Chapter Eight
Parker
The Somerville mansion sits quietly on the estate as I approach the front doors, spring flowers sprouting on either side of me. Tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, primroses—all of them seem too bright, too cheerful for the walk I’ve just had this morning. April came far too quickly with no news of my father’s whereabouts and how the fuck he has managed to stay under the radar for so long.
I hear Tomas’s voice in my head, mentioning that I’m free to take over my family’s empire. Without my pesky pig of a goddamn sperm donor around to fuck the maids and fuck things up, I could easily grab the strings connecting us to Macedon. I still have the ability to rule—I just need to adjust my approach.
It’s the living room and library that feel the strangest without my father around. He was usually bustling through books, chatting up clients, or sipping oak-scented liquor in his office. The sweat of his mental labor would typically cling to the air, or the sound of him porking that loose fucking maid in the mansion would ring through the hallways.
My mother would hang around somewhere with her iPad, reading and pretending like the ugly sounds of his skin smacking something younger and hotter than her didn’t affect her emotional well-being. It doesn’t matter how much she hates him. She never did recover from his preference for supple pink flesh.
When I walk into the library attached to the living room, I notice her dabbing her nose with a handkerchief, the movement seeming practiced yet entirely foreign at the same time. Nothing has been the same around here. While it’s refreshing to have silence, it’s also terrifying—it means we’re waging an inner war that we could easily lose.
“I’ve received word,” my mother whispers when I wander to the bookshelf. I trace the spines of the books that fell when I fucked Alex in here. “Your father has been on the run.”
“No shit.”
She glares at me. “Would you shut the fuck up and listen?”
Disinterest sits on my face. What do I care that my father has been on the run? Anyone could have inferred that from what I found back during that bloody mess that was my engagement party. His fucking coat was hanging on the dock and a rowboat was missing. He took off. Case fucking closed.
“My father is a coward,” I snap. “He left us to die while a sniper sat on the roof of our fucking home, picking people off like goddamn notches on a spinning wheel.”
She sniffles and folds the handkerchief in her palm, staring critically down at the fabric as though it’s about to provide a solution for our silly predicament. “Your father can’t do much for us dead.”
“He can’t do much for us alive either.”
“He still holds the keys to the kingdom.”
Unless they pass to me, I think while turning away from my mother. My stomach aches at the thought of being penniless and powerless. I have to do something about it. This is my empire now. Why should I care what she’s heard about that pig?
I shrug without saying a word.
My mother sighs and stands up, drawing my gaze to her. The halo of morning light glowing around her profile makes her look like a saint. But I’m not a fool, and I know better than to see her as anything but a ruthless bitch with the heart of a monster.
I had to inherit it from someone other than my father, right?
She purses her lips thoughtfully and then nods as if I’ve said something agreeable. “Just look at that girl, Alex Moretti,” my mother points out while looking at me. Shadows cloud her features as she whispers, “No one except that dreadful Amos is left in her household.”
“Are you planning on dying anytime soon?”
She steps toward me with a stunned look, her brows furrowing together as she replies, “The fuck do you mean by that?”
“Well, are you planning on dying?”
“No, Parker. What a dreadful thing to ask me.”
I shrug. “Then it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. Our lives hang in a delicate balance now. Without your father, we’ll be left to the fucking sharks. Do you want that?”
“No.”
She waves the handkerchief, wielding it like a flag of surrender. “Your father is pulling strings and putting something together for us.”
“And what would that be?”
“Something that he can’t talk about it.”