Chapter 3
Freddie
I’ve been doomscrolling for two hours by the time the bus drops me off near my family’s Manhattan Beach home.
My nerves spike when my parents’ house comes into view, though my father’s Rolls Royce is missing from the driveway and I pray to the Cenobites he’s away on business.
I don’t want to see him, especially not now.
His mere presence is suffocating—my family’s own Poltergeist. I rub my temples, then tuck my dark, chin-length hair behind my ears before heading inside.
The house is silent, and the immaculate wood floors, imported antique furniture and thoughtful design of my childhood home give no indication that my family’s life might be overturned in a heartbeat.
Sunlight pours in through floor to ceiling windows, and down the hill from our house I see the peaceful shimmer of the ocean beneath a blue, cloudless sky.
Elle is sitting at the kitchen banquette when I turn the corner.
She looks up—obviously surprised to see me home, then her face settles into something haughty as she looks me over.
She’s home from Yale for the summer, and at twenty-one years old with more job prospects than I have already, she’s the picture-perfect heiress my parents intended me to be.
Her dark, glossy hair falls to the middle of her back, and with our father’s blue eyes and a bone structure like a bird, she’s always been considered the pretty one.
Not that I would ever trade places. The corporate world she’s headed for with all of its ruthless bloodletting and ritual human sacrifice isn’t the kind of horror I enjoy.
“Mom’s upstairs,” she says. Nothing about being happy to see me, but I’m not surprised.
We’ve never gotten along, and we have less in common than ever now that she’s pursuing a career on Wall Street.
The brain rotting chatter about the stock market I hear emanating from her laptop gives me the heebie jeebies, but Elle is definitely our father’s daughter.
My family has always been well-off, but our father and his brother got away with highway robbery that made them billions during the Dot Com Bubble, and now he’s influenced Elle to seek out her own pound of flesh.
As if her trust fund weren’t plenty already.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being raised in this world, it’s that it’s never enough.
I find my mother on the third floor balcony, phone to her ear and her mouth moving, though the closed French doors prevent me from making out her words.
I tap on the glass, waving when she looks up at me.
My mother utters something and hangs up the phone, attempting to push a pack of cigarettes out of sight.
Unlike her, I’ve mostly kicked my cigarette habit—and unlike me, she’s never been good at hiding things.
It makes me sad, the way she’s always looking over her shoulder, but that’s what living with my father does to people, and at this point, I no longer pity her. She chooses to stay.
“Where have you been?” she says like I’m sixteen again and not a grown twenty-four year old woman.
Her mousy hair is twisted into a neat chignon.
I’ve never seen her wear it any other way.
She crosses her slender arms over her chest and levels me with a green-eyed glare, looking more like a lawyer or a politician in her cream, sleeveless dress than the housewife she’s been my whole life.
“I was in a meeting across town.”
“With who?”
“A potential employer.”
She fidgets, and I know she’s worrying about what my father will think of that.
He’s been on an extra short fuse with me ever since I dropped out of business school and got barred from the family trust. Bringing up the whole independent artist career thing to them is like dumping gasoline on a California wildfire.
“Where’s Dad?”
My mother goes to the minibar to pour herself a generous glass of sauvignon blanc. When she offers me one, I take it. I should really lay off, but I’ll need it if I’m gonna be around my family.
“I’m sure you’ve seen by now,” she says.
“A little.”
“He’s with the authorities.”
“Jesus,” I say.
“Frederica!” She doesn’t like when I take the Lord’s name in vain, even though I know she couldn’t tell me the last time she went to church, let alone her favorite Bible verse. Catholic-inspired horror flicks are the closest I get to Jesus these days, so I shrug.
“They think he’s involved?” I ask. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I’ve had a front-row seat to my father’s wheeling and dealing my whole life, and while I’ve never seen him do anything overtly illegal, I know how he operates—mercilessly.
Simultaneously without morals and completely within the bounds of the law. An admirable businessman.
“He’s not involved,” she says curtly, then turns on the local news.
A picture of my uncle’s mugshot fills the screen, alongside a talking head blabbering about the hockey team and its impending demise.
Truth be told, my father couldn’t give two shits about what happens to the LA Monarchs.
He’s always been more of a baseball guy, only buying into the hockey franchise because he loves his little brother, who couldn’t afford it alone, and my father wanted something to share with him.
It’s not like LA is a hockey town anyway. Everyone knows the team is failing.
“Mateo is coming over in an hour,” mother says.
Mateo is our family attorney. While he’s gotten us out of a few scrapes, like the time my father accidentally ran over the neighbor’s cat, he mostly just provides counsel.
Luckily in a town full of more interesting celebrities, we’re not really targets for gossip, but few things are as important to my family as upholding a classy, reputable image.
“He’s spoken with Dad?”
“He’s been at the station with him.”
I take an unladylike gulp of my wine, wondering how all of this bad publicity will affect my hireability.
Producers don’t like bad press. One of the quickest ways to sink a project is to attach a disreputable name to it, and I’m not naive enough to think I can fly under the radar for long.
My father’s company’s name is on the arena, after all: Spacelytics Center, and with my trust inaccessible, I’ve got nothing to sell besides my name and shining personality.
For the first time since the news broke, it occurs to me that my father might not be the only casualty of my uncle’s mistakes.