“Leave me, Lena,” he said, as soon as he saw her standing at the door. “I want to die. I want to die with my store.”
“Oh, Dad…” Lena hurried over to him and dropped to her knees beside the bean bag he was using for a chair. “Dad, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you. I didn’t realize how much you were suffering. But I’m here now. I’m going to take you home.”
“No! No!” He pushed away her hands and flapped his thin arms “This is my home. I will die here.”
“Oh, Dad…” An intense wave of sadness washed over her on her father’s behalf. “Please, realize this pain is temporary. It will hurt when they tear down the store, but then you’ll get through it. I promise.”
His sad eyes suddenly narrowed, his expression going from sorrowful to ugly. “You also promised to become a doctor, and how did this turn out?”
She reared back. Unable to believe such spiteful words were coming out of her father’s mouth. But then she realized. “Dad, you’re drunk. We need to get you home.”
“No, I won’t go home, I won’t—” her father started to say, but then his eyes suddenly popped horror wide and he asked, “What are you doing here?”
At first Lena thought the alcohol was confusing him, addling his mind, along with turning him mean. But then she followed the direction of his gaze over her shoulder.
Keane. Crap, he’d followed her into the backroom and was now standing in the doorway. Large as a Boston winter in his gray business suit. This was the last thing she needed while trying to bring her father out of his highly agitated state. But she kept her cool, for her father’s sake. “Dad, I’m sorry. I had to ask someone to help me get in here after you changed the locks. This is—”
“He knows who I am,” Keane informed her before she could finish the introduction.
“What do you mean he knows who you are?” she asked, confused alarm bells going off in her head, since she’d gone out of her way to make sure Keane and her father never met that summer.
“C’mon, Kumar. Time to get you home,” Keane said, instead of answering her questions.
“No! No! I’m not going to be dragged out of my store by the demon who bought it.”
“All right, fireman carry it is,” Keane answered, heaving the older man up and slinging him over his shoulders, like he weighed nothing. Probably because he did.
Lena ended up following them out of the little back room in a complete daze.
What did her father mean by “demon who bought my store?”
She soon found out, thanks to her father railing against Keane all the way out to his car, which he’d thankfully parked in back.
“I should have never taken your demon deal! I should have known you were using me to get to my daughter!”
It didn’t take much to piece together what had happened. Obviously DGK, not some nameless conglomerate was the one responsible for paying her father a full seven figures over what his store was worth on paper to give up his precious business.
“Keane…?” she started after he all but shoved her dad in the back of his Range Rover, buckled him in, and engaged the child locks, so he couldn’t get out.
“Get in the car,” he answered before she could finish asking. “We don’t have time for this. We need to get the car moving before he gets any bright ideas about trying to get out through the front seat.”
He was right. With nervous eyes on her father, who was currently yanking at the Rover’s backdoor lock, she slid into the passenger seat.
Fortunately, her father stopped trying to get out after the car started, but he turned his wrathful stare on Keane. “You found out, didn’t you? You found out about my grandchild.”
“Sure did,” Keane answered, with no inflection in his voice whatsoever as he navigated the car through Dorchester’s busy mid-day traffic.
Lena’s eyes widened and her heart lurched. “Wait, you knew about Max, too, Dad. But I never…”
“Yes, you hid that from me. Just like you hid it from this demon. But I guessed when Max grew so tall. I knew this could not be Rohan’s child, then.”
“Oh, Dad…” she said for a third time, unable to wrap her head around her father knowing all this time.
“So both of you decided not to tell me I had a son,” Keane said, gripping the steering wheel so tight she could see the white of his knuckles.
Meanwhile her father spiraled from angry to despondent in the backseat. “I am sorry for taking the demon’s money, my Lena,” he said with tears in his eyes. “He is still angry over what happened when he actually thought I would give him permission to have you. He came knocking on my door, you know. And I told him what he was—a summer dalliance, somebody my daughter was only using until Rohan came to his senses. I did not know it was him who offered me more money than I could have ever imagined for my store. I did not know it was him until he came in after my contract signing. So smug about tricking me into giving him the thing I held dearest. But even then I took comfort. It is all right, I told myself. At least he does not know about Max, and he will never know, I vowed to myself. But now everything is ruined for you because of me, beti. And my store…it’s gone!”
With that, her father broke down into piteous tears into the backseat. Oh God…
Lena couldn’t bear to see her father crying. And even though there was still so much to process about what he’d just said, she reached back to stroke his knobby knee as best she could. “It’s alright, Abba. It’s alright. It’s not your fault. I love you. I forgive you. Please don’t cry!”
Chapter Twenty
“It’s alright, Abba. It’s alright. It’s not your fault. I love you. I forgive you. Please don’t cry!”
Keane hated listening to her comfort the piece of shit who’d told Keane he wasn’t good enough for his daughter eleven years ago, when he’d come to ask his permission for her hand in marriage.
“I will not even bother to tell her I met you, as I already know you are a regrettable phase who will pass through her life faster than a Boston summer.”
Keane had stormed away, so sure her father had been wrong. He’d never felt anything like this for anyone else in his life. He’d been so sure they’d last forever.
What a stupid, stupid fuck he’d been.
Less than a week later Lena had dumped him. And as she walked away, Keane had known that her father had kept his promise about not even bothering to tell her Keane had come by, asking to propose. He’d just pulled his daughter’s strings, and she’d gone west.
So Keane had done what he did to everyone who had crossed him from his past. From buying nearly every house on the hockey player’s street, razing them and turning them into luxury condos. To purchasing the Back Bay mansion. That house had belonged to the parents of a rich kid who’d made his life hell on his first house league team. He didn’t even remember that kid’s name now, but thanks to some bad investments on his parent’s part, he’d bought the house that kid lived in, and now skated nearly every night in its basement.
Lena’s father had crossed him, underestimated him, and looked at him like he was scum. So Keane had taken his store.
But Lena had forgiven that son of a bitch for everything, just because he got drunk and shed a few tears. And like acid it chewed up his insides as he drove them home.
And look at this sad shit, he still knew the way to her old place by heart, on account of driving by there so many times after she broke up with him. As he approached the house, he passed under the tree where he used to sit, gripping the steering wheel tighter than tight, so that he wouldn’t get out and beg her to stay in Boston with him.
Once, the steering wheel hadn’t been enough of an anchor. He’d gotten out, walked up to her door. Actually had his hand raised to knock. But then he remembered how she’d never brought him here. How she’d laughed when he tried to bring up the subject, like she thought he was teasing her. And he’d lowered his hand, knowing even if he knocked, she’d never invite him in.
Lena still hadn�
��t invited him in.
But he followed behind as she helped her beer-kneed father get into their house. And he waited downstairs, as she rushed around making tea and soup, which she probably spoon-fed to the man who’d made Keane feel like a piece of shit eleven years ago.
Then when she came back downstairs, he said, “I’ve got to get back to work. C’mon, I’ll drive you back to the Institute.”
To his surprise, she grabbed her purse. But she said, “Actually I’m going back to your place.”
She didn’t say a word on the drive to Back Bay and when they pulled up to the back of the house, instead of thanking him for his service, she got out like he was her local Uber. Just dropping her off.
He had meant to just drop her off. Bono was blowing up his phone with all sorts of passive aggressive “Where are you?” and “Is everything okay?” and “I’m worried about you. Please call me back”.
But instead of texting his brother, he killed the engine and ran up the steps after her.
“Hey, why aren’t you going back to work?” he asked when he caught up with her just inside the back door.
She blinked at him. “Because my father is distraught and malnourished,” she answered. “But all the meat in his house is rotten, so I’m making something here to take him for dinner. And why are you still here, anyway? Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“Don’t know about that,” Keane answered, popping his neck to the side. “That house of his is nice. Good bones. Maybe I’ll go after that next.”
Lena’s eyes popped like she was a pressure cooker about to go off. But she kept her voice level as she answered, “You know, Keane I used to think you were just a bully, but now I’m beginning to see you’re a monster. He was ready to commit suicide because you bought him out of his only reason for living.”
“That was just drunk talk,” Keane answered with a dismissive swat of his hand. “You see guys getting pissed like that in all the real Southie bars every time factories hand out a bunch of layoffs. But only soft college kids do shit like that. Everybody else sobers up, finds another job and gets on with their life already. Just let him sleep it off. My crew will knock his building down tomorrow, then that will be that.”
Lena fluttered her eyes and raised her hands in front of her. “Wow, thank you for explaining to me why I should gloss over all my father’s feelings and let your demolition crew take care of his abject grief.”
“Just saying you don’t have to spend the rest of the day catering to him. Look, take my advice or don’t. I don’t care.”
“No, you don’t care, Keane,” Lena agreed, raising a hand to her forehead to rub at her temple. “About anyone or anything but your ego, which is apparently so fragile, you hold onto grudges for years because of something someone said to you over a decade ago.”
“My ego is fragile? I’m the one buying the properties here, not crying over some store like it’s my dead wife.”
“No, the store’s nothing like his dead wife. Because the only woman he’s ever loved died in childbirth. He never got the chance to marry her and now something else he loves is about to die. Because of you.”
Keane sneered. “Look at you. Twisting it all around to make it my fault that I’m going to build something nice on that corner, in place of some run down store.”
She threw her hands up. “This isn’t about what you did. It’s about how you went about it. How you go about everything, like every human you encounter is some pawn in some messed up game of payback you’re playing to overcome your past. I mean, why didn’t you tell me you met my dad back in the day? And how long were you planning to keep your buying his store from me?”
“Oh, you want to talk about secrets? How about Max? Nine years, Lena. That shit kind of pales in comparison to me not telling you about meeting your Dad. And by the way, why the fuck does Max care so much about not being naked in the showers with other kids?”
Lena blanched, her rising anger switching to shock. “That…that was supposed to be confidential.”
“Yeah, well, Con told me, because Merriweather only has open facilities. So he’ll need a special chaperone or some shit if he wants to stick to his shower rule at the tournament this weekend.”
Lena looked from side to side. Then she said, “Okay, I’ll go with him to Merriweather this weekend. Get a hotel room nearby, and he can room there with me.”
“No you won’t,” Keane surged forward and took her by the arm. “Weekends are for you and me and this baby business, remember? No backing out before 100 or the custody agreement is null and void.”
A crazed hunger nipped at Keane, demanding that he get her back to the one place they worked right. In bed. He needed to drag her down off this soapbox she’d decided to climb up on for Daddy Dearest. Remind her who had the absolute power here. Make her beg.
“I just got my period.” Her eyes flashed as she snatched her arm back. With anger or triumph—Keane couldn’t tell. Either way, it enraged him that she’d seemed to have that excuse locked and loaded and ready to shoot.
He exhaled hard, his nostrils flaring. Once. Twice. Then he grabbed her purse and dumped it on the nearest thing he could find. A side table, right next to the front door.
“What are you doing?” she screeched behind him.
“Checking for birth control,” he answered, turning back to confront her. “I searched your room the other night, but obviously you’re hiding them someplace. How else are you getting your period after all that fucking? We did it without protection once—just once—and got Max.”
“Because I’m thirty-three now. Not twenty-three,” she answered, fisting a hand of her hips. “And are you forgetting, I only agreed to do this because I want a baby, too.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said. Then you begged me to fuck you less than two weeks later.”
“Because you made me,” she shouted back. “With your mind games and your need to control me, and your complete inability to trust.”
“Yeah, like I’m supposed to believe anything coming out your mouth after you kept my kid from me for nine fucking years. Do you think I got where I am by trusting anything anybody says to me?”
“No, I don’t,” she said softly, her shoulders suddenly slumping. “And that still makes me feel really sad for you. Even when you’re lashing out.”
She said that to him. Then she hit him with that goddamn secret weapon of hers. The disappointed eyes, filled with sympathy because no matter what he did, he was still some kind of fuck up as far as she could see. Something to be pitied.
He turned his eyes to the pile he’d made on the side table. Fucked up as it was, he wanted to find those birth control pills. He needed something he could use against her, wave in her face like Matt Damon putting Yardies in their place with a girl’s number.
His mind itching for a weapon in this fight, he scanned the mess of receipts, pens, and other purse shit. There was a phone wallet, but it was too thin to house a sleeve of birth control but then…hot dog, what was that? A journal?
Lena must have spotted it at the same time. She moved forward to grab it, but he stopped her with a hand to her chest. “You still keeping a diary, bad girl?”
“Give it back, Keane. This isn’t a joke,” she answered.
“Really? Because I’m finding this situation real funny. Let’s see what we got here…”
He flipped to the first page, “Dear Mama, today the divorce papers came through. You were right. Rohan wasn’t the one for me—wait, let me get this straight. Not only are you still writing to your dead mom, but you actually think she’s giving you advice? See, this is why I don’t go to head shrinks. Most of them are crazier than their patients—”
He cut off when Lena surged forward and slapped him. It wasn’t some girly slap either. She put her weight into it. Scraped her nails across his face, drawing blood.
“Ow, you fucking…” he said, dropping the diary.
She grabbed it before he could decide which derogatory name to fin
ish that sentence with and ran upstairs.
And unlike at her own house, she didn’t come down. Even after he waited another half hour before heading back to work.
“What happened to your face?” Max asked when he picked him up at practice.
“Nunya,” Keane answered, cranky as hell because Lena’s fucking slice job was still throbbing.
Speaking of which, guess who was waiting on the alley-facing stairs as soon as they rolled up? New work outfit on, and a purse on her arm. All she needed was a pillbox hat to be Stepford Mother of the Year. You never would have thought her capable of an unkind word, much less slicing up his face.
“Hey, mom! What’s for dinner?” Max asked. “I’m starving.”
A smile of welcome lit her face for her boy, and Keane wanted some of it for himself. Damn. He was being an ass still over a woman who did not give two shits and a cent about him. Ruthlessly suppressing the feelings, he strolled forward with his son by his side.
“I made some biryani for your grandfather. He’s really sad about his store closing. So we’re going over there tonight.”
“But Mr. Keane and me were supposed to get in some ice time before dinner. Plus, we were going to watch some Merriweather games—”
“Thank you for tapping into your empathy well to put a loved one first,” Lena answered, without acknowledging Max’s protest. She brought out her phone. “Please go put your stuff in the house while I order the Lyft.”
“But mom…,” Max began to whine.
“I know Grandpa will really appreciate seeing you, since it’s been weeks. Family is the best balm for someone going through a bout of grief. Remember how much you needed me after the divorce?”
Max’s shoulders slumped, just like his mom’s did when she was disappointed. But in the end, Keane watched his son head up the back stairs to put his bag down inside without another word of protest. Or getting any of his deal points. Yeah, Keane would have to teach him to fight dirtier when he got back from Merriweather.
Keane: Her Ruthless Ex: 50 Loving States, Massachusetts Page 15