18. Jax
18
JAX
I hadn’t told her about the twins. It never seemed to be the right time. The doc spoke to me afterward when I loitered outside her room and annoyed his nursing staff until he did, threatening to have me removed from the hospital. When that didn’t work, he talked to me frankly, and I knew I had a few days to get my shit–and hers–sorted before she came home to a bigger mess than what she left.
I didn’t want that to be what a semi-healed Waverly saw when she walked into her room, and had to deal with on campus.
So I took the hard route first, and headed back out to see my father.
If I survived this part, the twins were high on my list for round two, and then, then I’d get to see my girl, if she wanted to see me again.
Maybe deal with her brother somewhere in there, too.
But first, I was due for another long haul drive to the coast. Maybe drown my father while I was there.
Joking.
Nah, not really.
Preferably in a pool of his own blood.
That was the mood I left Waverly in and it didn’t dissipate with the miles as I walked in the back door this time, not announcing myself to security. That was the funny thing about growing up in a place; you got to know all the best ways to slip between security shifts, the black spaces along the cameras in the halls. And stupidly, maybe because he truly believed he couldn’t be touched, my father remained a creature of habit.
I’d take that weakness and make him choke on his pride, along with his last breath.
Even though I wasn’t a four foot high five-year old stealing the cook’s candy supply anymore, I still knew the best ways in and about the mansion. Which made sliding through the back door, where there were no guards and never had been, that much easier.
All the way to my father’s study where I paid a simple, albeit hefty, bribe to his regular whore of a masseuse. There I made him my hostage when I held my blade to his balls where her hand had been a moment before.
Oil made them slick, but at this range, I wouldn’t miss.
“The fuck?” He jerked up right, his papery face mask slipping horrifically, like something out of a comedy movie gone terribly wrong.
“Did you really think you could take the girl I loved and not find yourself at the end of this?” I flicked the blade he once used to etch his name into my ribs, the scar itching over tight, bruised skin.
Also courtesy of my father, if by default of several degrees of separation.
Though the beating the twins threw me was a different sort of cruelty than he usually doled out. That was a conversation for another time, however, and not one I’d be having with him.
“I think you’re a waste of genes and space,” Fabius Palmer spat from his prostrate position.
Globs of saliva projectiled forward to decorate his cherrywood floor already covered in oil and who knew what other accumulated fluids from his weekly fuckfest with his overpaid and mis-titled masseuse.
“Right back at ya, pops,” I mused, knowing the slang would rile him.
Even here, behind closed doors with a knife to his literal balls, I was supposed to be the epitome of the perfect offspring.
Only I’d never been what he wanted, and I had no intention of starting along that narrow path this late in life.
“So you think you can come in here and threaten me?” he continued while I studied the unsavory, flaccid sight before me and chose which vein to nick first.
“Yep.” I slashed the blade sideways.
Fabius made the most pure little scream I’d ever heard. I evened up the other side just to make him do it again, but it wasn’t as pretty this time.
Damnit.
“You- You-” he gurgled, choking on the stink of stomach acid he managed not to spew all over himself just yet.
“Am the offspring you hate. I know, Dad.” I gave him a conciliatory pat on the back. “One more long one and we’re even for what you did her her, ‘kay?” I kept my voice gentle and soft, but for a gurgling pompous fuck, he caught on pretty fast.
“Don’t you dareeeeeeeeee–” His whine grew higher and higher as I flipped his ball sack up and made a neat slide at the base of his withered cock.
Not cutting all the way through, but doing enough damage I wouldn’t be getting any accidental offspring in this lifetime.
I stared at the pathetic flesh offering, his penance paid for the damage done to Waverly and wiped the knife on his hairy buttock. Apparently pain didn’t do it for him. Strange how those things didn’t run in the family.
Huh.
I gave my own hard cock a firm squeeze, telling myself to wait for Waverly where I had some serious groveling to do for my absence and a few other things. Ignoring the whimpering mass behind me, I headed out the door I’d come through, flipping the warm blade in my hand, my father’s security none the wiser.
Not that it mattered; I’d never come back here again. I didn’t care if the old man disowned me, though I doubted it. My minor notoriety gave him a reason to hate me more and my old man thrived on nothing if not a good dose of loathing directed at his own bloodline, something he coveted more than anything.
Classic catch twenty-two. Pride did that.
I sauntered along the hallway, pausing when a pair of identical pale shadows detached themselves from the walls at the opposite end.
Suddenly, one blade didn’t seem anywhere near enough protection.
I opened my mouth, but Key cut me off. “There you are.”
“We didn't expect to see you soon.” Cash finished his twin’s sentence in their odd, dual way of speaking.
“And yet here I am.” I twirled the blade between my fingers, comfortable with its weight, though I wished it was colder before I had to use it again.
Key shook his head. “Your father won’t be pleased.”
“He won’t be pleased at all.” The corner of Cash’s mouth twitched up leaving a dead, gaping hole instead of a smile like any other normal person.
“I don't think my father is going to care what I do from now on at all.” My lips didn’t so much as twitch as I thought about how I mutilated him in his rooms a moment before.
Key watched me carefully. “We wanted to apologize.”
“Is this it?” The softness of my voice was belied by the blade cutting the air between my hands.
A stillness settled over the otherwise empty hallway, punctuated by my father’s warbling moan behind the shut door.
The stand-off was broken when Cash matched his brother’s twisted smile. “You've done some of that work for us.”
“We wanted to give you a gift,” Key chimed in.
“Last night the charade with Waverly went too far.”
“We wanted to apologize to her.”
“For her.”
I stared at them, piecing together their conversation like a shattered mosaic.
“You want to apologize for what happened to Waverly?” I snorted my derision. “What, you didn't think my father, of all people, would take it that far? Are you fucking kidding me? At the end, he craves control. Power. Anything to make people jerk about like his personal puppet army. Waverly was the perfect example of what he could do in a short period of time.” I threw the knife at the floor where the blade embedded into the thick carpet to the hilt. “Do what you want with that. I really don't care.”
My need for vengeance had run its course. I wanted to get back to my girl.
The twins exchanged a glance. Both held out a wrist. “Be my guest.”
“Slice away.”
“Game recognizes game.”
I stared back at them. “That's it? You want me to hospitalize you?”
Each raised a shoulder. “It has to be you.”
“Waverly being hurt was our mistake.”
“This is our apology.”
I shook my head and nodded to the knife buried into the carpet. “You fuckers can fight over it. I'm done here.”
I made it to the end of the hall, and kicked open the door to the hidden stairwell there before they accepted my judgment. I stepped into the shadowy area and twisted back to find neither of them had moved except for their heads, watching me in perfect collaboration.
How fucked up that was.
“Waverly. She is free from my father. And she’s free from you. Is that right?”
The pair nodded as one.
“Yes.”
“Though we might pay our respects to her brother,” Kash added, as an afterthought.
I let my own strange smile mirror theirs. “Then instead of hurting yourselves, perhaps you'd like to add to the damage done to an old man lying in a puddle of his own blood on the third door on your right.”
Still smiling, I turned away but not before I saw the twins kneel beside the knife buried in the hallway floor.
I almost made it to the back door before my father’s screams began.