And now I’m back, to do the same to him.
Or worse.
The town car pulls up in front of my cabin. Not long after and I climb out, nodding to the driver and sending him on his way. I let myself in and am hit by the smell of stagnant air. Five years of dust coats the surfaces in my small hideaway. It’s not much, a bedroom, a bathroom and an all-purpose room with a rustic kitchen and a sitting area. A repurposed hunting cabin I’d snatched up not long after my return from the military. When all I’d wanted was peace and quiet and to try and find my way back to a relationship with my father.
In the end, I’d gotten none of those things.
I head straight for the shower, turning on the water and waiting for it to heat up. Stripping out of my clothes, I catch sight of myself in the mirror.
Ax Craven, home from prison.
My cheeks are stubbly, my expression stony, my eyes filled with something that hasn’t always been there.
I shake my head and climb into the shower. I might be older, but am I any wiser? Doubtful.
Soaping up, I let my thoughts drift as the water does its best to wash away five years behind bars. Five years of taking showers with other men, observed by guards with guns. Five years of no privacy.
Yet, as I wash, I remember when I’d gone without privacy in this very spot. The night after I hustled Sabrina at pool. I pulled her into the shower the next morning and soaped every inch of that gorgeous body of hers.
She’d returned the favor, and we spent enough time exploring for the water to go from steamy to lukewarm.
“I think you missed a spot,” she says, pointing to her navel.
I smile slowly and drop to my knees, licking the spot eagerly. Her sharp intake of breath drives me to the point of madness.
I kiss my way lower, the water running down her in rivulets, making her skin slick. When I reach the sweetest spot of all, she leans back, a sigh blowing through her.
I hold onto her hips for dear life as I devour her. Her little moans send sparks of electricity through me. She tastes like nothing ever has, so addictive that I already want to spend the rest of my life buried between her legs.
“Don’t stop,” she pants, and I want to tell her not to worry, but that would be stopping, so I redouble my efforts until I can feel her muscles shaking. She reaches her climax, providing me with even more of her delicious nectar, and I can feel her go limp in my hands.
I stand, kissing her, spreading her taste to her own lips, and then push her against the wall to do even more devastating damage.
When I drive into her, I know where I am.
Home.
My goddamn cock is hard as nails, and I use a trick I’d learned in Basic to tame it. Flipping the water to cold, I force myself to endure its icy punishment while I will my erection away. These memories of the past, memories of the beautiful Sabrina, are having a greater effect on me than I’d thought.
When I’d been away, in Basic or behind bars, she’d felt so out of reach. Now that I’m back in her orbit, the feelings are stronger than ever.
I need to remain focused, to remember what I’ve come here to do.
And it isn’t to fuck Sabrina again.
No matter how badly I wanted to do just that.
Toweling off quickly, I enter the bedroom and open the dresser. My clothes are where I left them, untouched besides the musty smell of disuse. I pull on a white t-shirt and a pair of boxer briefs, then return to the main room to retrieve the dossier.
It isn’t the first packet of information on my family’s business I’ve received over the years. I’d paid handsomely to ensure my agent provided me with the intel I need. Now that I’m out, I can put my plan, mostly theoretical so far, into action.
Flopping into the creaky armchair, I open the folder and begin to re-read what I’d skimmed in the car, looking for clues to the events I missed over the last five years.
The only thing I can tell for certain is that my father has stepped back from his lead role in the last several months or so. Brent, the eager beaver, has been inserting himself into new territories, with limited success, it seems.
An opportunity exists. One that will be exploited.
For five years of long, sleepless nights I’ve planned exactly how I will take my revenge on my brother. I know I’ll have to accomplish three things if I want him to experience what I went through.
First, I have to disgrace him in front of the town.
Second, I have to deprive him of his freedom.
And finally, I have to destroy his legacy, to completely obliterate his self-image.
He’d taken me from a hero to a petty criminal who wasn’t even smart enough to not get caught. Something equally shitty needs to happen to him.
Brent has to go from a successful billionaire entrepreneur to shareholder poison.
And now that I’m out, I can finally accomplish it.
For the first time in years, I smile.
4
Sabrina
The principal’s features may as well have been carved out of rock. I sidle into his office, a weak grin on my face.
“Hey, Mr. Johnson,” I say breezily, hoping he’ll go along with my efforts to downplay my being summoned to his office. And not for the first time.
“Ms. Jacobs.” His tone is neutral, but I can see the cracks in his authoritarian façade. “I think you know why you’re here.”
I stare at the floor, my false levity deflating. “I can guess.”
“We’re suspending her.”
My eyes shoot to his. “Wait,” I say, waving my hands in protest. “I’m sure we can figure something out that isn’t so harsh. Maybe a couple weeks’ worth of detention will—”
“Detention is not good enough this time. It’s suspension, or the child’s parents are pressing charges.”
“What?” I jump out of my chair, shaking my head. “You can’t be serious. Pressing charges? My daughter isn’t a criminal!”
“This is the third time this semester that you’ve been called here to pick her up for fighting. This time, the other student didn’t even get a blow in. Your daughter tackled him to the ground and started shoving his face against it, screaming at him to ‘eat dirt.’”
I frown. What the hell has gotten into Lex? “I understand, and I agree that her behavior is serious and needs to be addressed, but pressing charges? They’re kids, Mr. Johnson!”
The old principal crosses his arms over his chest. “She’s a menace, Sabrina,” he says. “The other children are scared of her.”
“She’s acting out,” I say. “I can’t spend enough time with her, and her grandmother’s health is starting to go. Lex doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Mr. Johnson says with a sigh, and I can see he’s tired. The lines around his face have been carved deeper these last few years, and I don’t envy him his position. “It can’t be easy on a girl, not having a father.”
I hide the scowl that wants to climb my face. This always seems to be the first thing people jump to whenever Lex gets into trouble—it must be tough not having a daddy.
No shit, people. Try being the mother, with no masculine backup. Discipline is a blast when you’re the only one who enforces it.
“Still,” Principal Johnson says, his gruff voice pulling me back into the conversation. “I have to consider the rest of the children. I’m sorry, Sabrina, but Alexa is suspended for a week.”
I sit there, unsure of what to say. Things seem to keep spiraling out of my control. There aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I need to, and things start to suffer. Lex starts to suffer. A wave of shame covers me.
“I’ll work with her,” I promise. “By the time you let her off of in-school suspension, she’ll be back in that classroom, making friends and—”
“Out of school suspension,” he corrects. “Not in-school. Not this time.”
My jaw drops. “You can’t keep her out of school. There’s
no way I can manage to—”
He raises his hand, interrupting me. “I’m sorry, Sabrina, but you’re going to have to find a way to manage. If you don’t deal with this now, it’s only going to get worse. You need to talk to your daughter, make her realize she can’t act out like this. Maybe even consider taking her into Wilmington for counseling.”
I bite my lip. Counseling doesn’t fit in my insurance plan. And things are already stretched beyond thin with Mom’s medical expenses. But Lex needs something, something more than I can give. I’ll have to find a way to manage, as Johnson says.
“Where is she?”
He stands, coming around his desk. “I put her in the auxiliary gym to wait for you.” Johnson places a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve known you since you went to this school. You’re a good girl, Sabrina, one who’s been dealt a bad hand by life. But I can tell you from experience that you have to take actions like this seriously. Your daughter needs help. And if you don’t intervene now, it will only get worse. She’s looking at a rough future, possibly a ruined one. Do whatever you can to change that.”
I nod, brushing away tears, then push my way past him and out the door. The auxiliary gym is at the end of a short hallway, a room with a slick wooden floor used for practice when the main gym is occupied.
Taking a deep breath, I push open the heavy gym door. Lex is there, throwing a tennis ball at the wall with excessive force. She glances up when I enter, then returns to her task as if alone.
“Let’s go,” I say without any preliminaries.
She ignores me, continuing to bounce the ball off the wall and catch it, the only sound the rhythmic thump of the ball as it hits the wall, then the answering slap as she snatches it out of the air.
“Lex,” I say, putting as much authority into my voice as I can.
“What?” Her tone is sullen, the corners of her mouth pulled down.
“You’re suspended. We’re going home.”
“Suspended,” she says, almost spitting out the words in her disdain. “Stupid.”
“Yeah, it is,” I say, marching forward and grabbing the ball before she can catch it. “Real stupid. We’re going to spend all night talking about how stupid it is.”
Lex rolls her eyes, and I wonder how God could fill a nine-year-old with such an atomic level of sass.
“Get in the car,” I snap, throwing the ball at the wall as hard as I can. It bounces off wildly, and Lex blinks. It’s the break I’ve been waiting for. “Get!” I shout, pointing toward the door.
Expelling a massive sigh, Lex starts trudging toward the door. I let out a breath, releasing the tension that’s filling me. I’m nearing my wits’ end, and we haven’t even made it home yet. I follow my daughter out to the parking lot and wait for her to climb into the car.
Her arms are crossed over her chest and she stares out the window as I drive home, not talking. I’m trying to keep anger from overwhelming my good sense. I count to ten, then twenty, and finally fifty before I feel like I can speak.
I decide to try building a bridge. Hoping to diffuse the situation with a little humor, I ask, “So dirt was on the lunch menu today, was it? Is that the school’s vegetarian option?”
I’ll never give up my day job for a career in stand-up, but I consider it a decent joke. My audience, it seems, doesn’t share my opinion.
Several minutes pass before she replies. “Kent deserved it, Mom.”
One eyebrow quirked, I turn to her. “He deserved it?”
“He was calling me names, saying I got no daddy and I’m an orphan.”
Frowning, I turn onto our street. “That so?”
She doesn’t respond. This isn’t the first time she’s said something similar. But no one in the administration backs up her story. From the school’s perspective, my daughter is a bully incapable of not telling lies.
We’ve talked about it all, and after our last heart-to-heart, she promised to tell me the truth if I promised to believe her. I also pulled out the tried-and-true, time-tested parental advice nuggets of old, sprinkled in with my own modern morals:
Honesty is the best policy.
If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all.
If you get mad, count to ten and walk away.
And my own personal mantra: Shake off the haters and shine.
It seems lame parental advice is just as effective on the next generation as it had been on mine.
“I took the taunts,” Lex continues, her tone tight. “I ignored him like you suggested. But then he called you a name, and I lost it.”
Unbuckling my belt, I grab her hand. “What did he call me?”
“A slut,” she whispers, and I see her eyes shining with unshed tears. “A slut who doesn’t even know who my daddy is.”
I pull Lex over into my arms, holding her tight. “Shh,” I whisper. How a nine-year-old even knows that word, I don’t know. But I can’t stand the effect it’s having on my child. “It’s okay. Kent doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“It’s not true,” she sobs against my shoulder, and I can hear a hint of doubt in her voice.
“Of course, it’s not.” I squeeze her tighter.
“Then where is he? Why don’t I have a dad?”
Brushing my hand over her hair, I kiss the tip of her nose. “I’ve told you before. Your dad had to go away.”
“But where? Why?”
I press her head against my chest, wondering for the umpteenth time if this is the day I finally reveal to her who her father is. She’s so young. And the town—the town won’t appreciate her claiming her father’s name.
“Honey, I promise you, someday I’ll tell you all about it. Right now, just believe me when I say it’s better this way.”
Lex pulls away, her emotion shifting from despair to rage. “Someday. Someday you’ll tell me. Someday I’ll realize it’s better not having a dad. Better getting made fun of. Better that everyone thinks you’re a slut. Sure.”
She pushes her way out of the car and runs across the yard, around the small house and toward the back. I fly after her, but her little legs are strong. Another gift from her father.
By the time I round the house, she’s already on her knees, climbing into the bushes along the back of the grass lawn. “Lex, you stop right there!”
My words have the opposite of their intended effect as she burrows into the bushes even faster. I lunge for the greenery, throwing myself to my knees, my arm shooting out to try and grab her ankle.
I’m too late. I see the bottoms of her shoes as she pulls herself into the tight hole created naturally as the bushes grew together. It’s too small a hole for an adult to climb inside. Deep within the shrubbery, I know there’s an opening within the bushes, surrounded on all sides by leaves and branches. A private kid kingdom.
I know it exists because I spent plenty of time there myself when I was little and pissing off my own mother. She’s safe in there, but also out of my reach, for now.
“You’ll get hungry soon enough since I doubt you had time to eat lunch before you started shoving boys’ faces into the dirt. You’ll come inside then, and we’ll talk.”
Standing, I brush the dirt off my knees, then start crossing the grass to the back door. I notice my mother standing there and frown.
She opens the door as I approach. “What did she do this time?”
“Why are you in the kitchen?” I counter. “You’re supposed to be resting in the armchair. And you need to use your walker, even in the house.”
Mom follows behind me, and over my shoulder I see her wince with every step. “That thing is clunky,” she says. “I gotta build up my strength, and that thing doesn’t help.”
“The whole point of ‘that thing’ is to help,” I say. “But if you don’t use it, you won’t get strong enough to walk around without pain.”
Putting her hands on the back of a kitchen chair, she purses her lips. “What happened with your daughter, daughter?”
I open the fridge, pulling
out the milk and pouring myself a glass. “She pushed a boy down and shoved his face in the mud. Said he called me a ‘slut.’”
My mother made a tsking sound and rubbed her face. “What’s wrong with kids these days? What makes them act like this?”
I grab the cookie jar from the top of the fridge and pull out a few oatmeal chocolate chip. Dipping one into the milk, I chew contemplatively. “The internet, I guess?”
Mom doesn’t think I’m much of a comedian either. “How long’s the detention this time?”
“Not detention. Suspension.”
“Another bullshit school suspension. I swear Lex prefers to spend the day by herself in the administrative office.”
“Out of school suspension.”
Mom frowns. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Johnson talked about pressing charges this time.”
“He never!” She shakes her head, then holds out her hand. I grab another cookie from the jar and hand it to her.
“What are you gonna do?”
I swallow a bite that suddenly isn’t so sweet. “I don’t know. Counseling maybe?”
Mom nods, but I can see her thoughts as if they’re written on her forehead. How much is that gonna cost?
“I can watch her this week,” she says. “Make sure she cleans her room and doesn’t spend all day watching TV.”
I close my eyes. I know Mom is trying to help, but right now she shouldn’t even be standing in the kitchen, let alone chasing around an overactive nine-year-old. And the whole reason we’re in this predicament is because I haven’t had time to spend with my daughter.
Well, maybe not the whole reason.
Mr. Johnson’s words stay with me. If I don’t deal with this now, it will only get worse later. This is something I need to do.
“I’ve got a few vacation days saved up,” I fib. “I’ll take the week off and sort this out.”
Mom puts her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll sort this out. The three of us.”
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