Love & Lies Under the Mistletoe (Silver Falls University)

Chapter 1

Sometimes even the smell of deliciously roasted turkey, the sparkling of the fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, and the crisp scent of a freshly cut Fraser fir isn’t enough to put me in the Christmas spirit.

My father stands proudly at the head of our long dining table. It’s such an awkward length. It can seat about twelve people, but Gerald Baker only has two children. The four of us sit on a different side, giving away how cold and distant our family has always been.

My parents are at each end, so far away from each other they couldn’t even pass the salt.

My brother Luke and I face each other on the longer sides, glancing at the other every now and then.

We’re close. Close like two siblings who have always faced an emotionally abusive father.

One who made sure we knew we were next to nothing compared to him.

We’re close like two siblings who know their family has heavy secrets no one should ever discover.

Secrets Luke is unsure of, but I’ve come to learn.

Secrets I could never tell him. I can barely look at myself in the mirror.

How could I look my brother in the eyes if I admitted what our insane father has been doing for years? What I’ve been an accomplice to.

The spine-chilling sound of a knife being sharpened brings me back to reality. My gaze flicks to my dad holding the honing rod he’s gliding the blade against in grand, dramatic gestures. His eyes are sharp, his stance wide.

His presence is always threatening. The physical similarity between him and his children is uncanny.

We’re all eerie copies of him. The almost-white blond hair, the pale blue eyes, the porcelain skin.

My worst nightmare is that all the similarities between us aren’t just physical.

That one day, I might end up just like him.

He is a charming man, beautiful even. That’s what’s so scary. Charming people are nothing but a gateway to hell.

Every year, on the twenty-fourth, we have a Christmas Eve dinner. That way we can dine as a family before my parents escape to their private beach villa for their real Christmas.

The knife slides against the perfectly crispy turkey skin, and my stomach twists.

My father drags the sound out, making a spectacle of the manly way he’s cutting the Christmas dish.

The table is full of side dishes, pots of gravy or cranberry sauce, and all the mouth-watering other options one would love to have for Christmas dinner.

But everything tastes bitter in my house.

Everything tastes like dirty money and sin.

My mother cooked the turkey. She is a wonderful mom and housewife.

Everything my father desires of her, she has achieved.

I have perfect memories with her. Too perfect.

Like a doll of a mother, with no other feelings than the ones she’s meant to have.

She never screamed at us, never told us off.

She never said she was too tired to cook or play or help with our homework.

We have help in our house, but they’re all under the careful watch of Celine Baker, and when it comes to cooking, she’s the chef. And she made sure I had plenty of vegetarian sides since my dad categorically refused to let her cook a vegan turkey.

“Celine,” my father approves in a low purr. “This all looks delicious.”

She smiles brightly at him, like a golden retriever that’s been waiting for nothing but praise.

My mother saddens me. She’s brainwashed, unaware of her unhappiness and all the great things she could do if she wasn’t in my father’s clutches. But that, among so many other parts of my life, is not something I have control of. So, I smile, and I approve, and I lie. What a perfect family we are.

I’m not twenty-one yet, but that doesn’t stop me from drinking expensive champagne and quality wine that cost an arm and a leg to the average American citizen.

It tastes acrid to me, but there’s nothing like alcohol to help spend time with my family. Nothing like a good buzz to make everything around me bearable.

I don’t listen when my father discusses the family business with Luke.

My brother wasn’t very good at school, and neither am I.

We both retook years, probably because our father spends most of his evenings reminding us of how incapable we are.

How dumb we are and that we’d have been nothing if it wasn’t for the empire he built.

Bakers’ Café.

A fucking chain of coffeehouses. That’s the pride of his life. Not his children or the marriage he built with his beautiful, sweet wife, but his forty thousand and thirty-two shops in seventy-nine countries and his eleven subsidiary companies.

Luke didn’t care about high school because he knew that as the eldest and the only son, he would go to work for Bakers’ Café right after graduation.

And that’s what he does all year long at the Los Angeles offices.

He’s training in ruthless business so he can become CEO and my dad can stay a simple, powerful board member rather than being constantly hands on.

“Ninety-two percent?” I hear my father’s stern voice snap. “We agreed to ninety-four. What the hell is that? I went on vacation for three weeks and that’s the news you have to announce?”

“Two of the farms didn’t meet the environmental criteria. We’re working on it.”

“Working on it? How are you working on it? It’s Christmas Eve. We aimed for ninety-four percent ethically sourced coffee by the end of the year. It’s the end of the year, Lucas.”

I eye my brother, his face impassive although he knows he’s about to have the worst Christmas Eve dinner of his life. We all are. If my father isn’t happy, no one else is allowed to be.

Luke turns to our mom. “Do you understand now? Why I only came for one night.”

“Oh, Lucas, please stay tomorrow.” My mother pouts pitifully. “Gerald, will you please leave business at the office at least for Christmas.”

“Stay out of it.” His clipped voice makes me tighten my grip on my glass of champagne as he points the carving knife at my mom.

He attacks the turkey without mercy. Like the psychopath he is, I bet he imagines cutting up Luke’s heart.

“I am not putting you in charge of a forty-eight-billion-dollar company for you to destroy my life’s greatest work. My father grinded coffee beans for a living, Lucas. Your father made an empire out of it. What are you going to do with your life?”

Luke runs a hand through his pale hair, making a mess out of already untamable strands.

Our maid serves everyone but me the perfectly sliced turkey and I slowly help myself to all the sides as my dad sits back down.

“I’m telling you I will get it fixed before the end of the year,” Luke grits. He murmurs a thank you to Samantha and she nods her head.

“Who was the OfEC agent on our case?”

The Organization for Ethical Coffee is familiar to me. We had agents over for dinner many times in the past. Otherwise, how would my dad bribe them into making us an ethically sourced coffee company?

“Matters,” Luke explains. “I’m seeing him on the twenty-sixth. Don’t worry, I know the process. You wanted ninety-one percent last year, didn’t you? I got it. You’ll get your fucking ninety-four percent ethically sourced.”

Dad takes a bite of turkey, chewing violently as he thinks. “His wife needs knee surgery. Did you know?”

Luke nods silently. His eyes dart to me. He can probably feel my accusing stare. My brother is a good person, and I hate my dad for dragging him down the slippery slope of bribery, threats, and everything else that makes a man a billionaire.

We live in Stoneview, a town in America that has the most concentration of billionaires per square meter. Every single one of them is a criminal. No one becomes that rich by keeping on the straight road. It’s impossible.

My brother’s mouth twists in a silent sorry to me, caught too quickly by my dad.

“We are ethical and environmentally friendly, Lucas,” he insists. When you tell a lie so often to keep everyone on your side, you probably start to believe it yourself. “OfEC simply has standards that we need a little help meeting. It’s not uncommon in our field of work.”

I can’t help the snort that escapes me as I chew on hot potatoes.

Oh no.

My father’s hard eyes land on me. “Something to add maybe?”

I swallow slowly, take a sip of wine—since I finished the champagne—to give me courage, and stare back. “Do you know what kind of Christmas tree is standing behind you?”

Cocking an eyebrow at me, he doesn’t bother even turning around, so I keep going.

“It’s a Fraser fir. They’re an endangered species.

That’s three stages away from extinction in case you didn’t know.

Please, don’t bore us with your ethical and environmentally friendly company at Christmas Eve dinner when you know your entire organization is a threat to our planet.

Your coffee houses waste more plastic with their takeaway cups in an hour than the rest of America combined. ”

From across the table, my brother kicks my shin, silently telling me to drop it. He doesn’t care about staying quiet for an entire evening because he never has to deal with dad anymore. I see him all the time.

I might have just started my second year of college, but Silver Falls University is a forty-minute drive from Stoneview at best if there’s a lot of traffic. I’m too close to my parents to truly feel independent, and that’s how it works for most Stoneview families.

We go from Stoneview Prep to SFU because that keeps us in elite education, and that way we don’t stray too far from our families and their expectations.

I see my dad at least one weekend a month. I don’t have any patience for his bullshit like Luke does.

“The actions I take in my personal life don’t reflect on the company,” my dad defends calmly.