Chapter 13 Theo
The new espresso machine I own isn’t as good as the last one, and I make a note to tell Michael to upgrade. I may have kicked away every inherited toxic trait from my father, but we agree on a few things. Good coffee, good Scotch, and medium-rare steaks. Everything else, he can go fuck himself.
I glance down at a voicemail notification from my mother, and debate for a split-second on playing it.
My pulse ticks against my neck until I toss the phone on the desk.
This is message number five this last month, and if I don’t respond soon, she’ll pull some shit like barging into my workplace with a steely smile and loud voice, demanding to see me.
But right now, I can’t. Especially after seeing Olivia last week.
Every time I encounter a female student my father victimized, rage simmers inside until it nearly explodes. I’ve met with Olivia at least a dozen times now, and even though she battled through my father’s terror, and is braving to go public, she’s still shaken to her core.
When she asked to meet me recently at a hotel where my father used to take her, I didn’t hesitate.
Her therapist thought revisiting the space with someone she trusted might help her reclaim a sense of control.
She wanted absolute secrecy, and I honored that.
I didn’t even tell Anna I’d taken the afternoon off.
But in the hotel elevator, the severity of the situation ransacked her.
She clung to me like she was drowning. And I get it—she wanted to feel safe when my father made her feel unsafe.
But when she tried to kiss me… fuck. She’s a fragile, confused woman, broken and shattered by my father, and I had to calmly explain, again, that I’m engaged.
I know I’m doing the right thing. But I’m making these women relive some of the most traumatic parts of their lives. Does the end truly justify the means? Is this really about seeking justice on their behalf, or is it about me, and my need to destroy my father?
My mind shifts to Lexie. I run my hands down my face.
Not even five weeks in, and she’s making me paranoid as fuck.
At the hotel, she kept asking if I’d been there before.
So much so that I’d convinced myself that maybe she’d seen me there.
But that’s impossible. I would’ve felt her presence a mile off.
Still, Lexie does this—she slips past my logic and invades my otherwise rational thoughts.
I need her out of my head.
My phone knocks against the table as it buzzes. Anna.
Christ. I should be focused on Anna, my future wife for God’s sake, and not some venomous, torturous minx.
“You hate me forever, don’t you?” Anna says when I answer.
“Why, because you’re ditching me for dinner with your girlfriends, and I’ll be stuck in New York meeting with hotel managers and learning how to do the foxtrot?”
Anna’s sweet giggle comes over the phone. “It’s not the foxtrot, Theo.” And then her giggling stops. “Right? I mean, isn’t it the wedding waltz or something?”
“Hell, if I know,” I say, stepping to the window to look out on the city below. “You’re a woman. Aren’t you supposed to know this stuff?”
“You did not just play that card,” she says. Oh, I love getting a rise out of Anna. It’s one of the best parts of my day. “Say something like that again, and I’ll force you to do our first dance to Beyoncé.”
“Beyoncé?” I say, lifting the mug to my lips. “Did you and Lady Gaga break up?”
“I mean, both are incredible. We have to keep our options open if we choose something besides the waltz,” Anna says. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you dance, so maybe—”
“And I’m telling you right the hell now, you never will.”
The sound of the phone shuffling comes through the speaker.
Anna whispers to someone—probably a house staff—then says, “we’ll have to divide and conquer to get this wedding done on time.
I’m really sorry that this dinner—with donors—came up last minute, but I’ll take the next venue tour while you’re at work. ”
I like to give Anna crap that being an art philanthropist basically means that she just sits around with other rich people talking about Van Gogh or some shit while eating delicious meals. But she’s genuinely dedicated to the non-profit she co-runs and it often takes up more time than my practice.
I might be pretending otherwise, but I’m not upset she has to miss today’s meeting.
In fact, when she told me, I thought the timing was perfect.
It’s been a week since we saw Lexie at the hotel, and I need to see her—alone.
Anna has always been the angelic light in my life, grounding me and keeping my inner demons at bay.
But Lexie—she knows exactly how to push my buttons, and the way she’s been playing me in our interactions has me burning with an urge to strike back.
“You know you won’t be learning to dance tonight, right?” Anna says. “We won’t start taking lessons until closer to the wedding date.”
Fucking dance lessons. The things I do to make others happy. “I’m going to hire a dance double.”
“You are insufferable. It’s probably why I love you so much,” she says. “What time do you have to leave for work today? Since you ditched me for dinner last night, I was going to swing by your apartment and bring you your favorite breakfast sandwich from Jennifer’s House.”
Dammit. Jennifer’s House does have the best sandwiches. “Ditched you for dinner? You mean the one with you and your mom where I dodge every invasive, painful question about the most diminutive details about my day?” Anna’s snort is loud because she knows it’s true.
I cup my hand to block out the mid-morning sun and glance out the window at the surrounding buildings. “But sadly, I’m going to miss the breakfast of champions because I’m already in the office.”
“Damn, already? It’s not even seven yet.”
“I know.” The traffic is just starting to pick up below. The slow churn of taxis, buses, and pedestrians fills the street. As the neighborhood springs to life, I scan each face on the sidewalk. “I wanted to get ahead on some paperwork before the clinic opened.”
“Jesus Christ, you work too much,” she says.
“Honestly, it’s not that bad.” I lift the mug of subpar coffee to my lips. “You should’ve seen me during med school.”
“I did see you. You were an asshole.”
I laugh. She’s not wrong—medical school hours are brutal.
The weight of it nearly broke me. One would think growing up an Astor would’ve prepared me for that kind of pressure, and in some ways it did.
Being the best, the golden child as my family painted me, the one my dad paraded in front of his colleagues with a slap on the back and a half-assed remark about following in his footsteps, came with suffocating expectations.
The hours I worked back then is what drove my need for control.
They were what filled the void after my passion—my addiction, the one thing that quieted my mind—was gone.
“Thank you, seriously,” Anna says. “You have no idea how much I appreciate this.”
What she isn’t saying is that the wedding—and all the attention around it—makes her uncomfortable.
We’ve known each other since elementary school.
I know her better than anyone. Yes, she’s a Barlowe, but out of her entire family, Anna’s the one who stays furthest under the radar, skipping public events and donating anonymously.
Even as a teenager, she refused to be in family holiday photos.
She always joked she was like Sharon and Ozzy’s eldest daughter, the one everyone forgets exists.
So, her detachment from the wedding planning doesn’t shock me.
“Oh! Also, our families reached a guest count,” she says. “Can I get a drum roll please…”
My back tenses. “I’m scared to ask.”
“Six hundred.”
“Are you kidding?” I don’t know why I’m surprised—our families thrive on adoration. I’m shocked it’s not in the thousands. Still, six hundred is absurd. No one has that many friends. The wedding is becoming exactly what Anna and I feared: a semi-formal networking event.
When Lexie described her ideal wedding—just her, the groom, and the lake as their witness—my stomach twisted. Once I pushed past that, it sounded perfect. Intimate. Serene. It wouldn’t be a show for six hundred goddamn people like our parents want.
“I know…” she says, then pauses. “Are we moving too fast? Maybe we should rethink—”
“We can’t.” There’s too much riding on this wedding—too many interests at stake. But her silence tightens something in my chest. The sigh that follows tells me everything.
Did Lexie say something to her last week at the hotel?
They claimed they were just talking about family but what if there was more to it?
I haven’t forgotten the forced smiles, the way Lexie steered the conversation the moment I returned.
I knew I shouldn’t have let that woman out of my sight.
Because if Lexie planted even a single seed of doubt…
Annabelle cannot back out of the wedding.
I scratch the back of my neck and push out a burning exhale. “Talk to me. Are you good?”
“Yeah. I just… I wish it could be different.”
My jaw flexes. “I know. Me too.”
And we leave it like that. Fifteen years’ of unspoken words, of conversations we refuse to have, of familial pressure we continue to endure. But we know how it is. I’m an Astor and she’s a Barlowe and we can’t fight the rules we were born into.
“Have you decided about Sunday?” she asks.
“No idea what you’re talking about.” I roll the chair up to the window and blink against the rising sun beams.
“Theo.” Annabelle’s voice turns stern, which is honestly kind of cute. She’s like a kitten pretending to be a lion, and sometimes that’s my favorite version of her. “You need to talk to your mother. If all of… this… is going to work, you need at least one conversation.”
Anna doesn’t elaborate on what “this” means, but I know.
The wedding. The joining of two families, old-school Godfather-style.
The Astor family with the shipping heiress mother and brilliant sociopathic father merging with the Barlowes of hedge fund and investment empires to create one super-family.
Our families have been unusually hands-off so far, which surprises us both—but that restraint won’t last. They’ll want reassurance soon. Proof that the Astors and the Barlowes will finally be bound in marriage without any further delay.
“Theo,” she repeats, with an even sharper edge to her tone. “You can’t ignore her forever.”
I run my hands along my jaw. “Can’t I?”
As far as I’m concerned, my mother’s complicit in my father’s behavior.
She knows. She has to. She’s too smart, too powerful not to see what he does—and she lets him do it anyway.
The rest of the family follows her lead, pretending he isn’t a narcissistic monster, giving him the freedom to carry on untouched.
So, no, I don’t need to talk to her.
“Fine, I’ll think about it,” I finally say to my fiancée, knowing damn well there’s no way in hell I will. Besides, I’m meeting with a journalist on Sunday who’s agreed to help me with my investigation, and my family can’t find out what I’m planning.
Motion outside the window catches my attention and I lean forward, squinting. “Hey, I’ve got to run. I hear a nurse, and I need to grab him before the patients arrive.”
“Okay, sounds good,” she says. “I’ll call you tonight after dinner and you can let me know your thoughts on the venue tour with Lexie.”
After we hang up, I reach for my camera with its telephoto lens, and a sense of peace settles over me as I spot movement across the street.
The studio apartment is finally mine after three long months of waiting. I moved in last week and I’m already sleeping better than I have in years. This place will become a refuge, a safe haven—far enough removed from everything else to let me focus on what actually matters.
A flicker of guilt surfaces at the thought of Annabelle.
I haven’t told her about the apartment. But she wouldn’t understand this insatiable itch that’s corroding my insides or why being here is the only thing that quiets it.
I can’t tell her how for years Lexie hovered, darkened, ruined moments in my life.
Lexie, the one I couldn’t be with, the one I couldn’t fuck, the one who toyed with me like I was her puppet; she was the master puppeteer.
I chased her forbidden taste, her smell, those green eyes, and full lips.
Sometimes the ache of needing to be close to her, to be in her, flooded me to the point where I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even fucking think.
I’d drown myself in sex and boxing and running because Lexie was always fucking there.
Unattainable. Untouchable. It was an insatiable thirst that nothing—no woman, no sweating, no academic accomplishments—could quench.
Lexie’s poison. She might be the sweetest, most intoxicating kind, but she’s still poison. And I need to neutralize that.
I pace the studio, taking in every inch. Scratched hardwood floors. A dark leather couch. A chair that faces the window. A table pulled close beside it. It’s perfect.
The neighborhood is decent enough. A small bakery on the corner, a grocery store a block away, a smoke shop. But it’s not the neighborhood I’m interested in.
It’s the neighbor.