Chapter 47
VAUGHN
“Anything to drink, sir?”
I glance up at the waiter and shake my head. “Just sparkling water, thanks.”
“Shall I bring over the wine list?”
“No. No alcohol for the table.”
He nods and disappears. Evelina's soft hand lands on mine, and she gives me a puzzled look.
“I’m trying to make a good impression with your brother,” I say, squeezing her hand.
“Well, he won’t say it out loud,” she grins, “but it won’t be lost on him.”
I nod. Then my brow pinches as I glare at the table in front of me. “Do you really think I should still tell Val?” I turn to her. “I mean, about…well, all of it.”
“If it was me, I’d want to know.”
I sigh. “He’s going to hate me for it.”
She makes a face. “He’ll be upset, yeah,” she says gently. “But he’ll understand why you’re telling him. I mean, it’s the truth. I know Val, and I know he’d rather hear the truth than be fed a lie, even if that truth hurts.”
I nod. Then I turn, cup her face, and lean in to kiss her softly.
“Sorry if I'm interrupting,” a voice growls.
Shit.
Wonderful first impression.
Evelina quickly pulls away from me, biting back a sheepish grin as we turn to see her brother and mine standing there with the ma?tre d’.
“Hi, Rome,” she smiles as we both stand. She comes around the table and gives her brother a big hug. I turn to Val and nod stiffly as I shake his hand. Then we swap, Evelina hugging my brother and me shaking Roman’s hand.
“Thanks for coming,” I say to him.
“What, not show and give you more ammunition to drive a wedge between Evie and me?”
“Rommmme,” Evelina sighs. “C’mon. You promised.”
I shake my head. “Roman, I have zero interest in coming between you and your sister. Just like I don’t imagine you have any interest in trying to come between me and my brother.”
Roman smirks. “I think you’ve been doing a bang-up job of that on your own.”
“Chill,” Val mutters, elbowing him in the ribs. He sighs and then smiles at all of us. “I’m glad we’re doing this. I think it’s important.”
“Me too,” Eveline grins.
“Well,” Val clears his throat. “Shall we sit?”
Everyone takes their seats. Suddenly, Val frowns as he glances around.
“There’s only four chairs.”
Val’s mouth thins as he looks at me. “Where the fuck is Dad’s chair?” he growls. “He’ll be here any—”
“He’s not coming,” I say quietly.
“Excuse me?” he growls. “Why the fuck not, Vaughn?”
Here we go.
I clear my throat. “What I’m about to tell you is going to make me the bad guy.”
“What the fuck…” Val hisses.
“Val,” Evelina says quietly. “Just…listen to him, please?”
He scowls, but drags his gaze back to me. “Fine, I'll bite. What is going to make you the bad guy?”
So, so much.
I draw in a breath and exhale it slowly. “Morgan isn’t who you think he is, Val.”
My brother’s face darkens. “You have got to be joking, Vaughn,” he hisses. “If you don’t want a relationship with our father, fine. But I fucking do!”
“No, you don’t,” I growl. “Trust me.”
He barks a laugh. “Why would I? You obviously can’t let go of your anger toward him.
And dude, I won’t ever try to tell you that your pain isn’t valid.
But I’m fucking trying, okay!? I’ve been trying to get to know him, and spend time with him, and make up for all this lost time. So fuck you for trying to sabotage—”
“Has he told you about his other family yet?” I snap. “Has that come up?”
Val’s eyes glint as sharp as mine as they narrow on me.
“Whatever the fuck you’re trying to pull, you are way over the fucking line—”
“Here.”
I pull an envelope out of my pocket and drop it in front of him.
“I’m not opening that.”
“Okay,” I growl. “But it’s the proof, since you don’t believe me.” I nod at it. “Morgan got himself a new family, Val. A wife and two boys, way down in Georgia.” I smile coldly. “He got himself a do-over.”
Val scoffs. “You’re unbelievable. The man is allowed to have a life, motherfucker. Yeah, his first one fell apart. He was an addict, and a shit father, and he lost both his kids, and his wife.” He glares at me. “So what if he got sober and wanted to start over? Is he not ever allowed to be happy—”
“If he didn’t tell you about the other family,” I say dryly, “then I'm guessing he definitely didn’t tell you about walking out on them.”
Val turns to stone. “The fuck do you mean he walked out,” he says icily.
I sigh. “I mean he left them. Abandoned them. But I guess that wasn’t in the ‘Dad comes back from the dead’ brochure, was it?”
Val’s jaw grinds. “I can’t imagine he just left for no fucking reason,” he growls.
“Oh, there was a reason.”
Pain stabs into me. I’m about to hurt someone I love with a brutal truth.
“None of them was a match,” I say quietly.
“I mean, tough luck, because it really seems like Morgan’s entire impetus for having a second family after he’d fucked the first one up was that he needed one.
But then, lightning strikes, and Morgan spots your fucking photo in New York Magazine.
So he cleans himself up, comes to the big city, reaches out to his long-lost—”
“What match,” Val snaps. “Vaughn, what the fuck are you talking about?!”
“He wants your fucking kidney, Val.”
My brother freezes. His jaw drops open a little, and his Adam's apple bobs heavily as he blinks.
“The fuck did you just—”
“Morgan’s got acute organ failure from his decades of heavy drug use,” I say gently.
“He’s about to lose both kidneys and have to go on dialysis for whatever life he’s got left.
No transplant list in the world is going to give a former heroin addict a fucking kidney.
” My mouth tightens. “Val, I’m very fucking sorry,” I grit through clenched teeth.
“But Morgan’s only been cultivating a relationship with you because your kidney is near-perfect for a transplant.
Remember that DNA test you took together?
It wasn't a DNA test. It was to see if you were a match.”
“Jesus,” Roman says quietly, his face paling as he sits back in his chair. He turns to my brother and reaches out to plant a hand on his shoulder. “Val,” he says quietly. “Baby, I’m right here—”
“Fuck,” Val rasps. He looks away, blinking and shaking his head. “Fuck,” he growls louder. He stands abruptly from the table, shoving his fingers through his hair and pacing the floor before he abruptly sits again.
“Okay,” he nods. “Okay, fine. Fuck it. I wish he’d just fucking said something, but if he needs a kidney—”
“Val.”
“No, fuck this,” he snarls. “And fuck you for making him such a fucking villain!”
“Val,” I growl.
“Seriously. Fuck YOU, man,” he seethes. “You can hate the guy, but trying to get between him and a fucking life-saving transplant is fucking diabolical—”
“Goddamn, Val,” I hiss. “Will you listen—”
“He’s our father!!”
“Val—”
“And if my father needs a goddamn kidney, he’s going to get a fucking—”
“He’s not your fucking father!”
The look on my brother’s face when that flies out of my mouth almost kills me. It’s like I’ve just stabbed him in the heart. His whole face crumples.
My own chest tightens as I clear my throat. “I’m sorry,” I grit out quietly. “I thought about not telling you, because I knew it would hurt—”
“How long.” Val’s eyes are pure poison as they pierce mine. “How fucking long have you known.”
Evelina’s hand slides across the table on my other side and squeezes mine.
“Years, Val,” I say quietly. “I’ve known for years.”
He stares at me, blinking slowly. “You’ve known he wasn’t our father for—”
“Oh, he's my father,” I murmur. “But not yours.”
Val exhales slowly, his eyes glazing over as he drops back in his chair.
“Wow,” he breathes. “Just fuckin’ wow.”
Roman’s face crumples. “Val—”
“I need a cigarette,” my brother mutters.
Roman slides off his chair and crouches next to Val, putting an arm around his shoulders. “I’m right here—”
We all jolt when Val’s fist slams down on the table, rattling the silverware and making water splash from the glasses. “I need a fucking—!”
His face squeezes and scrunches up tight. He whirls on me, his eyes wild as they stab into me.
“What the fuck do you mean he’s not my father,” he seethes.
“Val, I’m so fucking sorry—”
“I don’t want your fucking sorries,” he snarls. “I want a cigarette, and I want to know who the fuck my actual dad is!”
I take a deep breath.
“Your father is Diego Torvallés.”
I thought the look on his face when I told him Morgan wasn’t his father would be the one that killed me. But when I see the horrified shock on my brother’s face, it’s like my heart is ripping open.
Val sits slumped in his chair, his eyes staring through the table and his hand clenching into a fist over and over. Roman wraps his arms around my brother and holds him tightly.
I breathe deeply, gripping Evelina’s hand.
“You know Mom turned tricks,” I say quietly.
“But before things got real bad and meth took her looks, she was a stunner, and she’d do high-end escort work to feed her addiction.
” My jaw tightens. “Mainly in Pittsburgh or Philly, but the real money and the big spenders were in New York. And on one of her trips here, she got booked by a high roller client who was visiting from Spain.”
Val’s face pales.
“D-did Dad…Morgan…” he frowns. “I mean, he obviously didn’t know—”
“Oh yeah, he knew,” I mumble. “He and Mom tried to shake Diego down for money about a year after you were born. They weren’t the first. When I dug into it, there were something like forty-five women over about a ten-year period that did the same, and he paid them all without ever looking into their claims. He just wanted them to go away. ”
Shit.
I realize exactly how terrible that sounds just as Val’s chair loudly shoves back from the table.
“I need to get the fuck out of here before I explode.”
He storms away from the table as the rest of us stand.
“What the fuck, man?” Roman hisses, turning to glare at me.
“Rome,” Evelina says, her voice breaking. “Was he supposed to not tell him?”
“I…” Roman grits his teeth. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Vaughn.”
Evelina frowns. “Roman, come on. He deserved to know! Don’t shoot the messenger!”
Roman shakes his head. “I'll go find—”
“No. I’ll talk to him,” I growl.
Roman barks out a brittle laugh. “I think you’ve fucking said enough for one night, don’t you?”
“Roman!”
Evelina and her brother turn on each other, muttering quietly. I squeeze her shoulder and then leave the table and head outside.
Val is huddled against the wind, a cigarette he got fuck-knows-where between his lips as he vainly tries to coax fire from a lighter in his hands.
“I thought you quit.”
“Don’t,” he mutters.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
His thumb snaps the lighter over and over before he suddenly roars and whirls, throwing both lighter and cigarette into the gutter.
“FUCK YOU!” he bellows, storming toward me and jabbing a finger in my chest. “Fuck you for not telling me!!”
“I wanted to,” I hiss. “Fuck, did I want to.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you?!” he screams, startling pedestrians as they walk past us. “Instead of letting me try and cultivate a fucking relationship with him!”
“Because I knew Morgan was the only father you were ever going to have!” I roar back. “And I’d already taken you away from him once, and…”
“And because you hate him.”
My blood pressure spikes. “Yes, but not just because he was a piece of shit when we were growing up,” I growl.
“I hate that he let you go your whole childhood thinking that he was your father, when he knew he wasn’t!
Because to me, that makes the abuse and the neglect even worse!
He let you grow up thinking your own father was that big a piece of shit to you, when he could have lessened that hurt!
” I roar. “He could have told you the goddamn truth, and then he’d just be a deadbeat piece of shit stepdad, not your piece of shit actual father.
He had the chance to do something hard and make a kid’s life slightly less shitty, and he didn’t take it. ”
I throw my head back, exhaling all the pain and venom inside as I look up at the steel and neon high above us.
“I love you, Val,” I growl quietly. “You’re my brother, and I would do anything for you, and I'm so fucking sorry.”
I look at him, both of us shaking with emotion.
“Yeah,” he growls, looking down at the pavement. “I'm sorry, too.”