Page 73 of Scandalous Lover

Dom did his MBA right after college, while he was still stringing our father along about joining him in the family firm. But the second his trust account was unlocked, he was gone, and he never looked back.

I remember those years vividly. I was a teenager, struggling to find myself and my place in the world, when Dom dropped the news that not only would he not be joining my father at work, he was headed to Europe to work in restaurants. He told me I could come with him, but I assumed he was joking.

To say that my father gave up on life would be a sorry understatement.

Dom was his plan. His legacy. There was no chance I was going to replace him, so my father didn’t even try. He allowed me to follow my passion of photography and art and pursue adegree in visual arts, even though Dom had to get his in finance or risk being cut off.

My father shrank into himself, spending more and more time at the office until it reached the point where he didn’t come home from the city for weeks at a time.

Our house became even more of a tomb than in my early years, when the family was in mourning over my dead mother.

And I learned just how unimportant I was to them. Invisible. Non-existent.

My junior year of high school, I would spend hours setting up artsy shots for social media, building my life into a rich, happy place like a diorama for people to scroll on their phones.

The internet became my family.

It was all so much simpler than my real family. Instead of having to show up and be someone these stick in the mud men thought I should be, I could show up exactly as myself, represented in whatever way suited me best, and everyone would follow right along.They would see me and like me.

I learned to curate my life for the tiny screen and found that I was really good at it. I ran a lifestyle blog through college when that was popular, followed by Tumblr, and finally Instagram.

No one could control me because I was completely in control of my image. They saw what I wanted them to see.

And people were always watching.

It’s addictive, that kind of attention. I watched myself transform from an artsy teen posing with flowers and graffiti art to a polished, confident authority on how life should be lived. When I spoke, people listened. When I did something, they all wanted to do it too.

I had no idea what a house of cards I had built for myself. Blinded by the little hearts into believing that I was important to those people.

“I got a call from our father last week.”

My attention shoots back to Dom as he drops this bomb. “What? He called you?”

He hasn’t called me. Not since I called to let him know that I was leaving the city for a while and why. I wouldn’t have bothered, but again, I'm not thirty-five, so I needed him to bolster my accounts more than usual for a while until I could get things back on track.

He refused.

“Apparently he wants to start taking part in his children’s affairs again and he’s decided to take his last few decades of failure out on you,” Dom says, and I almost feel a hint of camaraderie from him as I consider how similar our positions are right now.

I let out a sigh, having exactly nothing to say about our father. Turns out, Dom has plenty.

“I had no idea things were still so bad.”

I take a full moment to process the words while running my finger along the rim of my pale teal and cream porcelain mug before the possible meaning sinks into my mind.

I want to be angry at his intentional ignorance, but the wave of emotions is too exhausting.

“Yeah, well…” It’s not meant to be a statement, simply a filler.

“I thought you were doing well. I follow you, you know.”

I glance up at that, into his calm, curious eyes. The same dark eyes that I’ve been trying to get to see me for my whole life finally are. Or maybe I’m just now brave enough to look into them.

“You follow me on Instagram?”

“Yes. I have an account to follow The Sands and you.”

I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and find Reina there, nodding, signature smilein place.

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