Page 65 of Brushed and Buried
Victor goes quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice carries a note I’ve rarely heard from him, something that might be regret, if he were capable of such a thing.
“You made it, son. Everything else is just details.”
“Adrian’s not a detail. What Mitchell tried to do to him isn’t a detail. What you manipulated me into believing isn’t a fucking detail.”
“What are you planning to do about it?”
The question cuts through me like a blade. The answer roars through my blood before I can even think it.
“I’m going to destroy Mitchell.” The words come out raw, torn from somewhere deep in my chest.
The silence on the other end tells me he can hear the violence in my voice, the way my breathing has turned ragged with the need for retribution. Ten years of buried rage is clawing its way to the surface, and I can feel it changing me, reshaping me into something dangerous.
“Vincent, be smart about this.”
“Be smart like you were smart? Smart like spending my whole life pretending to be someone I wasn’t?” My voice drops to something dangerous. “I’m done being smart on your terms.”
The line goes quiet. I can almost hear the calculations running through his head, the way he’s trying to figure out how to contain this situation, how to manage me the way he’s been managing me for decades.
“Your career depends on your reputation staying clean,” he says finally.
“I’m twenty-eight years old, Dad. I’ve got plenty of good years left, but not if I keep living like this. Some things matter more than money.”
“Like what?”
The answer comes to me with startling clarity. “Like the chance to be the person I should have been all these years. Like the chance to prove that I’m better than the man who raised me.”
I end the call before he can respond, but his words keep echoing in my head. I keep hearing everything he said about discipline, focus, and what it takes to succeed. Part of me knows he’s not entirely wrong. Part of me recognizes that his methods, however brutal, did shape me into someone capable of thriving under pressure.
But as I sit in this empty hotel suite, surrounded by the trappings of the success he helped me build, I finally understand the real cost of his approach.
I never learned how to fight for the things that actually mattered. I never learned that some battles are worth losing everything for.
Ten years too late, I’m finally ready to find out what kind of man I am when I stop trying to be Victor Holloway’s son.
The clarity that comes with that realization is sharp as a blade, cutting through years of confusion and self-doubt. It’s time to prove I’m capable of being the man Adrian deserved then, and still deserves now.
23
Vince
The hotel hallway stretches before me like a gauntlet, each step toward Adrian’s door feeling heavier than the last. My heart pounds against my ribs with a rhythm that has nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the desperate need clawing at my chest.
I remember the way Adrian’s hands moved when he sketched during our art classes, the way his entire being seemed to come alive when he was creating. I remember the hunger in his eyes when he looked at things he wanted to capture, the way art used to flow through him like it was essential as breathing.
That part of him died because of me, because of what my father did, of what I believed, and of ten years of silence that should have been filled with everything we never got to say.
I can’t give him back those lost years. I can’t undo the damage or take away the pain. But maybe I can give him back the one thing that used to make him feel most like himself.
I raise my hand and knock against his door, three soft raps that somehow sound too loud in the quiet hallway.
It opens after a long moment, revealing Adrian in sleep pants and a worn t-shirt, his golden brown hair mussed from the pillow in a way that makes my fingers itch to smooth it back. His fair skin catches the hallway light, looking impossibly smooth, and those brown eyes look up at me with sleepy confusion before sharpening into wariness. Even rumpled and guarded, he’s beautiful in a way that makes me burn from the inside.
The soft cotton of his shirt clings to his slender frame, and I can see the hint of muscle definition beneath, the result of years I wasn’t there to witness.
“Vince? What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” The words come out rougher than I intend, thick with want I can’t quite hide. “I need you to see me.”
