Chapter 51
Fifty-One
Brooks
Idrove the streets of DC for an hour before returning to the White House.
The dinner was long over, the hallways were quiet, and hardly any lights were on.
I found my father in the Oval Office.
The place looked like it’d been ransacked. Couch cushions lay upside down. Desk drawers hung open. Papers littered the rug. Historical artifacts were swept aside. He’d been searching for any more hidden bugs.
He paced in front of the Resolute Desk, tugging at his loosened tie. The second he saw me, he stopped.
“She told you, didn’t she?”
“Is it true?” I shut the door behind me.
He looked down at the papers on the floor. “It’s something I regret every day of my life.”
“Why’d you do it?” My chest hurt as I remembered the pain on Daphne’s face.
“Love,” he said simply, that word heavy with regret.
“I wanted Marjorie as my Fawn, but Daphne’s father got her first. I couldn’t take her away from him.
We tried to stop, Brooks.” He laughed resentfully.
“God knows, we tried. After getting married, we cut it off for a while. But a few years later … we fell right back into it.”
He sank onto the bare couch while cushions lay scattered at his feet. “When she told me she was pregnant, I’d just won the presidency. I was fucking terrified.”
“So, you forced her to have an abortion?” I gritted out.
His face tightened. “I told her we couldn’t have that child.”
“That’s not what I fucking asked!”
He looked away.
“She almost fucking died!” Spit flew from my mouth with the words.
“I didn’t know that’d happen.”
“But you knew what you were asking her to do.”
He went silent, hanging his head in shame.
“Did you even fucking care about that?” I kicked a cushion out of my path and stopped directly in front of him.
“You only cared about your fucking self because you’re one selfish motherfucker!
You nearly got Marjorie killed.” I planted a hand on the couch to keep me from putting it through his face.
“And what about Mom? Did you give a shit about what cheating on her would do?”
“Oh, please. She knew about it. Your mother and I’ve never loved each other. She’s been sleeping with the head of her Secret Service detail for years.”
I flinched. That was news to me, but right now, her fucking a Secret Service agent was the last of my worries.
“Then why don’t you just divorce?” I snapped, the hypocrisy turning in my stomach. “Why keep living a lie?”
He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. “You know why.”
“Why does everything have to be about our fucking image?” My anger boiled over as I motioned to the wreckage around us.
“Our lives depend on it, Brooks!”
“No, they don’t!” I shouted. “For once in your life, put something—anything—ahead of this presidency!”
“I do!” He slammed his fist onto his knee before surging to his feet, grabbing a cushion, and throwing it across the room.
“I put you and Adelina first! I protect your mother!” He stared at the Resolute Desk.
“You don’t think I’ve sat in that chair, night after night, wanting to say fuck it?
Wanting to walk away from all this and catch the first flight to Calira?
To throw myself at Marjorie’s feet and beg forgiveness?
To tell her I made the biggest mistake of my life? ”
He bowed his head for a moment. When he looked up at me, I’d never seen more pain in his eyes. “But I don’t. I chose this life over her. I made that unforgivable mistake, and now, I have to live with the rot of it.”
A sickening wave of dread washed over me at the realization that I wasn’t just looking at my father. I was looking at my future. If I didn’t break the cycle, I’d end up just like him. Trapped and fucking miserable.
I didn’t want this hollow, manufactured life.
But it was all I’d ever known.
My father had raised me to follow in his footsteps. To become him.
I’d been willing to risk it all for Daphne.
Without her … this was all I had left now.
My father drew in a controlled breath. The raw emotion drained from his face as the president returned.
“I’m not having her arrested,” he said, turning toward the windows overlooking the Rose Garden. “Nothing else will go public. Her father is already in prison. As far as the country is concerned, the person responsible has been punished. I won’t drag this back into the spotlight.”
He picked up a folder and set it back on the Resolute Desk. “But that doesn’t mean she gets to walk away from this. She still has to pay for what she did.”
I was halfway to Adelina’s room to check on her when my phone buzzed.
I tugged it from my pocket and nearly put it back when I saw Cory’s name.
Cory: SOS. Pls meet me.
Another came through a second later.
Cory: Come alone.