“What do you do for work?”
“What do you do for work? Mooch off my son?”
I snort. “Primroses don’t mooch.”
They lie, cheat, and steal. But mooching is beneath us.
With that, I spin on my heel and leave her there with her jaw hanging open. I’m not sure if the entire Wolfe family has beef with mine, but her immediate shock is enough of a reason to believe the rivalry runs deep.
Much deeper than any of the rest of us knows.
A little while later, I’m eating shrimp scampi portside at an experimental yacht restaurant, waiting for Cash to get off the phone with one of his firm partners. Elena sips a martini, eyeing me from across the table as I scarf down my plate.
I’m past the point of being comfortably full when I push back from the table, and I wipe my face with my napkin. “What?”
Elena shrugs, wrapping a strand of dark hair around her pinkie. “Nothing. You just seem hungrier than usual.”
Since we met up that day in Boston a few weeks ago, we’ve had a dozen lunch dates; despite my initial apprehension regarding making friends, as that skill wasn’t one I grew up utilizing much, Elena and I sort of hit it off immediately.
She’s warm and inviting, but there’s also this alluring darkness to her. An edge I’ve not seen in many people, especially any my age, that I find somehow comforting. Like I can embrace the broken, ugly parts of me in her presence, and all she’ll do is show me hers in return.
Don’t get me wrong, the woman seems to have her own host of secrets. I suppose you can’t be involved with the Mafia and live transparently.
Not to mention, her husband is completely terrifying. The one time I met the man who Aplanians call Dr. Death, he just stared at me and then disappeared down the hall with their kids.
But his friendship with Jonas definitely makes sense.
I take a drink of my water as Cash comes back to the table, intruding on our lunch because he insists on checking up on me nowadays.
“Not hungrier,” I tell Elena, setting my glass down. “Just nervous.”
“Is his mom that intimidating?”
“No, she’s just… I don’t know. Imagine spending your life thinking about someone close to you a certain way, getting used to that idea of them and eventually coming to terms with it, only to one day have that notion totally wiped. Almost a clean slate, except you can still see the dirt they left behind in the first place.”
Cash stabs a piece of his Caesar salad. “She fucked him up that bad?”
“Apparently.”
“Parents will do that,” Elena says into her glass, and I remember her comment about her mother’s disappearance, and wonder if that’s what destroyed their relationship.
Or if it was something else entirely.
“Imagine if we sat down and wrote out every single transgression our parents bestowed onto us.” Cash looks at me, scoffing. “We’d be writing until we die.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “What did they do to you?”
He makes a face. “You don’t think you have some sort of monopoly on the Primrose family trauma, do you, swan?”
Heat scorches my face, and I sit back in my seat, brushing some hair off my shoulder. The summer sun beats down on us, reflecting off the rippling water around us, and I write off the sweat beading in my palm as the summer air.
I don’t think that, but my brothers were never held to the same standards as me. They didn’t need to be, because for the most part, anything they did could be easily explained away. Whereas for me, a girl, my actions in public were always being judged more harshly, and a single slipup could have detrimental ramifications.
The worst thing either of the twins ever did in our parents’ eyes was when Cash got a DUI riding his bike around campus, and Palmer opened up to the island about his sexuality.
They even managed to come to terms with the latter, as difficult as it is for bigoted Southern Baptists to do.
But me? I’d messed up once in my entire life, a decision that spiraled completely out of control and beyond the realm of what I’d intended, and Daddy not only held it against me, but used it as fuel.
Paraded my pain around for everyone to see.
Made me a bad guy, because it was easier to write off the end of my relationship with Preston Covington and my “descent into debauchery” as a colossal mistake.
If he’d owned up to it, that would’ve meant severing ties with business partners and friends. People Daddy refuses to disassociate with, even though it was my sanity on the line.
So, no. Not a monopoly on Primrose trauma, but I’ve definitely received the lion’s share.
“Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Elena cuts in, disrupting my thoughts. “But nothing good has ever come from the sudden reappearance of an estranged parent. Trust me on this; it’ll be a bloodbath, one way or the other.”
The rest of lunch is rather quiet, as we shift into stories about Elena’s daughters, and some big pharmaceutical case Cash has coming up, but I just sit back, wringing my fingers together.
Anxiety threads through the muscles in my stomach, and since I’ve eaten too much, I do my best to focus on not puking.
After a while, though, the nausea morphs into something else.
Something dark and sinister, as I think about my father and the men he let get away with hurting me.
Richard Stiles’s horrified face comes to mind; how he’d seemed so shocked on the balcony when I fought back. It was almost as if someone had told him I wouldn’t, and I’ve always wondered who.
I think deep down, though, I’ve always known.
37
The mayor’s mansion dwarfs the natural beauty around it; the grounds are traditionally landscaped, with perfectly manicured hedging and an array of pine and maple trees native to Aplana Island.
It’s got beautiful gray-stone walkways and a cherub fountain out front, making it look as stately as any other in the country despite being relatively new.
When you get to the house itself, however, the modern architecture, with its squared roof and block-style doors, it just doesn’t blend well.
Strangely appropriate, I suppose, given my brother’s the current inhabitant, and he’s always seemed incapable of fitting in.
That, I fear, is the real Wolfe curse. We were brought up with such a specific purpose, that venturing beyond it is incomprehensible.
I show up unannounced the morning after Mileena shows her face on the island, escaping the house before she can wake and drive me to insanity all over again.
Her comment from last night about the house being in her name makes me uneasy, so I’m bringing my concerns to the man who convinced me not to let the bank foreclose in the first place.
Alistair’s in a meeting when I force the lock to his front door and head to his office upstairs—I use the term meeting liberally, given my brother’s pants are around his knees while his cock is in another man’s mouth.
Though not just any man; this one I recognize immediately as Isaiah Fredrickson, aside from Tom himself, Isaiah is the last remaining name on my father’s hit list. CFO of Primrose Realty for over a decade, and the initial person to report my father as the reason behind company assets that suddenly vanished.