CHAPTER TWO
He was not a speedster, but on that night Grayson Carrington was speeding his Porshe Carrera down the dark, narrow roads that led to the lake house with pure pain in the pit of his stomach.
He wished he could say this was the first time he had to do this.
But it wasn’t the first. Or the second. Or even the third.
He was always forced to get involved in his father’s craziness.
When he arrived at the house, he parked his car crooked on the lawn, jumped out, and raced to the entrance door.
He flung it open as if it wasn’t a door that was a hundred years old, and rushed into a house that hadn’t been in their family for even longer than that.
He flung it open like it was the hellhole he took it for.
His father, Sebastian Carrington, Senior, the beloved former governor of Maryland, was waiting in the living room. He looked flustered and devastated. But he always looked that way on nights like this.
“Where is she?” Grayson asked him anxiously.
“I didn’t know she was already high when she got here. I told her I had all she needed right here. Why would she take something before she came? But she was already high, Grayson. How was I supposed to know that?”
Excuses was his middle name. Grayson had heard them all his life. He didn’t want to hear that shit tonight.
His father was still making excuses as Grayson hurried down the narrow hallway that led to the master bedroom. The door was wide open. All Grayson had to do was step inside to see the woman on the bed, completely naked, and he could tell from where he stood: completely dead.
He hurried over to her and took her pulse, even though it was plain to see. She was already cold to the touch. She’d been dead for hours.
He looked over at her clothes. At the leather miniskirt.
At the tiny, sleeveless and nearly topless blouse.
At the knee-length boots even though it was barely Fall.
And then he looked back at her face. At the fake lashes that went on way too long.
At the caked-on makeup that concealed not one blemish in her face.
At the blonde weave that was down to her butt.
Grayson looked at his father. “A hooker, Dad?”
“She’s not a hooker.” His voice was always towering whenever he spoke, regardless of the situation. He was known for his soaring rhetoric. “A hooker is a dime a dozen whore on a street corner. She’s a lady.”
“She’s a hooker.”
“She’s a lady of the evening.”
“Well she’s a nothing right now, isn’t she?” His father was known for his soaring rhetoric, but Grayson was known for his sharp tongue.
That sharp tongue brought his father back down from his high-horse.
Grayson could see the fear begin to reveal itself in his father’s small eyes.
“I tried to revive her. With all I had I tried. For hours I tried. But she was dead. She was already dead.” Then he looked at his only son, the CEO of Carrington Capital: His rock.
“What are we going to do, Grayson?” he asked him nervously.
“We?” It was always we when he was in trouble.
“You’re my son. And you’ve got to get me out of this!”
“Why can’t Vincent get you out of this? Why don’t you ever call him? He knows how to handle this shit. Why do you always have to involve me?”
“Because you’re my son!”
Grayson started to say what he truly felt, but he didn’t.
His father was like a petulant child to him, even though the man was almost twenty years older than Grayson was.
But that was why everybody in seemingly the entire state of Maryland supposedly loved his old man so much.
He seemed so sweet. So trustworthy, they constantly proclaimed. So innocent. Yeah right!
“Grayson, what are we going to do?” He looked like he was pulling his hair out as he moved around that room. “I can’t have a dead body in my house! Why did she come high when I told her not to do that? Why would she put me in this position? What are we going to do, Grayson?”
“Stop saying we. It’s not we. It’s your ass!” Then his rage unleashed. “You’re a married man!” he yelled out with his finger pointing violently at his father. “Why do you keep running around with these girls when you’re a married man? What’s wrong with you?!”
And as soon as he said those words, his father slumped down against the wall and then slid down until he was sitting on the floor.
And he sobbed. Like the arrogant, sophisticated asshole Grayson knew him as, he sobbed like a baby.
“You can never tell your mother,” he said.
“She worships the ground I walk on.” He looked up at Grayson. “You can never tell your mother.”
Grayson shook his head. Why was he as bad as everybody else in Maryland? Why did he still love this man despite overwhelming evidence that he was not loveable at all? Why did he still jump at his commands and do everything in his power to protect him? Why???
But it was a question he knew he couldn’t answer. He pulled out his cell phone instead.
When the voice came over the phone because he always answered Grayson’s calls, Grayson exhaled. “I’ve got a situation I need you to handle,” he said into the phone.
His father looked at him. And he looked at his father. He dared him to object.