That’s it, asshole. You’re going cold turkey on this bitch, even after she comes back. You need to get her out of your system.
“You will lose a fraction of what you are gaining.” The man who spoke with Syllie took a drag of his cigarette. “And have the world at your feet in return. If your excuse for why you shouldn’t raise refinery workers’ salaries is stirring pity in Wall Street brokers, you may want to try another tactic.”
“What are you asking?” My father’s right hand retorted. “Get to the point.”
“They would each like three million dollars over the course of the next three years, paid in unmarked Bitcoin, so they can trade and resell them as they see fit. As for me, I’d like a substantial number of shares in Royal Pipelines. I’ll buy them kosher, and you’ll slip the money back to me through the back door.”
“What do you consider substantial?”
“Fifteen percent is my starting point.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I’m afraid humor is not my strong suit.”
There was silence, and then some arguing. In the end, they didn’t reach an agreement, but it was easy to see the Eastern European dude had Syllie’s balls in a vise. I stopped listening when Syllie stomped his way back to the car and slammed his door.
I wanted to take this to Cillian and Da, to throw it in their faces and tell them I’d been right all along. In fact, I’d shoved my feet into my sneakers and dropped the USB with the recording in my front pocket, halfway through the door, when I remembered what Cillian had said.
It was my operation to handle.
It was my war to fight.
I’d started it, and I needed to finish—a hunter going for the kill.
Even though I knew Sylvester Lewis was up to something, I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. There was more to unveil. Worst of all, I knew Syllie to be a very resourceful man and was afraid he’d spin it somehow with his smooth tongue.
No. I was going to wait it out and deal with him myself.
I was going to earn my place at Royal Pipelines.
I was going to show Athair I was his.
The last thing I wanted to do after New York was go straight from the airport to the archery club.
My feet blistered from standing on heels all day, my skin was raw from the makeup they’d slapped on me—then rubbed off of my face—and my scalp burned from all the hairspray and tugging. I’d sat for three hours and answered questions that had nothing to do with archery, then ended up missing my training session in New York. Everything felt chaotic and pointless. Since when was being an athlete about the fame and not the actual sport?
But Junsu had insisted I meet him at the club. Things between us were so strained, I figured appeasing him was more important than catching up on sleep. Besides, a huge chunk of me didn’t want to face Hunter again. I’d received radio silence from him the last couple days.
I asked Dad, who picked me up from the airport, to take me straight to the club. He didn’t protest, though I could see the apostrophes between his eyebrows on our way there. I itched to reach and smooth them with my fingers.
“If you have something to say, you might as well do it,” I grumbled as we rounded the street to the club.
I knew he and Mom were worried about me. I’d never given them an answer about the summer semester. I just pretended we hadn’t had that conversation, shoved it into the jam-packed denial drawer in my head.
Fuck-buddy purgatory. Life purgatory. Same difference.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Dad kept his eyes on the road, his jaw twitching.
Growing up, it had always surprised me how my dad, who seemed so formidable and terrifying to the rest of the world, gave me pretty much free reign when it came to my own life. When I asked him about it once, he said, “I cannot keep you from making mistakes, because then you’ll never learn from them. The world is tough, and cruel, and mostly unfair. It’s our job to find a way to navigate our way in it. The more I shield you, the less chance you’ll have of surviving.”
“That’s because I haven’t,” I admitted, fiddling with my seatbelt as we sliced past rows of red-bricked buildings, little cafes, and potted plants. The sky was wooly, heavy with gray clouds. Autumn had molded into winter. The seasons were changing, and with them, the circumstances of my life. “But I will. Now that Lana is here, all I need is to prove I deserve the Olympic spot. Then I can finally take my foot off the gas.”
“Like you did in the last decade?” he quipped, strangling the steering wheel.
“Whatever happened to letting me make my own mistakes so I can learn from them?”
“Whatever happened to learning from your mistakes? You’re killing yourself,” he countered. “And seeing you like this is killing your mother. I will not be a widower because you’ve a chip on your shoulder and something to prove. Clearly, the Fitzpatrick boy didn’t have the desired effect on you.”
Dumbstruck, I whirled toward him, struggling to keep my jaw from dropping.
“Excuse me?”
He rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up. “I thought an arranged relationship would work for you as it worked for your mother and me. I was wrong,” he grumbled, not a trace of apology in his voice.
“Hunter and I are not in a relationship,” I lied. Maybe. Who the hell knew what we were at this point?
Dad had kind of, sort of, okay—totally—kidnapped Mom and married her back in the day. They hadn’t expected to fall in love, but fall madly in love they did. Still, I struggled to understand what made him think this was the norm.
“It sure looked like it from where I was sitting at the Fitzpatrick dinner table.”
“Hunter’s celibate,” I bit out.
Dad side-eyed me, giving me the bored, shockingly condescending look he spared his enemies.
“Don’t lie to me, kid. I make a living off my bullshit radar, and your version of things stinks.”
“So you just handed me over to Fitzpatrick because you thought it’d loosen me up? Open my eyes to the wonders of the world?” I scoffed, aghast.
He threw the Maserati into park in front of the club, but didn’t kill the engine. I didn’t make a move. Junsu could wait. I was too busy digesting the fact that my dad had all but pimped me out in the name of bringing me out of my shell.
Dad ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, scowling at the center console.
“You needed a push in the right direction. Still do. It is fine not to be boy-crazy, but you can’t ignore the world forever. You’ve never had a crush. Beau wasn’t a crush. He was a fucking beard. You’ve never taken interest in doing anything, becoming something, pursuing a profession. You needed someone to introduce you to the world. Hunter was supposed to be the guy to do it.”
Hunter was the guy, I thought bitterly. Thanks to him, I had Ash, had learned how to push myself forward, to believe in myself, and stood up to Junsu. Because of him, I’d started dressing up and paying attention to what I looked like. Hunter had dragged me out of the house to restaurants and the theater and to meet his friends and family. He made me a part of something bigger than my teeny-tiny life. I couldn’t deny it. And Hunter, like my parents, hated my obsession with what I was doing—my tunnel-visioned quest to the Olympics.