Page 17 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part One
I strode straight upstairs to get the shit I needed, so when I inevitably stormed out, I’d have it with me. Taking the stairs two at a time, I was relieved to make it to my room without running into either of my parents.
My room was immaculate, untouched. More like a hotel room than my bedroom, considering I never stayed here if I could help it. I didn’t stop to look at the small pile of letters on my dresser, or bother to pack any clothes. Money could buy me that shit. Instead, I walked right to the end of my walk-in closet, pushing open the false front on the very end cabinet. If you opened the drawers, you’d see my collection of Rolexes and cufflinks. But if you pushed it into just the right position, the false front opened, revealing a safe behind it. Wasn’t much there: important documents, a couple of photos from when I was a kid. Ten thousand in cash. My passport.
Grabbing a couple of bundles of cash and my passport, I grabbed a jacket and stuffed it all into the pockets. That was it. All I needed from this place.
I briefly wondered if I could sneak back out again before my father found me, but his voice bellowing up the stairs killed that dream dead. Dad was good at crushing dreams.
“Hendrick!” he yelled again, and I unconsciously walked faster. Old habits died hard. He was sitting in the den, in his chair, sipping what was probably forty-year-old scotch for no other reason than he could.
“You hollered?”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I resisted the urge to needle him more. I needed to get in and out of here, back to Sampson and Otto. And Aviva. The addition of her company was like throwing fireworks into a whorehouse. Just Sampson’s response to her was worth the chewing out that I was about to get any second now.
“The rehab called me.”
Yeah, he refused to call it anything but rehab, like I was a junkie instead of…
“Oh yeah, what did they say?”
“That you bought your way out of therapy and abducted another patient when you left.”
I snorted. “That’s not true. It was her release day and she came willingly. And a lot.” I gave him a smarmy grin, because Dad only knew two things in life. Power and pussy. He never saw the woman who existed above the tits. He wouldn’t understand the thrill I got from the fact that she couldn’t stand me.
He chuckled low, and took a swill of his scotch. “I need you on the campaign trail with me.”
“I can’t. I have college.”
“If you can buy your way out of rehab, you can buy your grades, son.”
I shook my head. “I promised Sampson I’d go to Europe with him, and you know, his company pays a lot in political donations.”
My father ground his back teeth, because he knew I was right and he didn’t want to piss off Sampson. “I’m sure Mr. Rubio can go to Europe without you holding his dick.” I didn’t say anything, just gazed around the room looking bored. “I need you back here before the primary elections, Hendrick.”
I huffed out a sigh. “Can’t you just tell everyone I’m dead and get the sympathy vote?”
The coldness in my father’s eyes should have chilled me to my bones, but he’d been looking at me like that for as long as I could remember. “I could, if you stopped getting drunk and fucking debutantes in the back of Bentleys and letting the paparazzi photograph it for prosperity.” He sucked in a breath. “You will be back here in three weeks for the primaries, or I’ll cut you off.”
A laugh burst from my chest, and I knew it was a bad idea as soon as I did it. But fuck it, I was all in now. “Cut me off from what? The money is mine, remember? We just aren’t telling your constituents that.”
In a love story as old as time, my father came from a good, all-American, blue-blooded family—who were poor as fuck, their money squandered away thanks to bad stock portfolio management and too much pride. It was my mother who had all the money. She came from new money, and my grandfather had been a wily old fuck. I missed him.
Still, he’d left me the money and not my parents, a small fact that pissed Dad off every day. I funded his shit, he left me alone, and together my parents burned through my mother’s very ample trust fund.
“How about I get your psychiatrist to declare you mentally unwell and put you under a conservatorship?”
Ice ran through my veins, but I’d been preparing for that too. Since the first time he’d put me in rehab when I’d been fourteen, I’d been gathering my own case, ensuring that I had my own expert witnesses to confirm I was of sound mind and body. There were medical files, police reports that never went anywhere, recordings of shady shit and double crosses, all stashed in a lockbox beneath Otto’s childhood bed. Even back then, I’d known Otto was the one person I could trust above all else.
Father didn’t know any of that though. If he did, I’d already be dead. Still, the thought that he could take over my life by convincing one of his judge buddies that I was nuts terrified me.
My father stood, walking over to me, a smile on his face. “We both know that I could.” He lifted his glass and smashed it against my temple.
I staggered to the left, reaching out to grab the armchair as stars danced in my vision. Adrenaline burst through my veins as he stepped closer, leaning over me. “Listen to me, you little fuck. You’ll do what you’re told or I will make your life so fucking miserable, you’ll have a reason to hang yourself from a shower curtain rail.”
I could feel the slow trickle of blood down my temple as I cowered. I hated myself. Hated myself for shrinking away, when I knew I could punish him right back. I could smash his head in with the crystal ashtray on the occasional table beside me, just keep beating until his head was mush.
In my head, I did just that.
But my body stayed frozen, my head throbbing from the cut that he’d opened in my scalp, until he strode out of the room like it was nothing. Like he didn’t beat the shit out of me whenever he felt like it, didn’t make my life so damn miserable that I hadn’t considered ending it numerous times. I’d never give the fucker the satisfaction of dying though. None of that changed the fact that I was crushed beneath his five thousand dollar oxfords.
