Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Roderick
“This isn’t just livable,” I murmur.
She smirks, cutting the engine. “Right? I lied. At first, I was going to go low-key, but then I thought—why drag my famous brother into some dump where many of your neighbors might still have your old mug—” She clears her throat— “I mean, poster in their room?”
She nods toward the entrance. “My therapist said you needed a secure place to heal. Privacy. Stability. So, I found it for you. I paid the deposit, first and last month of rent. You owe me.”
The building stands tall and crisp against the drizzle, red brick polished clean and framed by black wrought iron. The canopied entrance is dry, elegant, and there’s someone in a trim uniform who gives Cleo a nod like he’s seen her a hundred times.
“Ms. Cleo. Everything is ready upstairs.”
“Thank you, Leonard. This is my brother,” she smiles, “and your future pain in the ass, Roderick.”
He nods at me. “Welcome, sir. Let us know if you need anything.”
“Nice to meet you, Leonard.” I try to smile, but it probably lands somewhere between worn out and I’m-lost-don’t-judge-me.
Inside, the lobby feels quietly upscale—cream marble floors, hunter green accents, and a concierge desk with a corded phone mounted on the wall. Real plants in terra cotta pots line the windows, thriving in the soft glow from recessed ceiling lights. It doesn’t scream wealth, but it hums it.
The elevator creaks slightly as we step in, brass paneling reflecting my tired face. Cleo presses the button for the fourth floor.
“No penthouse?” I joke.
She rolls her eyes. “You want a view. You can open the fridge and stare at your orange juice. You need peace and quiet. Not a skyline.”
The elevator eases to a stop, its motion smooth and almost soundless. The doors part with a quiet glide, revealing a hallway carpeted in soft maroon, with sconces casting just enough light to feel lived-in.
We walk toward 4B. Cleo unlocks it with a key from her hoodie pocket and pushes the door open with the side of her foot, as if she’s done this before. Inside, it’s quiet. Sparse, but intentional.
Hardwood floors extend beneath a worn but decent area rug—navy with a faded geometric pattern.
A low, dark wood coffee table sits in front of a boxy two-seater couch upholstered in charcoal gray tweed.
Against the far wall, a small TV sits on a metal stand, flanked by a stack of VHS tapes and a chunky remote.
I should tell her I don’t have time to watch anything. Next week, I’m talking with my agent. Sure, I fucked up, but I need my career back. I need my music. Since I ended up in rehab, I haven’t touched my guitar. Haven’t even hummed a tune, for that matter.
“Not sure where your vinyl collection is, but I got you that.” She points to a stereo system resting on a nearby shelf, with twin speakers wired and angled as if someone knew what they were doing.
My collection is . . . well, at the house, and I don’t think I have the balls to get it back anytime soon. “Barret might know,” I mumble. “But that’s a problem for another day.”
She makes a noncommittal noise that I ignore as I continue studying the place.
The kitchen opens to the living space, divided by a waist-high island topped with sleek, pale stone, with a couple of barstools tucked beneath. A single mug sits beside a French press, like someone expected me.
This is definitely not home, but it can work for now. I might start touring soon, and this will just be a base where I visit often. It’s doable, right? In that moment, I realize that earlier I was wrong. Someone does give a shit about me. My little sister.
“You really did all this for me?” I ask quietly.
She shrugs like it’s nothing. “You needed someone to show up. So, I did.”
I feel something I didn’t know I would, hope. It’s faint, but it exists. That’s when I notice the cardboard box on the kitchen island.
“What’s that?”
Cleo grins. “That, my friend, is your ticket to the outside world while you recover.”
She opens the box and pulls out a laptop. It’s blocky, industrial gray, with squared-off corners and the OmegaLink logo gleaming beneath the latch.
“OmegaLink ProBook,” she announces, patting it like a cat she doesn’t want to admit she likes. “State-of-the-art.”
I squint at it. “It looks like it should come with a seatbelt and maybe even a helmet.”
“You sound just like our father,” she shoots back with a pointed look. “This is exactly why—” Her voice cuts off mid-thought, like the words didn’t have permission to come out. Cleo sighs. “I set it up for you. You’ll enjoy it, I swear.”
She powers it on, and the screen flickers before loading a boot menu and a bright blue EchoZone welcome screen.
“Why do I need a laptop?”
“You should create your own EchoZone account,” she ignores my question but then adds, “You’ll need internet access eventually.”
“Echo-what?”
“EchoZone.” She leans on the island as if she’s about to sell me something.
“It’s your internet provider—imagine that forums, encyclopedias, and message boards had a weird, socially awkward child they named EchoZone, and you can do anything with it.
Talk to strangers about music, books, yell about movies—whatever you want.
There’s always someone ready to listen. It’s addictive, but in a low-stakes way. ”
I stare at it. I’m not sure if I’m more afraid of the thing or the world it opens up to.
“Just don’t use your real name,” she adds, sliding a Post-it toward me with a username scrawled in her handwriting. “I made you a starter one. Change it later.”
I blink. “You want me to talk to strangers on the internet?”
There’s disbelief in my voice. My stomach’s a knot of nerves, pulled tight and almost pulsing. The screen in front of me might as well be Mount Everest. She wants me to talk to people.
“I want you to remember how to talk to anyone without needing a middleman,” she says, the corners of her mouth twitching as if she’s fighting a smirk. “Even if it feels a bit anonymous and weird.”
Not sure why I do what I do next, but I do it anyway. “Why are you so . . . normal?” I glance at her from head to toe. “No one would know you’re celebrity royalty. Clara Vanderpool’s only daughter.”
She scoffs. “Our mother’s name is Jenny Jones. She was born in fucking Austin, Texas, not Austria like she made everyone believe.”
I shrug. “Still. You grew up like the rest of us and look at you. You’ve got your shit together. You’re already doing a better job than many people twice your age. You’ve built a career out of the spotlight. Like a normal person.”
She rolls her eyes. “Normal? I was called weird in school.”
“Sure, but you’re not broken,” I murmur. “You can be you in this world. No one is watching you.”
My brothers and I have been in the spotlight most of our lives, but not her. We can’t sneeze without our mug shots appearing in seedy magazines. Not her, never her.
“You make it sound like it’s terrible, Rod.”
I sigh. “Rhodes, Julian, and Alfie don’t do that bad but me . . .”
She’s already shaking her head, like she won’t let me spiral. Like she’s fucking daring me to.
“We all have our issues,” she says. “Me? I have daddy issues. He only paid attention to his boys. Mostly you. Then add our mother criticizing me about my height, weight, and poor choice of friends . . . I’m pretty fucked up too, Rod.”
She pins me with a look. Fuck, that look. “You were Dad’s pride and joy. His successor in a weird way. The one who’d make him proud while the rest of us worked too hard to be anything—to mean anything.”
My skin prickles. Even when her voice is soft, it cuts through, all blistering honesty and fire.
It hits deep. It presses in, not gently, not kindly.
Forces me to look at her—not just as the girl who used to steal my fries or roll her eyes when I teased her—but as someone I have been underestimating.
“You think that was good, but our father let me get away with a lot—even murder.”
“You didn’t murder anyone, Roderick.”
“It’s a figure of speech, obviously,” I state, but honestly, I was killing myself slowly.
Though I’m old enough to take responsibility, I blame my parents for not giving young Roderick the attention he deserved.
They didn’t set up boundaries and just let him do whatever the fuck he wanted as long as he played every instrument they put in front of him.
“Are you going to be, okay?” she asks, scribbling a number in a notepad next to the phone. “This is my phone number. Call me at any time.”
“Leave a message if you’re not available?”
“Nah, that’s my cell phone. I will answer every time you call.”
“Should I get myself one of those?” I ask almost cringing. “A cell phone?”
She shrugs. “That’s up to you.”
I take the scrap of paper from her, fold it like it means something.
Maybe it does.
She turns to leave but pauses at the door. “You should call the others, you know,” she says without looking back. “It’s not the worst thing to try to reach out to your family.”
The door clicks shut behind her.
Do I want to reach out to my brothers?
I don’t even know if they’d give a fuck.
It’s not that I didn’t care. We just didn’t grow up as brothers—we grew up like strangers who just happened to share DNA. There’s a permanent static between us. Like something got short-circuited before we even had a chance to try becoming a family.
And maybe I shouldn’t blame our parents, but, fuck, I do.
They didn’t just fail us.
They fractured us.
Now I’m holding all the broken pieces, wondering if I’m meant to fix what they never even tried to build.