“What are you suggesting, Thomas? That my intentions with your daughter aren’t pure?”
“She isn’t pure, you know.”
My brows hitch, nearly disappearing into my hairline. I stop walking, my face pinching with disgust. “Are you really trying to discuss your child’s virginity with me? You do realize that’s not the commodity it once was?”
He doesn’t say anything. Just watches as I circle the vehicle, searching the workshop against the wall that has an array of cleaning supplies and power tools.
My fingers wrap around the rubber handle of a sledgehammer hanging above the wooden counter. “In any case, her purity doesn’t interest me. I happen to like the fact that she’s positively dirty.”
Tom shifts, leaning farther into the car as I turn back around. The sledgehammer rests against my thigh as I continue my trek around the vehicle, studying him for any sudden movements.
“I could have you arrested. Two casualties on my property, plus you’re in violation of the restraining order.”
“You could.” Tapping the tool against my knee, I shrug. “But I’m sure there’s a reason you haven’t. Could it be you’re doing something worse behind the scenes, and don’t want the attention?”
Silence. Then, “What do you want, Wolfe?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the same thing I came for twelve years ago.”
Stopping at the trunk, my eyes glue to his mouth as it parts, hopeful that this time I’ll get an answer. That maybe he’s softened with age and become less prone to lying, although I know better.
Men like us don’t lie less; we just get better at it.
His pudgy fingers pull at the collar of his shirt. Disappointment spews from his mouth as he says, “My answer hasn’t changed, damnit. I don’t know what happened to your father.”
Nostrils flaring, my elbow jerks, the bulky head of the sledgehammer rising and falling in a whip-like fashion. It connects with the left taillight, and the plastic cover cracks, sending shards of acrylic flying.
Tom flinches, raising his arms in a blocking stance.
“Who knows then?” I prod, coming around the vehicle. “If not you, whose side my father worked at diligently for years, then who?”
“He had a host of enemies—”
Rushing over to him, I bring the handle of the sledgehammer up, pinning him to the car with the rubber end against his windpipe. He wheezes, eyes bulging as I increase the pressure, but he doesn’t really try to fight me off.
Pity.
“You were one of those enemies. Kept him close so it’d be easier to pin your fuckups on him.” His back bows as I push harder, and now he does resist. Bringing his hands up, he tries to pull the hammer away, but I’ve got a good forty pounds of muscle on him and the benefit of youth. “Did it even matter that he considered you a friend? Or that he had two sons who weren’t ready to be orphaned?”
A blood vessel throbs beneath his eye. “I had nothing to do with what happened—”
“Tell me who!” I roar, spittle flying from my mouth into his face. He squeezes his eyes shut as the droplets hit, trying to hide from them. “All of a sudden after you moved to the island, he started acting different. Saying people were out to get him, and that he was in trouble. Then, shit started happening around town and he was getting blamed. Companies were tanking and buildings were being destroyed. All that had ties to Primrose Realty, but you want me to believe you had nothing to do with any of that?”
“No, I didn’t—”
“Lying won’t make it hurt less.” Gripping his jaw in one hand, I turn his face to the side so I can see it. The evidence of my emotions getting the best of me and causing me to ruin the vengeance I’d been planning for so long.
The W is partially hidden in his sideburn, the mangled flesh having healed enough over the years that you don’t even notice that it’s there at first.
I can still smell his skin melting away, the metal of the fire iron ensuring that whoever found him that night would know who did it.
For some reason, I thought my father would be proud. Looking down and smiling from wherever he is in the afterlife.
Stupid, really. Might as well have turned myself in.
Tearing away from Tom, I drop the hammer to my side and take a step back, letting the sound of his frenzied gulps of air seal the cracks in my heart. Cracks he helped put there in the first place.
“When I come for you, it’s not going to matter if you’ve confessed or not. I’m going to make sure you suffer. And I’ll take your daughter along for the ride in the meantime.”
Lifting the tool, I bring it up and grip the base with both hands. Tom’s mouth drops in horror, and he curls into himself as I swing down.
He screams, the sound bloodcurdling as it echoes off the walls, and the hammer lodges into the top of the car, landing right beside his head.
It doesn’t touch him, but as I step back, I see the dark stain forming in the crotch of his pants. A gasp rips from his chest, and he hunches over the hood, struggling to calm down.
I leave him there with the knowledge that I could’ve done more but chose to have mercy.
This time.
21
“You promise you’d tell me if he was hurting you?”
Hiding my laugh behind a fake sneeze, I glance over at Mama as she flits about my old room. Her hands rove over picture frames and ribbons won from art competitions back in Savannah—things I left behind because I didn’t want the reminder that our lives were ever good.
It’s easier to sacrifice yourself when there are memories to ground your hurt in, and I refuse to do that.
“Yes, Mama. I’d tell you if I were being abused and held against my will.”
She turns, fiddling with one of her earrings. A skeptical look crosses her face, pulling her mouth to the side. “You never told me what happened with Preston.”
Sitting on the edge of the made bed, I tap my fingers together in my lap. As she comes to sit beside me, she pushes a glass, heart-shaped frame into my hands.
Inside is a lightly crinkled photo of Preston and me at one of the Primrose Realty awards banquets a couple years ago. He’s in a gray suit, gripping my hips tight as I sit diagonally on his lap, one of my arms around his neck to keep from falling to the floor.
I remember having to do that because he wouldn’t let me have my own seat, and he was constantly moving around as if his goal was to see me slide off and humiliate myself.
My knuckles blanch as my hold on the frame tightens, disgust welling up inside of me like a funnel cloud.
“Preston and I just… didn’t work out.” I hand the picture back, and she frowns at it as if trying to see past the snapshot. “We had different ideas of what a relationship should look like, and they weren’t compatible.”
Nausea presses along the lining of my stomach, the lie barely even registering on my tongue as I say it. I’ve repeated the mantra to myself so many times at this point that it’s almost believable.
“Couples sometimes grow apart. But he was good for you, wasn’t he? Kept some of your… impulsive behavior at bay.” I bite back a retort about how he only amplified them, and she shakes her head. “Plus, your father sure does love him. It would’ve been so good if you’d married into an oil family.”