Chapter 9 I Will Survive
I WILL SURVIVE
Thaddeus
Since Mimi and I got engaged, a lot had happened.
The one perk had been that she’d been pretty frisky.
The woman had a high sex drive and was down to fuck at any opportunity.
A surprise blessing for someone who’d been locked in a cell for ten years.
At first, she wowed me with her flexibility and creativity in the bedroom .
. . some of the things she did to my cock were unbelievable.
But the appeal had faded within days, and now I could barely cope with listening to her grating voice.
Every time she opened her mouth, my mind wandered away.
As the news played in the background, we sat at the breakfast table.
She sat across from me in a shirt cut so low the top of her nipple almost peeked out when she spoke, yet all I had on my mind was the Halloween party I was hosting.
I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about anymore.
For years, my mom hosted an early Halloween party so as not to compete with the ones happening closer to the actual day.
Now that I was back, I wanted to reignite the tradition.
Of course, Mimi thought it was childish. I zoned back in to her words.
“So, you’ll open your house to a bunch of strangers, have them eat all your food and drinks, for what?”
I thought that was pretty clear. “For fun.” I shrugged.
She folded her arms, pushing her cleavage up even higher. “It seems pretty childish to me.”
The urge to roll my eyes won out. “Who cares what you think?”
Why were we even debating this? I loved Halloween, and I was carrying on my mom’s tradition to throw an early party. “You don’t even have to attend. Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t. You’d spoil it.” I knew I sounded sulky, and I didn’t care.
She raised her eyebrows at me, mouth hanging open in shock. “I see you woke up in a mood.”
“No, I didn’t. You just put me in one.” I left the room without saying another word. Since my release, my tolerance for drama queens had been on the floor. I wasn’t about to tolerate snarky replies because of a fake marriage.
I heard the front door slam soon after. Women were more trouble than they were worth. My mother once warned me of that when I was too young to understand. Boy, did I wish I’d listened.
My phone rang, and it was a number I didn’t recognize.
“What the hell? I just can’t understand why your new mission in life seems to be making mine unbearable.”
Summer. Seriously?
“Everything isn’t about you.” I tried to keep my voice calm. I wouldn’t let her win.
Silence.
I smirked. “You seem to be forgetting that we’re willing to give the tenants a monetary donation.”
“This might be hard for you to believe, but money isn’t everything, Thaddeus. That building is special . . . to them.” The tremble in her voice was impossible to ignore.
My jaw tightened. “I’m not having this conversation with you. Speak to Melissa. She’s the lawyer.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me after what you did!”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “After what I did? You have to be fucking kidding me. This is business, it isn’t personal. I’m not about to change course because I feel sorry for the former Starlight tenants. Not everything is about you, Summer.”
Her voice cracked, and I was pretty sure I heard a sniff. Was she crying? “You are heartless.”
Her words knifed at me. Why did her opinion of me matter so much?
“Says the woman who wiped up my mother’s blood as if she was nobody.
Says the woman who lied, who took the side of a killer over the person she’d promised to spend the rest of her life with.
But sure, yeah. I’m the one who’s heartless,” I snapped at her.
Venom coated my tongue. Only Summer could make me so angry I wanted to . . .
Silence.
“You’re a murderer, Thaddeus. I kept a secret. They’re not the same fucking thing! You murdered my dad in cold blood in front of me like he was nothing, like I meant nothing to you. You’re evil. Pure evil, if you can’t see that. How do you live with yourself?”
White-hot anger pulsed through me, and it hurt to swallow it back down. “I thought this was about the Starlight building, about the tenants. You’re making this about you again, Summer. Your dad killed my mom. I killed your dad. We’re even.”
She didn’t miss a beat. Same old argument. “It was an accident, what my dad did. What you did was murder. That’s hardly the same! You’re sick, Thaddeus. They should never have released you from jail. They should have left you to rot there.”
A fresh wave of fury burned through my veins.
“Sometimes, I wish I’d killed you too, then I wouldn’t have to deal with your shit now.
What you did was just as bad. If I deserve to rot in jail, you should be dead.
” I didn’t mean it. I wanted to hurt her, badly.
How could she be so deluded to think that she was innocent in all of this?
“Fuck you,” she snarled.
“Great comeback. Get off my phone.”
I hung up. Red filled my vision. Women seemed to be on a mission to piss me off today.
Summer had let her hard-ass act drop, and her woe-is-me real-life attitude had returned.
I ground my teeth. She’d done exactly the same as this ten years ago.
Her dad was sorry. It was an accident. I broke her heart. She managed to make it all about them.
Them. Them. Them.
All my feelings and decisions should be based on them.
After the building inspection came back and it said it was unsafe, I thought she’d do the right thing and give in. But her foolish head wanted somebody to spend millions making the building safe for people to live in for free. She had zero understanding of the way the world worked, it seemed.
Let my dad walk free for killing your mom. Let’s get married after I hid the truth about you. Just donate the building after you do all the hard work of fixing it.
She was fucking na?ve. Starlight’s sale would be finalized in days, then Fitzgerald would do whatever was in our best interest.
Because that was the world we lived in.
Summer
The Halloween party came around quickly, and I made my way up the hill on foot, having left the car at home in the driveway, replaying our phone call again and again.
I shouldn’t have called Thaddeus. It was a moment of weakness.
And in the moments of weakness after that, when I’d tried to call back, and he ignored me.
I’d hoped he’d say something to talk me out of my plan.
But he hadn’t. He’d cemented it. Thaddeus believed in getting even.
So did I.
He murdered my father and felt no remorse at all. It was only fair, and only right, that he shouldn’t be allowed to live. He was the one who preached fairness. And then saying that he wished I were dead? What kind of a fucked-up person said that?
The gun didn’t feel freeing as I walked. It felt like a heavy, oppressive shadow. But I knew what I needed to do, and I had to do it before I lost my nerve. Thaddeus would die. Then, I’d finally be free to get on with the rest of my life.
I glanced down at my outfit and grimaced.
With the Joker paint smeared across my face, the expression came too easy.
The costume had been a last-minute idea.
Despite what I said before, I had no wish to spend a second behind bars, so I came up with the perfect disguise to keep anyone from recognizing me.
A black wig, chalk-white face paint. I even wore my sneakers, just in case I had to run from the scene of the crime.
Maybe I’ve seen too many movies.
Chances were I wouldn’t be the only one there dressed like that. People wouldn’t be able to point out who killed Thaddeus.
A joker.
The moment I stepped inside, I remembered just how much Thaddeus and his mom loved Halloween.
They always went above and beyond with decorations, and even I had to admit he’d done his mother proud.
He ensured every inch of the Fitzgerald house was covered in cobwebs, graves, witches or ghosts, black bats and ravens on top of bookshelves, and a string of glowing skeletons and pumpkins lined both sides of the stairs. It was like a Halloween fairy tale.
I poured myself some blood-red punch (from a smoking cauldron) to steady my nerves.
I moved freely through the house, searching for the son of a bitch, certain no one knew it was me behind all the face paint.
It was strange to be back here. I thought I’d never step through those doors again.
I walked through three rooms: the dining room, the kitchen, and the living room, before realizing that each had a different theme.
Thaddeus had really pulled out all the stops.
He transformed the living room into a vampire’s lair.
Smoke billowed out from a machine in the corner, and he lined coffins up against the bookshelves.
I picked up an eyeball cake pop and a tombstone cookie.
I was stress eating, but also, why shouldn’t I take advantage of what was offered?
I lifted both hands to my waist, wondering how much longer it would take to find the son of a bitch.
I knew this house like the back of my hand.
Which door led where, which stair creaked, and most importantly, where Thaddeus’s room was.
I’d find his ass eventually and put a bullet in his back.
Or maybe I should shoot him in the face.
I wanted him to know who’d ended his life.
I would have to wash off all these layers of paint to reveal my face. Damn it, why didn’t I just wear a mask?