Antonio
I pause for a moment in the door to my office, staring at the desk in front of me. Without warning, my mind fills with memories of last night.
Julia, bent over, wedding lingerie discarded next to her dress on the floor, those impossibly sexy little gasps of pleasure she made when she was getting close. Back arched, body submitting to mine, as if this was what she had been waiting for since the second she agreed to marry me.
I push the thought from my mind.
Fuck it. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but there’s no way I’m going to let my head get caught up in the memories of what happened.
A mistake, sure, but at least we have consummated the marriage now—which means it’s legal in pretty much every part of the world that matters, and nobody can question it.
Which, I keep telling myself, is the reason I did it.
Even if I know the truth good and goddamn well—that I would have done it anyway, that I wanted her when she walked in there, that the moment she asked me to help her out of her dress, I knew what was going to happen.
In the mess of the wedding she was meant to have, this was only one more step. And now that it’s been taken…
I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself.
I slip into my seat with a sigh, planting the coffee down on the dark wood before me.
I had a few too many drinks last night. I had been prepared for that, but I’d imagined that I would be celebrating the fact that my son was married, not knocking them back to try and forget that he had abandoned his wife and left me to take care of her.
And that note from Salamanca, fuck, there’s no other way to read it. My son has betrayed me. And the information that he has might be enough to topple this whole business if I’m not careful.
I should have known he would pull something like this, fucking idiot that he can be at times. Always has his head turned by whatever sounds good in the moment, never keeping his shit straight when it comes to managing his expectations.
And yeah, I’d sensed that he was starting to get frustrated, pissed that he wasn’t earning more power yet, but I saw how quickly he could be tempted by something—not exactly an ideal approach for someone to take at the top of a business like mine.
I figured that getting married would curb some of those desires, at least when it came to women—that’s always been his biggest issue, the promise of some hot girl who wants him getting in the way of every bit of good sense I’ve tried to instill him with.
Maybe that’s why he wanted to marry Julia so much in the first place. Thought it might prove to me that he was ready for whatever was thrown his way.
But he left me to pick up the pieces, got a better offer from Salamanca. Hard to believe he’d turn his back on me like that, but if it was a matter of instant gratification, I can see why he would have been pulled in by whatever bullshit he had spun to him.
But that doesn’t mean that I can’t reach him.
I’m his father, after all—I know him better than anyone. At least, I think I do. And if I promise him the chance to walk this back, to come back to the fold without having to pay for his crimes, maybe he’ll think about undoing this and forgetting the shit he tried to pull.
Of course, I might have to explain what I’m doing with the girl he was meant to marry on, but shit, if it gets that far, I’ll confess whatever it takes to get him loyal to me again.
I reach for my phone as I take a sip of my coffee.
I haven’t tried to reaching out to him directly yet.
I figured he would have changed his number as soon as all this shit went south, but maybe it’s worth a try.
I don’t want to think that my son would do something that stupid, but I can’t help but see this as some sort of tantrum intended to force my hand.
Maybe, if I give him what he wants, I can get this over with, get him to give up on this bullshit tantrum that he’s throwing and admit that he was in the wrong.
I dial his number and lift my phone to my ear—and I’m surprised when I hear it ringing.
He hasn’t even blocked me? Jesus, he truly has no idea what he’s doing. Or maybe he’s expecting me to reach out to him, wants to rub it in somehow, as if he hasn’t done enough to me as it is.
He picks up the phone, and my chest tightens at the sound of his voice.
“Dad.”
I hate hearing him like this, so absent, so distant, clearly planning something. I don’t know what he thinks he has managed to get over on me, but I sure as hell am not going to just stand aside and let it happen.
“Andreo, what the fuck are you playing at?” I demand, before I can stop myself. My discomfort turns to anger now that I can hear his voice, everything in me drawn taut as I wait for him to explain himself, but he makes no move to.
“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago,” he replies.
I can hear something in the background of the call, and I strain my ears to figure out what it is, something that might give away what he’s doing or why.
“Which is?”
“Working with someone who actually values my input.”
I draw my lip back in disdain. “You can’t really believe that,” I retort. “Salamanca, that bastard—”
“Don’t talk about him like that,” he snaps back at me. “He’s shown me more respect than you ever have.”
“What the hell do you mean—”
“You’ve been keeping me away from this business for too long,” he tells me, voice dropping to an icy coolness, each word clearly rehearsed carefully as if he wants me to hear each and every one. “And I’m done pretending that I don’t belong here.”
“You would have belonged here, if you had taken the time to learn.” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “But you were always reckless, son. And reckless, in this business—”
“You’re telling me you’ve never made a call against the wire?” he shoots back. “Never done anything because you had to, not because you wanted to? I don’t believe you, Dad—”
“No, but the difference is, I trained myself to know exactly what I needed to do in order to trust those instincts,” I reply through gritted teeth, doing my level fucking best to keep my temper in hand no matter how much I want to lash back at him right now.
“And you never took the time. Too busy drinking, partying—”
“Too busy seeing that there was a world outside you, you mean,” he replies dismissively. “People who would actually understand that I knew what I was doing, and give me the respect I deserved.”
“You think Salamanca respects you?” I snap back. “He’s using you, Andreo. And when it turns out that you don’t have everything he needs—”
“What makes you think I’m going to fail him?” he says. “See, you don’t even trust me now…it’s why I could never stick it out there, Dad. You were always going to see me as less-than. Never ready. Always finding some excuse to prove that I wasn’t good enough for your precious business.”
I fall silent. I want to argue with him, but I get the feeling that he’s going to deflect every attempt, push back and make me feel like a fool for even imagining I could convince him otherwise.
“Fuck, I thought getting engaged would be enough to show you I was serious about settling down,” he goes on. “But you just treated it like play-acting. Like I was pretending to be an adult, instead of proving myself to you. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you—”
“I never asked for you to be married,” I say angrily. “I never asked for anything from you. But if you wanted to be part of this business, if you had serious interest in proving yourself to me—”
“You think I didn’t try?” he hisses furiously, his composure dropping away in an instant.
“You think I didn’t try to show you what I was willing to do?
That’s your fucking problem, Dad, you can’t see past the end of your own fucking nose, and you’re so self-obsessed that you would never let your grip on that business loosen! ”
“You turned on me, and now you’re acting like I should have trusted you?” I say, incredulous. “Listen to yourself right now, you sound crazy—”
“No, I don’t,” he says. “I’ve never been thinking more clearly. And besides, even if I had married her, seems like you had more of an interest in her than I did, huh?”
A cold rush passes along my spine. “What the hell does that mean?”
He snorts again. “You think I wouldn’t find out?
” he snarls, and I can hear him leaning closer to the phone, clearly so angry he can’t hold it back.
“You married her, Dad. When I left her, you married her. Were you always waiting for the chance, or were you going to just wait till she was in the house and try to make a move on her then?”
I want to argue with him, but God knows, after what happened last night, I don’t have a leg to stand on.
“Come on, admit it, you always wanted her,” he taunts me. “I saw the way you looked at her, you were just waiting for your chance to—”
“I did what I had to do to keep her safe!” I shoot back, finally unable to hold myself back any further. “You walked out on her, you knew that would leave her without protection—you knew it would put her at risk, but you were too selfish to—”
“So what, you married her just out of the goodness of your heart?” He laughs. “You expect me to believe that bullshit? I don’t know what kind of shit you spun to her, but you can’t convince me of the same thing.”
“Because I didn’t want an innocent girl getting caught up in this with no protection, which you know damn well would have happened if she hadn’t gone through with the wedding,” I remind him.
“Anyone close to us is a target, Andreo, and you know that. You walking away from her like that, it wouldn’t change what people thought of her—the risk she was taking.
Marrying her was the only way to ensure that—”
“That you got your dick wet.”
“Jesus, Andreo, listen to yourself!” I yell. “You think I would do something like that?”
“I think that you married her, so there must be something you’re getting out of this whole arrangement,” he replies. “And forgive me if it’s such a fucking stretch to think that you would fuck her after you married her. Tell me, is she there right now? Playing at being the good little wife?”
I clench my teeth. Anything more, and I know he will use it to prove to himself that I’m a traitor.
Not to mention, I’m skirting dangerously close to the truth, and the last thing I want is for him to figure out that he’s right in any of this.
I need to make sure I don’t give him more than I already have, more than I want him to.
I can already picture his face, triumphant, no doubt glad to get off his chest everything that he’s been holding back for so long.
“You don’t respect me,” he continues. “You couldn’t, not going after her like that.”
He doesn’t even say her name. It’s as though she’s nothing more than an object to him, a thing he used to get what he wants, and now that it has failed, he can cast her aside as though she never mattered in the first place.
I regret the call. I want to hang up the fucking phone, but I know it would only serve as proof to him that he was right all along—that he can’t trust me, and that I will lie and cheat and twist his words until I can get what I want.
“What the hell do you want from me, Andreo?”
“It’s too late for that,” he tells me, voice sharp, unyielding. “You could have given me what was mine a long time ago. The legacy I deserve—”
“This place?” I ask, gesturing around, though I know he can’t see it. “You think I would hand over my business to you, after this?”
“No, but you should have treated me like the heir I am long before this,” he says coldly. “You missed your chance. And now—” He takes a deep breath, like he is really going to enjoy this next part. “Now, I’m going to make sure that Salamanca is the biggest name in this city.”
“You don’t know who he is. What he’s capable of—”
“I know that he’s capable of more than you,” he says, and for a moment, I can hear the petulant child in his voice—that pathetic boy, who’s nothing more than a child trying to get what he wants from me.
“I’m going to make sure of it,” he continues. “And that’s the end of it. You reach out to me again, I’ll take that as proof that you want me to start coming at you even harder than I intend to.”
Dread creeps up the back of my spine. I might have kept him at arm’s length from the business for a long time, sensing that something wasn’t entirely right, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things he understands about it—parts of the business he was involved with, things he has seen, even shit like the layout of the house would be enough to give Salamanca the upper hand if he’s willing to exploit it.
And by the sounds of it, Salamanca has already spun enough lies to my son to convince him that this is the best call for him. I can’t even imagine what he has promised him, the fantasy he has handed him on a plate in the hopes that he will give him everything he’s been waiting for.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Dad,” Andreo tells me.
And with that, he hangs up the phone, leaving me staring down at the receiver wondering what the hell has just happened.
My own son, turning against me? Talking like I’ve been pushing him down all this time, waiting for a chance to pounce on his wife, all the shit that he seems to believe from the bottom of his heart? I wonder if Salamanca planted those ideas in his head, or if they have been there for a while.
I set the phone on the desk before me, breathing deep, trying to make sense of everything that has just happened.
He wants me flustered, wants me ready to make a mistake that he can exploit, ready to fuck up and leave a gap in things that he can use to let Salamanca snake his way into the business and get what he wants from me.
My own son. My own fucking son.
I keep turning that over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out what it means, how badly I must have failed as a father for something like this to have happened.
But I can torture myself with all of that later. Right now, I need to look at bolstering my defenses, locking everything down, doing what I can to mitigate the damage that I’m sure my son and his newest ally intend to aim at me.
I have worked too hard to lose this business—not to him, not to anyone.
No matter what it takes, I will protect it.