Chapter 4 – King
Chapter
Four
KING
This is a mistake. I know it is, but I pull up his number anyway.
I still have some good contacts in New York, but apparently none of them are connected enough to get me a ground-floor two-bedroom apartment in three days.
This is my last resort. Despite how dangerous it might be given the potential Pandora’s box I could open, if I don’t do this, then I let my Grampa down—not to mention his sweet nurse who, as of today, is out of a job.
I press call, hoping he hasn’t changed his number since he moved back to New York. He answers after a few rings. “King? You’re a blast from the past, buddy.”
I smile at the sound of his voice. It feels like a little slice of Chicago is right here with me. “Hey, Drake. It’s been a long time.”
“Sure has. What can I do for you?”
I screw my eyes closed and summon all my courage.
It pains me to ask for help, having been entirely self-sufficient since the age of eighteen and left to fend for myself from way younger than that.
“I need an apartment, and fast. And I was hoping you could help me out. You know anyone who has an empty space available? I figure I’ll need it for six months at most. Ground floor or something easily accessible for a wheelchair. ”
“In Chicago?” He sounds surprised.
“No. New York.”
“Oh, I see. Who’s the client?”
I run a hand over my head. “Not for a client, Drake. It’s for me. Me and my grandfather.”
“Shit! You’re in New York?”
“Yup.”
“Wait until I tell Nathan we have the best PI in the country right here in Manhattan. He’s gonna want to meet you.
We have a ton of—” He stops speaking and clears his throat.
“Sorry, buddy, I got a little carried away there. You said you need a place. For you and your grandfather? Is everything okay?”
The only thing I hate more than asking for help is telling people my personal business. But I suck it up—for Grampa. “My grandfather is sick. He doesn’t have long, so I’m moving back here for a while to take care of him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, King.” He sounds sincere, and I thank him, but I’m growing increasingly impatient.
“I have a meeting in ten, but then let me make some calls and see what I can do,” Drake says. “We have a few properties, and I’m sure one of them is vacant. I’ll check with my brother. He knows more about them than me.”
Dread balls in the pit of my stomach. He has four brothers, King. There’s only a twenty-five percent chance he’s going to talk to that one.
I take a deep breath and keep a lid on my emotions.
If Mason finds out I’m in New York and in need of an apartment, so be it.
If I have to beg him to take pity on me, I will.
Even if I don’t deserve his help, I’ll swallow my pride and ask if that’s what I need to do. “Thanks, Drake. I appreciate that.”
After I end the call, I mentally check another task from my shit list of awkward conversations to have today. Now it’s time for the one I’m dreading most.
This old house is no less imposing now than it was when I was a kid—or when I walked out of it eighteen years ago, vowing I’d never set foot in the place again.
And I kept that promise for five long years, but something brought me back. Guilt, perhaps. Or maybe the fact that no matter how far I ran, I was still their son, and nothing could ever change that.
Eventually, I succumbed to my father’s requests to come back and visit.
I kept them infrequent and brief, twice a year at Easter and Christmas.
They were stilted, uncomfortable affairs at first, but as time went on, they grew increasingly tolerable.
That was until Christmas a few years ago.
Ironically, it was also the Christmas when my parents told me they needed my help.
My father was mixed up with some dodgy shit, which wasn’t unusual for Kyngston Worthington III, whose business dealings have always been barely legal.
Despite his shady business practices, he’s managed to maintain a respectable public facade.
However, on this occasion, he got himself in far too deep with the Russian Bratva and had heard I’d done a little work for the Cosa Nostra and the Bratva up in Chicago, so he asked me to use my contacts to “smooth things over.”
And of course I was going to help. They’re my parents, and some deeply ingrained part of me has always sought their approval, particularly his.
And what better way to achieve it than to help them out of a bind.
I did also take a little pleasure in thinking about getting my father in a room with Dante Moretti and Dmitri Varkov and having the opportunity to watch him postulate and peacock with men who could wipe him from the face of the earth without breaking a sweat.
But I was wholly prepared to help my parents.
They were desperate, and I knew it—mostly because my mother managed an entire dinner with no cruel comments or withering looks in my direction.
However, when it came to it, neither of them could help themselves. Couldn’t help showing their innate hatred and inherent disgust at what I am.
Grampa came for dinner too, able to tolerate my mother for the sake of Christmas dinner, even if not my father.
We were talking about fishing of all things, surely a safe topic of conversation.
Grampa let it slip that his fishing buddy had sparked up one joint too many and fallen asleep on their little boat.
He wasn’t used to the stuff, but he’d been so stressed about his son’s upcoming wedding, and it was his son who’d handed him a couple joints and told him to “chill out.”
My mother asked some innocuous questions about the venue and the color scheme and remarked how beautiful a winter wedding in the city could be, and then Grampa dropped the bombshell. Entirely by accident, he let two he’s drop into the conversation.
My father’s sneer stopped the conversation dead. “His son is marrying another man?”
My blood ran cold.
Grampa rolled his eyes. “Men can marry each other now, Kyngston. Isn’t it about time you brought your views out of the Dark Ages?”
“It’s disgusting and unnatural.” Father spat the words, derision seeping from every cell of his body.
My mother’s face twisted in an expression of disgust to mirror his. And even that slight I could have overlooked. I could have endured their disdain for two men I didn’t know.
But it was the sideways glance my father gave me, filled with so much revulsion and vitriol.
I’d tried to be the good son, had renounced my “mistake” and lived my whole life pretending to be someone I wasn’t, had hidden every illicit interaction and came away each time feeling so much shame and guilt that it made me physically sick.
Although I did all of that to please them and protect their “wholesome family values” image and their standing in their bigoted conservative circle of friends, it wasn’t enough.
They hated me anyway. And that look, fleeting as it was, is what I couldn’t move past.
Grampa simply shook his head and went back to eating his turkey, and I left. I did smooth over my father’s fuck-up because I knew I could, and I didn’t want their deaths on my conscience, but I made sure they never found out I had a hand in it.
And now I’m back. Staring at the Gothic mansion and creepy-as-fuck gargoyles and wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
I came back to New York for Grampa, not these two.
But my mother asked to see me, and … I don’t know.
Maybe the impending loss of her father has made her more reflective. More … human?
The gravel crunches beneath my feet, and every step I take makes the knot of emotion in the pit of my stomach grow heavier.
It’s grief and dread and shame all tangled up together, and the farther I get from my bike and the closer I get to the door, the more tangible it becomes.
I reach the steps. Now I can taste it. It clambers up my throat, desperate to be let out.
I swallow it down.
The door opens, and a new housekeeper I don’t recognize from my last visit offers me a wan smile. “Mr. Worthington.” She greets me with a polite, practiced nod.
I follow her into the lounge at the front of the house. My mother’s domain. It’s overfilled with expensive art: Fabergé eggs and rare nineteenth-century Spanish plates sit beside a Jeff Koons sculpture. A Degas hangs on the wall beside a Hockney.
It’s like she collects them because she can. There’s no pattern. No attachment to any of the things, merely a desire to have what so many others cannot. She misses the point of art entirely, because not a single piece in this room makes her feel anything.
I do like the Hockney though. It reminds me of a summer I spent with Grampa on Long Island.
My mother sits curled up in a Louis Vuitton cocoon chair with a blanket over her lap and a glossy magazine in her hands.
She raises her head a little, eyes glazed.
As I suspected due to the time of day, she’s already polished off her nightly bottle of wine.
At least it used to be one bottle. It could have increased to two or three by now.
My mother is a functioning alcoholic. Socialite and investment banker’s wife by day, lush by night.
She would deny that flat out of course and say her evening wine is merely her way to “unwind.” Perhaps anyone having to endure being married to my father needs something.
I’m sure I’d be downing more than a bottle of wine every night if I had to live with him.
Although live with is a stretch. They coexist under the same roof.
“Kyngston.” She says my name like an insult—or that’s simply how I hear it.
“Hello, Mother.” I address her with her preferred title. I was never allowed to call her Mom. It was always mother and father. So fucking stiff and unnatural. The opposite of Grampa. How did a man like him raise the ice maiden in front of me?