Page 87 of The Love You Fight For
“Do you even know who you’re fucking, Samantha?”
I let a taunting smile stretch over my face.
“I know it’s not you, thank god.”
He jerks like he wants to hit me again, but he doesn’t, and I don’t flinch. I almost think I’ve won and he’s going to back down, but then his lips turn up at the corners into something truly sinister, and my stomach clenches.
“Ask your father about Christopher Casper, Samantha. I’ll admit, I didn’t make the connection at first. Not until I ran his background. But what a surprise.”
He’s dangling the information in front of me, toying with me. He wants me to beg.
“C’mon, Samantha, aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I sneer at him, and then I unlock the car door and climb out.
TWENTY-TWO
I walkto the road and order a car on my rideshare app.
It’s going to cost a couple hundred dollars to have it take me back to D.C., but I don’t care. I order a luxury vehicle and put it on my father’s credit card.
When I’m dropped at my father’s place, I let myself in with my key, then rearm the alarm behind me. Instead of waiting for him in the foyer, I go to his office and open the safe he keeps behind the portrait on the wall.
The contents are the same as they were last time, but I take more photographs, anyway. Cash. A gun. Stacks of spreadsheets. A black book of contacts. Bank statements.
When I was in high school, my father had a similar safe in our house in Franklin, only he kept drugs in it. Cocaine and pills, mostly. I used to steal them. I used to take them with Macon and our friends. But then a girl OD’d and died on drugs that Chase gave her, and my father cleaned out his safe. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. I stopped using after that night.
I grab the black book and open it, thumbing quickly to the Cs, and my stomach drops to my feet when I see Chris’s mom’s name, along with her phone number, address, and birthdate. Then, under the listing, written in the margin as if it was added later, is a secondphone number. I don’t recognize the area code, so I take out my phone and search it.
New Mexico.
My heart thuds hard in my rib cage. I feel dizzy. I have to lean back onto my father’s desk so I don’t risk tipping over.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I dial the New Mexico number. It rings and rings before going to voicemail, and when the voicemail greeting plays, I almost vomit.
It’s Chris’s mom. She goes by a different last name now, but the first name is the same. It has to be her. I hang up without leaving a message, and I just stare at the wall. My father has Chris’s mom’s information in his personal book of contacts. Every man who has ever attended one of my father’s bourbon and cigar parties is in that book. Every person he’s ever owed or been owed a favor is in there. And every mistress he’s ever had.
How did I miss this? How did I not see this name and zero in on it?
I already know the answer. I was focused on the men—on the monsters—and the mistresses were of no concern to me. There’s a familiar sinking feeling in my gut, the one that tells me there’s so much more that I don’t know, and suddenly, I’m terrified of the truth.
I’ve never shied away from learning the darkest, ugliest things about my father. I’ve dug for them. I’ve searched and searched for them. But this? This connection between my father and Rebecca Casper? This feels different. This feels worse, and I’m not sure I want to know anymore.
When the alarm beeps, alerting me to someone entering the house, I put the contact book back in the safe, close it, and put the portrait back. I close the drawers and turn off the light as I leave, making sure my second cell phone is recording before making my way into the kitchen.
I work on my breathing. I clear my head. I wait.
I can’t turn back now. There’s no escaping this.
A few minutes later, I hear my father’s voice, followed by thefinance manager’s voice before they’re both stumbling into the kitchen attached at the lips and groping at one another.
I clear my throat, and they break apart, whipping bewildered eyes at me. My father looks furious. I skip over to him and narrow my eyes at the finance manager. She looks mortified.
“Barbara. Thank you for keeping Daddy company, but I would like to speak to him now, so you can go.”
“Samantha,” my father says sternly, “you don’t have the authority in this house to send away my guests.”
I laugh. Hisguests. And he’s talking like I didn’t just watch them sucking each other’s faces. A consummate actor, this one.
