Chapter 1 Neil #2
When we got back home, my sobbing mother tackled Chloe just before Matt gave her a long, loving hug. My sister was still very shaken up, even though Logan had untied all the ropes and comforted her all the way home.
“Daddy!” she exclaimed, embracing our father, William, who was, surprisingly, there as well.
He looked unsettled but still impeccably dressed in a designer suit.
He kissed her forehead and gazed at her, his eyes so bright and clear they looked like blue glass.
He looked at her the way I had always wanted him to look at me, especially when I was a kid.
Though I never would have admitted that to anyone else.
“I’ve been so worried…” he said in a tortured murmur. He who had always been such a cold, unflappable man now looked fragile and vulnerable.
“I’m okay,” Chloe answered with a weak smile before turning her attention back to our mother and Matt.
“Can anyone tell me how this happened?” William shifted his withering gaze from Logan to me, waiting for me to say something. As usual, the only thing I could muster up for him was complete indifference. He was fully aware of how much I hated him, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
He’d certainly never made any efforts to patch up our relationship.
He had never been there for me.
Annoyed by my silence, he stalked over to me and gave me an evaluating look before turning slightly to do the same thing to Xavier, who was standing next to me.
“So, you’re letting your sister hang around these thugs now…” he noted with a superior air. He looked at the piercings in Xavier’s eyebrow and lower lip, his face a rictus of displeasure, before his eyes slid down to take in Xavier’s clothes.
William knew all the members of the Krew and had repeatedly ordered me to stay away from them, but I’d never paid him any mind. No one was going to tell me what to do—or not to do—least of all him. The man meant nothing to me; he had no right to dictate anything about my life.
“So, Hudson, how’s your father faring in prison?
” He gave Xavier a mocking grin, and the boy next to me went rigid.
William didn’t give two shits about Xavier or his family; he just wanted to get in a shot at me, reminding me that I spent my time with what he called “the dregs of society”—troubled, dangerous kids who would inevitably land me in jail, thus ruining the Miller family’s good name.
Xavier took a step forward, ready to get into it with him because he hated it whenever anyone who wasn’t a close friend brought up his father’s incarceration for his mother’s murder. I stretched my arm out across his chest, silently telling him to let it go.
“You should go,” I said, giving him a speaking look. His jaw tightened, and he rubbed his eyebrow in agitation. Knowing him, he was going to ignore my warning completely.
“You know what, Bill?” Xavier shot back predictably with a devious little half-smile.
“You talk about my father one more time, and I’ll do a whole lot more than bring your kid home late from a party…
” Xavier tried to step closer to him, but I automatically grabbed his arm to keep him from attacking.
I yanked him back as he stared wrathfully at William.
After a moment, he peered down his nose at the older man, as though repulsed by the signifiers of wealth that dripped off his person.
Xavier turned abruptly and left, slamming the door behind him.
I kept silent, but my father could sense my satisfaction. Another son might have sprung to his parent’s defense in that kind of situation. I, on the other hand, had just basked in it like a pig in shit.
“You and I need to talk,” he told me in his usual autocratic tone.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I tried to push past him, but he blocked me.
He was as tall as I was, and he seemed to have more muscle than I remembered.
He’d always taken great care of his physical condition, and that had only ramped up since his divorce from my mother.
He was now an inveterate middle-aged bachelor, constantly sleeping with much younger women but incapable of committing to anything serious with anyone.
He was a man who knew next to nothing about me, but I undoubtedly knew everything about him.
“Neil, your father’s right,” my mother put in. “Logan, Alyssa, please take Chloe up to her room and stay there with her,” she told them to remove their buffering presence. My brother gave me a concerned look, and I gestured for him to go with a jerk of my chin.
I wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, and definitely not my asshole father.
When we were all alone in the spacious living room, my mother sighed, rubbing her forehead, and Matt patted her shoulder comfortingly. William, on the other hand, just turned to me, hands on his hips.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened to your sister?” he exclaimed with an inquisitorial expression that I longed to punch right off his face.
“And don’t try to lie to me. I called Logan to see if you’d found Chloe, and he told me everything,” he added firmly.
I remembered that conversation. I was driving, but Logan nimbly answered our father’s questions, quickly spinning out a story about Chloe sneaking out to a party she heard about from the Krew (that part was mostly true), drinking too much, and losing her phone before passing out.
I could hear William’s indistinct outrage through the phone, but I knew it was better than telling them anything about Player or his deadly games.
“I didn’t take her to the party.” I hated pretending to be so cavalier, but I couldn’t tell them the truth.
“No, that was just your degenerate friends.” He sighed, fixing me with a stare full of the distaste he could never fully hide from me.
“I don’t see how this is my problem,” I answered simply and began feeling around in the pockets of my sweatshirt for my pack of Winstons.
“No?” he said in a mocking echo. “So you think it’s just fine if your underage sister is exposed to the kind of cesspools you spend your time in?
Or maybe you don’t care if your sister gets assaulted by one of the punks you hang out with?
” He went on the attack, baring his teeth so ferociously that my mother moved toward him in alarm.
“William!” my mother chided him.
“What, Mia?” He turned on her, enraged. “You know as well as I do that this is his fault. How many times has he brought trouble down on this family?” He raised his voice, and my mother retreated.
She never could stand up to her ex-husband.
She was incapable of taking my side or even of trying to put in a good word for me.
She hadn’t been able to manage it even when I was a child and he was visiting his awful punishments on me in the name of “education.”
“There’s no point dredging up all the things I’ve done wrong. I know what I did,” I said loudly to draw his attention. “But Chloe’s not me. She screwed up like any other teenager, but she’s okay, and she’s home safe now. Trust me, she won’t do it again,” I continued.
“Did you hear that?” William said sharply, turning to Matt and Mia.
“She’s learned her lesson, he says. Because he’s such an expert on normal teenage behavior,” he laughed mirthlessly.
“Are you even hearing yourself? How do you know she’s not going to get hooked on something and end up just like you, out there running wild for everyone to see?
” Ah, of course, his priority was the same as it always was—protecting his fucking reputation.
“What’s the matter, William? Are you worried about your bottom line?
Or maybe about the reporters who are always circling?
” I taunted him with a cold smile. “I can see the headlines now: ‘Children of CEO William Miller, embroiled in yet another scandal.’” I let out a laugh and pulled a cigarette from the pack, tucking it between my lips before I continued.
“I still remember the army of overpaid lawyers you needed to make everything disappear so quick after the cops arrested my babysitter…” I lit my cigarette and advanced on him until our razor-sharp stares aligned perfectly.
“You remember my babysitter, right? The woman who abused me. The one you got so friendly with.” I blew a cloud of smoke into his face, but he remained impassive.
“You’re talking crap,” he said, shaking his head as though amused.
“Your mother never believed that particular story, and do you know why?” He cut his eyes at his ex-wife before looking back at me.
“Because, back then, she knew better than to listen to a disturbed child, just like she isn’t going to listen to a raving lunatic now,” he sneered.
I continued smoking, unmoved, as I stared into his eyes.
I’d never look away. He was lucky I hadn’t already kicked his ass.
“She was the reason I was ‘a disturbed child.’ And you were fucking her while your wife was pregnant with Chloe,” I shot back tauntingly.
Go on, William, let your monster out, I thought.
I wanted him to expose his worst side so I’d have a valid reason to hit him.
“You’ve always had such an imagination, ever since you were a boy,” he taunted me, licking his lower lip. He was getting antsy; I could see it in his tense muscles and tight jaw.
“Oh, yeah. Guess I imagined these, too…” I pushed the sleeve of my sweatshirt up roughly and exposed the three small scars on my left forearm. William creased up his forehead and took a step back, speechless. There was nothing more to say.
I shoved my way past him and crossed the living room.
Then, without so much as a glance at my mother or that asshole Matt, I raced up the stairs.
Despite the powerful urge to shower that I was feeling, I instead headed for Chloe’s room and went in without knocking.
I spotted Alyssa on the end of the bed first and then Logan, stretched out beside our sister.