Damion’s Prologue
Damion’s Prologue
“Sometimes people do inexplicably weird shit.”
—Remington
“Damion?”
I glanced up from the risotto I’d been zoned out on, only to see my parents watching me from their spots at the far end of the dining room table.
My dad was still sporting the suit he’d worn to the office, which meant he was definitely going out after dinner, and my mom was wearing her “hot barre” workout clothes, which meant she wasn’t going with him.
“Yeah?” I said, irritated they’d interrupted thoughts of Remi.
Every time I had risotto, I thought of him because he’d hated it.
Remi was my mom’s uncle, an eccentric old guy who was like… well, shit, like no one else I’d ever met. I swallowed hard, that marble-in-my-throat feeling back again as I pictured his face.
How can Remi be dead?
It seemed impossible that he was gone.
“What do you mean, yeah?” My dad raised his eyebrows, and I could tell by the expression that I’d tuned out something he deemed important.
He had the kind of face that should’ve belonged to a king or a world leader on the wrong side of good, the kind of face that wielded powerful expressions with little effort.
You could tell if he wanted you praised or executed simply by the speed of his blink. “Your mom asked if you stopped by the office after school.”
“Quinn,” my mom snapped, letting out a long-suffering sigh as she glanced at her annoyingly intense husband. “Not tonight—I’m too tired for this.”
The “this” she was referring to was any conversation with my father whatsoever.
God, adults are wonderful.
“I was simply trying to get our son to answer a basic question,” he snapped back as he set his knife on the edge of his plate. “My apologies.”
“I did stop by the office,” I said, doing my best not to sound like a judgmental dick. It was hard when they were once again discussing the season, which was an exorbitant waste of time and money, in my humble opinion.
A formal ball for high school seniors that felt like something out of Regency England, with multiple parties leading up to said ball?
Fucking asinine.
But I pointed my fork at my mother and added (with the congenial smile of an affable son), “And I dropped off the donation cards, so we’re all good.”
“Wonderful, thank you,” she said, reaching for her wineglass. “I swear to God the planning is already killing me, and it’s only getting started.”
“Oh, you love the PTA,” my dad muttered as he lifted the lowball glass in his hand and tossed back the last of whatever brown liquor was lining the bottom. “What would you do without festivals and balls to plan?”
“Million-dollar question right there, honey,” she quipped, raising her glass to her mouth, pausing to say, “Talk about your swoony thoughts. What would I do if there were no festivals or balls for me to plan?”
“Shop more, perhaps,” my dad suggested.
“Oh, good one,” she replied with an eye roll.
Your parents are shitty to each other and you need to know that’s not how you talk to someone you love.
I could hear Remi’s voice as if he were actually there. He’d spent half my life trying to undo what he saw as the damage my parents were doing to me with their “adolescent thoughtlessness.”
How can he be gone?
It was impossible that he wouldn’t be there anymore.
My parents already seemed to be over his death. Since the moment we’d heard, they’d been on this whole he was probably ready to go kick, mostly because good ol’ Remi had been in his eighties, living far away and off the grid.
But they’d had no clue.
Uncle Rem’s last letter to me—sent at the beginning of May—had been all about how I needed to come to Nebraska and fish with him.
He’d mentioned the good steaks, the woman at the bait shop he said he “might’ve had the hots for,” and the possibility of me bringing him another cat because Mr. Dipshit was lonely.
Why didn’t I drop everything and bring him another damn cat?
And who’s taking care of Mr. D now??
The guilt was going to kill me, I swear to God.
And a thousand question marks about my future surrounded me now, a future I’d secretly plotted with Remi.
Could it still happen? Could I make it happen without him?
My gut said yes, that he’d somehow drafted a plan in case of his death because that was just the kind of guy he was, but I wasn’t sure how to find out.
I alternated between wanting to send a letter to the Nebraska address in hopes of a response from Bernard, and worrying that someone else—someone on my dad’s payroll—might intercept the note and all hell would break loose.
So for now I was just waiting. Longer than I realized I had been, because Remi had died months ago. Months ago, but we weren’t notified until a few weeks ago.
My parents were pissed at Bernard for being so grief-stricken that he hadn’t thought to let them know immediately, but I wasn’t buying into that shit.
There was no one on the planet more focused and intentional than Bernard fucking Elizando, Remi’s right hand.
If he didn’t let us know, that meant Uncle Rem had made arrangements in advance for Bernard to keep it on the quiet.
But why?
He did whatever the hell he wanted, all the time, sure. But it felt… I don’t know… shitty that he hadn’t let me in on the ending.
Whether he was surfing in Rio, exploring ancient ruins, or just hanging out in some random highway town, he always sent letters to the PO box he’d opened for me when I was in third grade.
The PO box I’d checked on a daily basis since he opened it.
The PO box that I probably needed to close now.
The sound of the doorbell cut through the quiet awkwardness of our family dinner.
“Um, hi…?” Jeffrey Callahan, one of my father’s trusted attorneys, walked into the dining room a minute later.
Every item of clothing on his body was expensive and perfectly pressed, but the way his glasses slid down his nose and the ever-present sheen of sweat on his forehead made it clear to all that he was an outsider.
What are you doing here right now, Jeffrey? Go. Away.
There was something about my father’s lack of work-life balance, the fact that he never stopped working at all, that grated on my nerves.
He was like a mob boss, the way his colleagues were constantly popping over to the house at all hours.
Only instead of addressing urgent things like family feuds and murder contracts, they were discussing mind-numbingly boring financials that could definitely wait until the next morning.
But Quinn Rutledge never let anything wait, not when money was attached.
“Listen—Quinn, Whitney,” Jeffrey said, his voice an urgent whisper. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I thought you’d want to know that I just found out the will is already out of probate and disbursed.”
He looked agitated and slightly terrified, like the human embodiment of nervousness, as he spit that statement directly at my parents.
“What are you talking about, Jeffrey?” my dad said with a calm smile, though I could hear the irritation in his voice.
“Remington,” he replied, scratching his neck. “I’m talking about Remington’s will.”
“Would you like to have a seat, Jeffrey?” my mother asked with a bright smile. “Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks,” Jeffrey said to my mom, then to my dad, “Can I speak to you in the other room, perhaps?”
NO.
My gut clenched, and I wondered what this was about as my dad and Jeffrey went into the study and closed the doors.
Had Remi mentioned me—and our plans—in his will?
I was ninety-nine percent sure he wouldn’t—he was way more off-the-books than that, especially when it came to me—but I still felt dread as silence settled over the dining room. Dread that quickly turned to confusion and fear when my dad’s voice erupted from behind closed doors a few minutes later.
Shit.
My dad returned to the room, his relaxed smile a thing of the past as he ushered a now-mortified Jeffrey quickly out the door.
Shit, shit, shit.
He was in full-on freak-out mode, fast-pacing around the dining room as my mother scrambled to keep up with him. He was ranting in a low voice that only allowed me to hear every few sentences.
But they were big-ass sentences (and not about me, thank God).
Apparently, Remi had left a big chunk of his estate to some randos in Nebraska.
As in millions of dollars, left to strangers in the Midwest who no one had ever heard of.
“Can he do that?” my mom asked my dad in a hushed tone, her hands wrapping around his bicep. My eyes got stuck on that—diamond-ringed fingers clutching at him in a gesture of support—because whenever drama ensued, my parents always came together.
It was somehow sweet and toxic, all at once, the way they bonded over crisis.
Although, what was the crisis here?
Since Rem had never married or had kids, I think my parents sort of assumed his assets might be left to our family. But Dad was good at his job and great at investments—we had more than enough money, so if Remi wanted to give everything away, why shouldn’t he?
“Well, of course he can,” he said, rapidly typing something to someone in his phone as he spoke. “But the bigger issue here is that he wouldn’t. This screams of coercion. Of fraud. Of someone taking advantage of a little old man.”
I snorted.
Because the idea of someone taking advantage of Remi was ridiculous.
Even in his eighties, he was balls-to-the-wall and get-out-of-my-way, one hundred percent of the time.
I mean, his letters had never changed. Their tone—and even the handwriting—remained the same from the time he first started sending them when I was in elementary school, until the very last one arrived a few months ago.
“He’d obviously slipped into some form of dementia, if this is truly what his will and testament looked like,” my dad said, shaking his head. “And the fact that he had it disbursed before we even knew about his death is beyond problematic. Talk about your red flags.”
I kept my mouth shut (not easy), but part of me wondered why he cared. Yes, it was a lot of money, but we had a lot of money.
So did it really matter if the old guy threw his money at some nobodies in Nebraska?
It was funny, actually, and the more I thought about it, the harder it was not to smile.
So on-brand for my badass weirdo Uncle Remington to say fuck it all and just give it away to strangers.
“Is it too late to contest the will, since it’s post-probate?” my mother whispered.
“Oh, we’re contesting,” my dad said with so much ferocity I almost felt bad for the Nebraska randos. “Jeffrey will get to the bottom of this bullshit and jerk every penny from their grasping fingertips.”
I said, “I don’t want to be the voice of dissent—”
“Yes, you do,” my mom interrupted.
“Not now, Damion,” my dad warned.
“But what if this was what Remi wanted?” I said, needing to finish my sentence. “Shouldn’t he be allowed to leave his things to whoever he wants?”
That made my dad send every bit of his attention my way.
He glared for a long moment, icy blue eyes pinned on me like my question had greatly disappointed him, before saying, “Did you know that the house is included in his estate, Damion? That these strangers from the middle of nowhere will be moving into his house?”
“I’m sorry, did you just say—”
“It includes the house.”
In an instant it felt like the oxygen had been sucked from the dining room, from the world, from my lungs.
NO.
I stared back at him, not believing what I was hearing.
It couldn’t be true.
Remi would never do that.
“Not only did he leave it to these people, but he included a stipulation that they must live there for six months; I did discover that much. They’re going to move into the home that Remi said, and I quote, would be Damion’s to play in forever.
So these… grifters are going to be living in your house, and they can do whatever they want to the space.
They can sell off every belonging, paint the walls pink, and then auction it to the highest bidder after the six-month requirement is met. ”
I could feel that he was still watching me, but I wasn’t there anymore.
No, I was at Uncle Remi’s.
Because that house… that house was so much more than a house to me.
One of the original “seven beauties” of the Upper West Side, it had hidden rooms, library walls that moved, a bar that F. Scott Fitzgerald himself had carved the initial Z into with a pocketknife; the place was legendary.
Rich with history.
But more importantly, my entire childhood with Remi was centered there, hanging out with my favorite person in the world while he taught me countless lessons and told me a thousand cool stories. It was like I was built in that place, raised by the echo of Rem’s booming voice as he let me be… me.
So yes, that house was technically just real estate, but fuck, it was also the only piece of him left in the world.
And if he’d left them the house, did that mean he hadn’t set anything aside for my “alternate” college plans, the ones my parents knew nothing about?
“Dementia seems like a stretch, though,” my mom said to my dad. “He was always so sharp. And fraud…?”
“The only way Remi would give up that house was if someone forced him to. Think about it.” My dad gave my mom a serious look and said, “He’s all alone, in his eighties, and some small-town nobodies in Springfield-Nowhere, Nebraska, discovered he had money.
They could’ve befriended him, listened to his stories, and slowly convinced him they cared. ”
I wanted to puke as I listened, because the idea of anyone manipulating Rem felt nauseating.
“All we know about these people so far is that they own a tiny grocery store—a store that was hemorrhaging money—and a house that’s mortgaged to the hilt. They were this close to losing everything when suddenly Remi leaves them his fortune? They had to have played him, Whitney.”
Could my dad be right about this? Could some small-town hucksters have wormed their way into Remi’s life to steal his everything?
“Maybe,” my mom said, her eyes wide on my dad like she was looking to him for next steps.
“At the very least, I’m going to do some digging,” my dad said, taking off his suit jacket. My mother swooped in with the assist, helping with the blazer removal before rushing away with something close to a smile on her mouth, presumably to fetch him caffeine and tea cakes.
“Brace yourself, Nebraska,” my dad muttered under his breath as he read something on his phone screen. “Because we’re onto your bullshit.”
My dad acted like he was a mob boss whenever he faced conflict. It never entered his mind that he couldn’t fix something once he drew up battle plans, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him lose.
Usually it was all in business, but this time it was personal.
And for the first time in my life, I found that to be really reassuring.