CHAPTER EIGHT #4
I swallowed before grunting an incoherent reply.
I knew he wasn't wrong. I wanted him to be.
I wanted to dump all the blame for my mother's overdose on his shoulders, but I wasn't a stupid child anymore. I had to acknowledge that he couldn’t have been responsible for her death when he hadn’t even been present for it.
And maybe that’s part of the problem.
But I didn’t say that to him. Not now.
Instead, I circled back and said, "Saying you've been showing up consistently is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"
He shrugged casually. "I came around when I could."
"When it was convenient," I corrected. "Or when you needed something. And the last time was, what, fourteen, fifteen years ago?"
"I've been busy," he replied flatly.
I glanced behind me toward the mansion and sniffed a sardonic chuckle. "Oh, yeah, I can see that."
"This is just the tip of the iceberg, Abraham," he whispered in a harsh tone. "You have no idea what I've got goin’ on here. If you remember, I tried to bring you in on it. I did. But you turned me down."
I pulled my hands from my pockets and crossed my arms over my chest as I asked, "What are you talking about?"
His lips curled into a slow, devious smile. "Oh, son, just you wait. I have a feeling you'll be very impressed."
I snorted. "Somehow, I doubt—"
"Gerald."
A new voice joined the mix, and I turned to see a man with a buzz cut, wearing black slacks and a button-down, walk out onto the stone balcony. I vaguely recognized him. He’d sat between me and Leonard at the table, but he was as silent as the man who had raised me since I had been a teenager.
Now, he kept his hands folded at his waist, keeping his distance as he bowed his head—a stance of respect, of submission.
I looked back at my father, wondering what exactly it was he had goin’ on, as he put it, to have another man treat him in such a way.
"Sir. You're needed inside."
My father turned toward him, a look of exasperation on his face. "Dean, can't you see I'm in the middle of a conversation here?"
Dean nodded, keeping his gaze downward. "Yes, sir. But there's been … an incident."
"An incident? What the hell do you mean by that?"
Lifting his head, the guy flitted his eyes toward me suspiciously before looking at my father. "If you could come inside, sir, I'll—"
"Gerry!" a woman who sounded a lot like Virginia screamed from inside.
Abruptly, Gerald looked toward me for a split second, his gaze widened with concern and panic.
It was the first time I'd ever seen him afraid, and despite my hatred toward the bastard, it stirred something in me.
Something urgent, something young and innocent, buried deep down inside my heart, where the boy in my soul slept, hidden away from the harshness of this cruel world.
Then he ran into the house with Dean—whoever the hell he was—following closely on his heels, and on instinct, I went after them.
We hurried through the back of the house and toward the library where I'd first met Analise.
Earlier, the room had been quiet and empty, save for us, a dark and private refuge, where a mysterious man met an off-limits woman in a moment that would live forever in the dusty, cobwebbed corners of my mind.
But now, the last of the party guests had converged inside the brightly lit room. They were all crowded on one side, their attention on what was happening on the other side of the library, while two men kept them held back with outstretched arms.
Curiously, I turned my sights toward the scene that had them looking on with intrigue, and at the moment my vision focused, my heart leaped into my throat.
A man in an expensive Joker costume stood over the unmoving body of another man.
There was a gun in the Joker's hand.
I didn't hear gunshots, I thought, but then I spotted the silencer at the end of the black pistol.
With wide eyes and a heart thumping harder than it ever had before, I studied the man on the floor and the pool of blood that had slowly begun to spread from beneath his head.
His hair was tinted red, but I could see those telltale bits of silvery gray trying to peek through.
I could see the familiar rounded curve of his belly that I knew shook when he laughed, the short stature of his motionless frame that was overshadowed by the amount of love he held in his heart.
I saw his shirt and his pants, and although they were clothes that I had seen a thousand times before, it took a moment, maybe two, for what I knew to be true to settle in.
But when it did, I slumped against a bookshelf, using its sturdy structure to hold me upright as the air left my lungs and the fragmented remains of my heart fell to the floor and bled at my feet.
Because Leonard Llewellyn, the only real father I had ever known, was dead.
He was gone.
And I’d been too distracted by a view and a beautiful woman to stop it from happening.
I had failed him, just as I had failed Anna, and I knew in that moment, as I stared helplessly at his corpse, that I would be punishing myself for it for the rest of my life.