“Camryn, trust isn’t yielding. It’s absolute or it’s not there,” he scolds. “You can’t place your faith in someone only to take away without justification, giving it back only when it fits your plan. If you’re balancing your trust like that, you’re expecting a person to live to only your expectations.”
My confusion is painted openly on my face.
“What about their expectations?” he continues. “Rocco has assured me he won’t kill Sarah, that’s the expectation he’s set with me, so, yes, I trust him to follow through. If he had found her without me and we hadn’t discussed the situation I wouldn’t trust him not to kill her, but that’s because there wouldn’t have been any joint expectations set.”
I frown at his words, digging deep within myself to find my own belief in his.
“What about relationships?” I ask. “You fall in and love and the expectation is that you trust one another.”
He leans in closer. “Of course, but having fallen in love, you’ve spoken about what is important to you, about how you are. If you’re in a relationship with a man who tells you he wants to sleep with other women, do you trust him not to cheat?”
“No.”
“Exactly, because your expectations aren’t aligned. However, if you’re with a man who tells you that you’re his everything. That he wants you and only you, do you trust him not to cheat?”
I dip my chin in confirmation.
“My point. Your expectation is aligned with his, it’s out on the table.”
I consider his words as our food is delivered, leaving my dad to thank the waiter.
“Does it bother you?” he asks after the waiter has disappeared. “The potential death of your mother?”
“I guess it should.” I pick up a pork dumpling and shove it in my mouth with little finesse.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I chew my food. “Does it make me evil to say no?” I whisper, embarrassed to admit it out loud.
“No,” he answers without pause.
“How can you be sure?”
Dropping his chopsticks carefully to his plate, he reaches for my hand. “Do you wish her dead? Or do you just have no intense feelings about her dying?”
“I feel she deserves to be punished but if she was standing in front of me, would I kill her? No.” I shake my head. “Something inside of me tells me that we should be bothered by death and that goes directly against my lack of concern about my mother’s welfare.”
“Camryn,” he sighs. “We shouldn’t be forced to think in any particular way. You’ll find yourself constantly at war with yourself if that’s how you live your life. Your mind is yours just as mine is mine. We all have ill thoughts pass through us throughout our lives. Death is a given, being bothered by it will only make you scared of it and that’s no way to live.”
“I tell myself that there is enough evil in the world, I don’t need to add to it with thoughts of harm and retribution.”
“Drink. Eat,” my father encourages, doing the same. “I look at it in a different way,” he offers on a finished mouthful. “I’ve felt hate for myself, for others, I’ve also had it aimed my way. I lived with it for as long as your mother remained in my home. I’ve experienced great sadness at times and I’ve felt loss. But because I’ve felt all that, because I’ve lived through all the horrible emotions we attempt to ignore; I know what true happiness is, I know what real love feels like. The negative facets of life, both external,” he gestures around us, “and internal,” he points to his heart, “just let us appreciate the good in life. It’s all a balance, sweetheart. The sooner we all realize that, the more settled we’ll all be.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I combat. “About us being bothered by death.”
He watches me silently for a beat before shrugging. “We’re all wired differently, Camryn. Things that may sit on your conscience, likely won’t sit on mine. Who is to say who is right?”
“But we know what actions are fundamentally wrong as human beings. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if general fucking common sense prevailed? Don’t kill anyone. Don’t cheat, don’t steal, blah fucking blah. Shouldn’t we stick to that?” I argue.
“Maybe,” he concedes. “But the world isn’t that simple. Where is your moral compass?” he tests. “Is it aligned with mine? With Rocco’s? What about Codi’s?”
I don’t speak, too engrossed in his thought process to even mumble a syllable.
“Codi believes in second chances, in giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Rocco, on the other hand, believes in retribution. He believes in people paying for their sins, himself included. If you wrong an innocent, you pay with blood. I imagine you’d sit somewhere in between,” he shrugs, not waiting for me to confirm or deny his belief. “I don’t think any of you are necessarily wrong or right. We’re different, and that is where the world will always sit, Camryn, whether that makes sense to you or not.”
I sit back in my seat, letting everything he said settle within me.
“I enjoy talking to you,” I tell him quietly. “We don’t do it enough anymore.”
Sadness brushes through his eyes, dropping along his features as he blinks. “I lost you some time ago, beautiful. I don’t know why, but I wish you’d talk to me about it. I gave in to your wish and left you to find yourself. But it backfired on me, in the end, I feel as though you not only didn’t find yourself, you lost who you were.”
I drain my glass of Sake. “I just don’t know who I am anymore.” Not a lie, but also not the complete truth. “I haven’t for a long time. Everything I thought I knew seems lost.”
“Why do you have to decide who you are?”
I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re remembering you were, thinking that’s who you should be. Am I right?”
I shrug and nod at the same time.
“Why can’t you just be who you are? Life changes us all, Ryn. Stop looking backward. If your focus is behind you, you’ll find yourself tripping into your future, bruised and broken.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rocco
“Always thought Dominic would be the first to find me. Connected asshole that he is.”
I don’t answer, letting her believe what she will. That I’m alone, working without the help of her husband’s connections.
“What I don’t understand.” She edges away from me, feigning fear as she moves against the wall and closer to the single window in the airless dump she’s now calling home. It’d be humorous if it wasn’t so idiotic, moving toward a window she can’t escape from, pinning herself against a wall. “Is why you care if I live or die. What have I ever done to you?”
I scowl, taking two steps into the shithole she’s settled into. What a fucking fall from grace. Living in the warm contentment of the Rein mansion, only to find herself in this fucking squalor, begging for fucks from a teenager and scoring drugs off kids younger than her own.