Page 88 of The Revenge

“Has been dealt with.” William’s gaze drops to my hands. “I assume from the fact that you’re leaving, that the engagement was fake; however, I meant what I said about staying away from my son.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and taps on the screen before holding it out to me. “I’ve already spoken to my lawyers, and while I will honor my agreement and make sure they do whatever necessary to help your brother, I’d prefer that you don’t contact him again. Give me your contact details.”

He says this like he thinks I want to find an excuse to come running back to Syn, but instead of telling him the truth, that he would be doing me a favor, I take the phone and write down my contact information in silence.

When I hand the phone back to him, he gives me a business card. “This should be the last time ever need to cross paths, Ms. Reynolds. However, if for some reason, you do need to contact me, do so directly, and not through my son.”

“Sure.” I push the card into my coat pocket without looking at it.

William glances at my bags. “I’ll have my driver take you home.”

“I’ll grab a cab. It’s fine.”

“Consider this making sure you get home safely.” There’s nothing about his firm tone that convinces me he cares about my safety. He just wants to make sure I leave.

Given that the cost of a taxi from here to my home in Jersey is going to cost me a small fortune, and I’d planned to haul my cases on two buses, a ferry, and a train, I don’t put up much of a fight.

“Thank you.”

“You should leave before the others wake. My driver will be waiting for you downstairs.” Without another word, Mr. Keyingham walks away.

Taking that as my cue to pick up my bags and make my way down to the lobby, I push the button to call the elevator. Even though it’s early, and he’s had no notice, Mr. Keyingham’s driver is already waiting for me when I step out of the elevator. He takes my bags from me and carries them out to the car. As he puts them in the trunk, the building doorman follows me to the car to open the door for me.

Once inside, my body sinks into the soft leather. At this time in the morning, the drive isn’t much quicker than public transportation would have been, but I have zero words of complaint when I get to sit in the back of a nice car instead of dealing with the start of rush hour traffic by myself.

Somehow, I fight back the urge to close my eyes and sleep the journey away, and about an hour later, I’m on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building in Jersey City.

This place, my current home, is a far cry from resembling anything like Syn’s home. The only similarity is that the building is probably around the same age. Trash is still piled up by the dumpsters on the side of the road, waiting for sanitation to come down the street. Overnight, the rats have chewed through the bags, and the contents are spilling out everywhere.

When I left for James Keyingham University, there was a deli store below our apartment. Now, the windows are boarded up, and there’s a large ‘For Sale’ sign plastered over it. I was hoping I’d arrive as it was opening, so I could grab something to eat for breakfast, but it looks like I’ll have to take my chances with what’s in the cabinets.

I pick up the bags and walk to the door on the other side of the building. The lock still sticks, but I get inside without much trouble. After grabbing the mail, that looks like it’s beencollecting for a few days, I carry my bags up four flights of stairs. There's no elevator in this building, though if there were, I doubt it would be working anyway.

Our front door opens into a small kitchen, and the first thing that greets me when I walk in is the smell. Somewhere inside, something is decaying. There’s not much sideboard space, but every inch of it is covered in bottles. Mixed amongst them are takeout boxes from the Chinese place down the street. As I put my bags down in the little bit of floor space, something small and furry goes running past me.

Nice.

“Mom?” I call.

I can hear voices, but I quickly realize it’s the TV playing.

Closing the door behind me, I leave the bags where they are and venture further into the apartment. After we lost the house, I lived with my mom and dad in a motel for a few months. When he left us, we had to find a place to live. Somewhere that we could afford the rent but was also spacious and comfortable. A place that didn’t exist in New York. It didn’t exist in Jersey City either.

I was prepared to settle on something worse until my mom found this by chance. Not only did it have two bedrooms—if you could call the room that was smaller than Syn’s bathroom a bedroom—where I’d be able to close the door and study, but the rent wasn’t exorbitant. What I realized later was that we’d have to deal with no air-conditioning in the summer, and an unreliable furnace in the winter.

The apartment is only just warm, but at least the heating is working today. Hopefully, my luck will hold out, and we have heat tomorrow because there’s no way anyone is coming to fix it on a Sunday if it dies.

The kitchen opens up into a small living area. The place was listed as having a separate kitchen and living room, butin reality, the landlord cobbled together three-quarters of a dividing wall from wood and plasterboard. If you lean against the wall too heavily, it wobbles.

Our dining table is pushed up against the wall, and, like the kitchen counters, is covered in trash. A mouse looks up at me from the middle of a tray of old fries before it runs away. In the corner, tucked out of the way of the front door, the small TV is on, like I guessed.

Lying on the couch in front of it, is my mom.

“Mom?” I step in front of the couch and accidentally kick some bottles over, sending them scattering into others like bowling pins.

Despite how loud the noise is, my mom barely flinches. She’s lying on her back, fast asleep. Or, judging from the bottle of almost finished vodka that she’s clutching tightly, passed out. Mom doesn’t offer much resistance as I pull the bottle from her grip and set it down on the floor beside the couch.

Whatever my plans had been, they’ve changed now. Leaving my mom to sleep, I head back into the kitchen and check the small cupboard under the sink to see what cleaning supplies we have.

Not much.

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