called during dinnertime?
My parents stared at each other before my dad excused himself to answer the door.
A shiver of foreboding ripped up my spine as I watched him go and then again when I turned back to Javier to see him grinning at me.
“I may not have his smile, zorra, but trust me, real evil doesn’t need a face, it just needs a presence.”
My dad walked back into the room frowning down at a brown manila folder.
“What is it, Ben?” my mother asked.
“Someone left this on the doorstep,” he murmured as he unwound the string holding the folder closed and dozens of glossy eight-by-ten photos spilled out.
I was too far away to see what the images depicted but I knew from talking to Zeus that those were the kind of pictures that had been left at the scenes of the fires started at The Fallen properties.
And now they were in my home.
I was on my feet and moving toward my dad before I was even aware of it.
It was too late though. My mother was closer and my father was already there staring down at the puddle of images like he was submerged in sinking sands.
I fell to my knees in the pile and scooped one up in my hands.
It was me, blond hair streaming in the air as I rode behind Zeus on his great black-and-silver beast down the Sea to Sky Highway with my arms tight around him and my face broke up in a wild grin.
Another one showed Zeus, his big body mostly concealing my own as he caught me from a flying leap into his arms.
Another. His bearded lips on mine outside his house two days ago, a big hand down the back of my jeans palming my bare ass as we made out.
There were so many of them, at least twenty, all depicting my illicit relationship with the thirty-six-year-old outlaw motorcycle President.
I looked up just in time to see my dad’s face contort with black rage and then see the closed fist come flying at my face.
It connected with my cheek and sent me reeling backward across the slippery pictures. I blinked up at the chandelier, stunned. My left cheekbone throbbed with blinding pain.
“Benjamin!” my mum cried as she fell down beside me. “What are you doing?”
“She’s sleeping with that fucking thug,” he roared, pointing his finger at me.
Lionel Danner was suddenly in his face, holding him back and snarling, “You touch her again, I’m taking you into the station, Ben.”
“My daughter is a fucking slut!” Dad shouted in his face.
I blinked back tears as I lay on the floor and tried to find my breath.
My dad had just hit me.
Oh my God.
With one simple act, the vestiges of my youth fell away and the girl who’d once been Louise Lafayette died. I lay on the ground blinking up at a life that was no longer mine. There was glitter and money all around me, the dinner party a frozen tableau of class that felt like a false front over something much darker.
My mum helped me to my knees but then grew distracted by the pictures all around us and shakily picked one up in her hand.
It was a bad one for her to have chosen.
In it, I was naked but for one of Zeus’s massive tees and I was straddling his lap as he sat on a chair on his front porch. His jeans were clearly undone and my head was thrown back in ecstasy as I ground down on him.
My mum turned to me with wide, horrified eyes and breathed, “Who are you?”
“Your daughter,” I reminded her, and only then realized I was crying.
“Not anymore,” she said, getting to her feet quickly like I had an infectious disease and she’d already spent too long in my presence.
“Mum,” I tried again, but she was already scuttling toward my dad who was still ranting at Lionel.
I sat there on my knees for a second looking at the table where Mr. Warren sat stupefied, staff sergeant Danner looked disgusted, Irina bored and Javier, fucking Javier, was smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
My dad broke through Lionel’s hold and stormed over to me. I backed away on my knees and fell onto my ass, hands in front of my face to shield me as he lifted his hand to backhand me. It occurred to me in a strangely manic way that I’d spent my life comparing Zeus to a monster when it was my father who was the true beast, a man dipped in civilized veneer with an empty center where his heart should have been.
“Stop,” Bea shouted as she fell in front of me and wrapped her arms around my body like a shield. “Daddy, please, stop this.”
He leaned down, pried her sobbing body off me and held her away. “Don’t touch her, Beatrice.”
“I’m not infected with anything, Dad,” I tried to explain, my stomach so nauseated I thought I might vomit all over the photos at my knees.
“You sleep with filthy animals, Louise, you’re bound to pick something up. Now get up and get the hell out of my house. I will not have a wanton slut living under my roof, let alone one who associates with the likes of Zeus fucking Garro.”
The dry, malnourished part of my heart that I’d tried for years to nurture for my family kindled and went up in flames at the mention of Zeus. I surged to my feet, caught my balance with a hand on the table and stared down my dad.
“Fuck you, Benjamin. Maybe if you’d bothered to parent me at all the last seventeen years, things would have been different. But they aren’t because you’re a selfish fucking bastard who only cares about himself and his career. You want me gone, fine, I’m fucking out of here.”
“Don’t you dare fucking come back and you can kiss your education goodbye. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m sending you to university now. When that thug leaves you for someone younger don’t come crawling back to me for money.” He kicked at the photos and sent them flying through the air. “My daughter, a biker slut.”
“My father, a daughter abuser,” I retorted through the snot and tears that streamed down my face and into the hem of my ugly brocade dress.
Then with the limited dignity I could muster, I ran to my room to grab what I could before I left the Lafayette mansion for good.
I knew my face was already swelling and discolouring when Harleigh Rose opened the door for me and covered her dropped-open mouth with both hands.
She was a biker’s daughter so I figured she’d seen worse but maybe not on a woman.
“Hi,” I said.
There were three big Louis Vuitton suitcases at my feet and two more duffels slung over my shoulders. I had a lot of stuff I didn’t want to leave behind, including the wooden box in one of the duffels that contained my letters from Z.
“Ohmigawd,” Harleigh Rose breathed, stepping forward with a lifted hand to flutter her fingers along the goose egg forming on my cheekbone. “What happened to you?”
A second later a big shadow loomed behind H.R. and Zeus was in the doorway, pushing her gently aside even as his face darkened with fury.