Phantom: Her Ruthless Villain (Ruthless Triad 5)

Luckily Mama chose that moment to swan into the breakfast nook. Like Skylar, she also had a mostly silent husband pulling up the rear. However, Hector, her former personal trainer, was six years younger than Clement.

Skylar hated that our mother had “embarrassed us so very greatly” by marrying a man nearly half her age in a big wedding last June.

But since our father left her for a woman also nearly half his age, I can’t help but have mad respect for my mom. Take that patriarchal stereotype! What’s good for the gander is good for the swan?

Also, it had been fascinating to watch her transform into a woman who did exactly what she wanted over the last couple of years. Rose Glendaver had been bred to revolve around a rich husband just like her mother and her mother before that had. She’d tried to raise her daughters to do the same and still lectured me about not letting my eggs dry up after her problems with infertility. But I loved that she now insisted on living her best life.

“Oh, Mama, just the person I wanted to see,” Skylar said, ignoring Hector all together.

“I was wondering if you could watch the kids for a little bit this afternoon. Dad asked Olivia and me to come by for a squeeze-in.”

“He did?” Mama and I both asked together.

A squeeze-in was what Dad called a visit—a holdover from the years when he put in ten to twelve hour days at the office but would schedule regular squeeze-in appointments with Skylar and me because he’d read that was how Bill Clinton handled scheduling extra time with Chelsea Clinton when he was in the White House.

But we never met on T-Day anymore since we always attended the Glendaver Thanksgiving Weekend Hunt’s afterparty on Friday anyway.

“What do you think he wants?” I asked Skylar.

“I don’t know,” Skylar answered, fretting her hands.

“Probably something to do with the business or that Uganda charity of his. You know that’s all he cares about,” Mama answered. “But I can’t babysit. I have pre-dinner drinks with Glory and Petunia scheduled. “Can you ask Minerva to do it?”

“She’s making Thanksgiving Dinner for eight,” I pointed out.

Then after everyone else sat around looking stymied, I realized I was the only one willing to point out. “Maybe your husband can do it?”

Rookie mistake.

My southern breakfast got thoroughly seasoned with several shakes of indignant “why do you come down here every year to judge me and how I live my life?” and “this is why things didn’t work out for you and Garrett” and “you wouldn’t be childless and alone if you just learned how to treat a man.”

I put up with it as I usually did.

Eric’s question about why I never stood up for myself floated back into my head. This. This was why.

I’d stand up for others until the day I die—especially women with disabilities like my birth mother. But, growing up, I’d learned that it was better to keep real Olivia in check, to never open my mouth, or assert myself in any way because this was almost always the result.

Skylar got so bad that Hector graciously stepped in to volunteer to watch my sister’s robot children. Still, she refused to speak to me as she drove us over to Glendaver Castle, our childhood home.

The Scottish-Inspired stone estate wasn’t truly a castle—it wasn’t fortified or occupied by royalty. But it was themed out to look like one, and it was so large that it had its own zip code in Glendaver County, where the estate was located along with the Glendaver Bourbon distillery and headquarters.

However, Skylar broke her silence when we pulled up the long drive to find my father waiting for us on the American Castle’s steps.

Our last squeeze-in was at Christmas, and not much had changed since then. He was still trim and slightly athletic with just the right amount of flecks in his salt and pepper hair to appear wise and in charge—but not, you know, old.

Every other week, a personal stylist came by the castle to help him walk that fine line between Astute CEO and Decrepit Old Man. I knew because he loved to double book squeeze-ins while Stacey was working her magic.

However, the discreet styling wasn’t doing its job today. He looked all sixty-eight of his years, thanks to his grave expression. Even more alarming than that, he’d met us outside as opposed to having one of the servants escort us to wherever he was on the premises.

I climbed out of my sister’s Land Rover as soon as Skylar put it into park.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” I asked, truly worried.

In answer, Dad pulled me into his arms for a tight hug. “Look at you, worrying about me, when you’re the one that idiot betrayed. You know, I didn’t say anything before because it wasn’t my place. But I never liked him. And he left you for your stepsister of all people!”