It started with the phone call—turned screaming match—between my father and me. A neighbor at the Bellvue Hills house decided tonight was a good night to snitch, telling that we’d had parties there nearly every weekend since the start of summer. So, as he sped through the streets of downtown Cypress with Mom listening in the background, he informed my brothers and me that access to all our bank accounts had been blocked until the start of the school year.
He’s pissed, but it has nothing to do with the house. He hasn’t even been by there in nearly a year. This is about control. The almighty Vin Golden hates the idea of something like that going on under his nose without his permission.
So, instead of losing out on the deal I struck with the owner of a 1970 Chevelle, I’ll let good old Vin pick up the tab.
My phone notifications are going off like crazy, and on the other side of the threshold, Sterling’s resorted to cussing me out under his breath. The combination of both sounds only makes my nerves worse. He’s losing his shit, which makes me start losing my shit.
“Pandora’s starting with her updates,” Sterling pops in to say. “One of her minions reported in on Vin, said they saw him blow through a few red lights to get here.”
Which means he’ll be rushing up here double-time if he’s that pissed. My window of escape just closed in a little more.
I move down a drawer on the desk, still holding on to hope that I’ll stumble across a very specific credit card. The black one with no limit. The one my father only brings out when he’s really fucked up, so bad the only remedy is to buy Mom something expensive enough to stop the tears.
Sad thing is, that’s usually no fewer than three or four times a year. Perks of being an asshole.
I won’t be using it to purchase diamonds or some exotic vacation. My splurge has a LS6 454 engine under the hood.
“Junk. Trash. Bullshit.”
Stacks and stacks of unopened envelopes only slow me down as I rifle through. I push them aside and still find nothing.
“Forget it. I’ll have to come back once they’re in bed.”
“About fuckin’ time.” Sterling barely has the words out before I hear his feet shuffling across the marble, ready to hightail it out of there. Pretty sure he’s already made it to the elevator, waiting to take it down a floor to our own place.
“When the hell did you become such a pussy?” I call out, knowing he’s probably too far away to even hear me by this point.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen him so on edge. The whole team swears off weed from July through the end of our football season every year. It just hits Sterling a little differently than the rest of us. Whereas we enjoy that shit, he damn-near needs it just to function. Dude’s wound tighter than a drum and the only thing that offsets it is getting laid more often.
Lucky for him, ass is never hard to come by.
I’m almost to the door and in the clear, but the soles of my sneakers squeak across the tile when I halt. Doubling back is about the dumbest thing I can possibly do, but … I have an idea where the card might be.
“Shit.”
I glance over to the far wall. The obnoxious, gold-framed oil painting hanging just above the fireplace is more than art. It conceals a safe. My dad has no clue I’ve known the code since I was ten, but it’s one of his many secrets I’ve kept over the years.
Only, this one might actually help me, which is new.
I glance in the direction of freedom, and then back toward the art.
“Shit,” I mumble again.
Moving at lightspeed across the room, I flip the painting at its hidden hinges. An array of glowing, green numbers glare back at me from underneath it. I punch in the six digits permanently etched in my memory. The buttons beep with every touch, and fucking Sterling’s anxiety has taken ahold of me now, too.
I press the last digit and … success. For a hot second, I swear I’m 007 in this bitch, before remembering the ticking clock. I peer inside the small space and take inventory.
A silver USB.
One of several pistols he owns.
A box of ammo.
The card I came for, and … a cell phone.
I fully intend to ignore everything except what I’ve been in search of, but I lose focus anyway, zeroing in on the dark screen resting at the back of the safe.
There could be a perfectly reasonable, innocent explanation for why my father—a respected real estate developer here in Cypress Pointe and beyond—has this in his possession. However, in order to believe that, I’d have to pretend not to know the man behind the mask.
He’s cold, manipulative, a shit father and husband—the dickhead trifecta.
Temptation is too great. The phone is in my hands before I can talk myself out of it. Glancing over my shoulder quickly, I power it on. The fifteen or twenty seconds it takes for the thing to get going feel like hours. When it finally does come to life, I’m prompted to type in an access code. It could have been anything, but I didn’t have to try more than once. It was the same six numbers as the safe, the same as the passcode he chose for the elevator that grants access to their penthouse and ours.
My mother’s birthday.
A guilty habit, no doubt.
There aren’t many icons for apps, which means it’s not likely he uses it all that often. I start by scrolling through what seems to be a dummy email account set up for linking it to the phone. Nothing sent, nothing received. I move on. The next logical place to snoop is in the text messages and call log. Whatever may have been there at one point is gone now. So, I move on to the gallery and, immediately, I’m confused as hell.
In a different reality, I would’ve been shocked to find pics of some half-naked chick in my father’s possession, but I’m beyond thinking he’s infallible. Women are his weakness. It’s not even a secret at this point. But something does knock the wind out of me when I zoom in and have a clear view of her face.
Because I know the girl in the image.
Well, we haven’t met officially, but … I hadn’t forgotten her face.
I’d first laid eyes on her when she stood framed in flames at the bonfire, little over a month ago. She stood there, doe-eyed, innocent. Shit, you’d never guess that now, seeing what I’m seeing.
She’s posed on a white sheet, full lips smiling up at the camera for a selfie, tits exposed and pointing skyward. At the bonfire, I remember wondering what she’d look like naked, sprawled out in my bed just like this. In fact, if Parker hadn’t distracted me with her promise of ‘the best head I ever had’, I might’ve found out for myself.
P.S. Parker lied. Her head game is weak as hell, but I digress.
The girl in this picture couldn’t be any older than my brothers and me—eighteen, maybe not quite even. In other words, she’s way too young for my father.
I let my eyes drift lower, down the plane of smooth, tan skin, all the way to her navel ring. I find myself wondering if the frame hadn’t ended there, would I find her completely naked?
Realizing I’m actually lusting after this girl, I shake my head to clear it. When I refocus, my new goal is to connect the dots, determine what might’ve led up to the moment. The context is hard to gauge, though.
Had he been there when she captured the moment?
Was this her answer to a special request he made?