Page 9 of Ex-SEAL Bad Boy

“Liam, what is it? Is it dad, is he OK?”

I know Mr. Delgado has had a history of heart problems. He’s been OK for the last several years, but his family keeps an eye out for any problems he might be having.

Our family has a different dynamic. I think the first thing we think about when a family member is ill is, am I about to inherit a fortune?

Our relationships are primarily transactional.

My father had not been home when I returned from lunch.

I was ready to get into it with him.

But who am I kidding? I always crumble when it comes to confrontations with him.

Liam had called me over after his sister told him I had pulled her from the water. It was good to reconnect.

I had called him after I got discharged, but life intervened, and we haven’t really gotten back together since I got back.

Liam is working long hours as a software engineer for a video game developer, and I’ve been—well, I guess that’s mostly on me.

He offered to make dinner for me as a thank you, and he thought his sister should be there since, after all, she was the one who I saved.

I don’t necessarily think I need to be rewarded. I was just acting on instinct, and it just happened to be her.

I think it’s high time we bury the hatchet, so to speak. Her only reason for apparently disliking me is that she dislikes my family and what they represent to her.

She should appreciate that I’m blowing off my family tonight to spend it with her brother and her. My father was very insistent that they needed to speak with me tonight, but I don’t answer to him anymore.

I’ve never had an issue with her aside from the fact that I find her acting like her brother’s overseer particularly annoying. I get that she feels like I’m a bad influence.

I’ll admit that I’m not the most ethical person. I’m more an end justifies the means kinda guy, but I’ve never made Liam do anything he wouldn’t otherwise do. I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I did.

That’s the one thing I’m most proud of. When it comes to my friends, I’m fiercely loyal. I don’t have a lot of them, but those I do have can trust me implicitly. That extends to their loved ones as well.

My folks are going to be pissed that I dipped out on the family meeting they had planned for this evening.

Since I left the Navy, I’ve been staying in the two-bedroom seaside cottage on the family compound. I really should get my own place away from them, but my mother likes me close by, especially when my father leaves town.

I never really understood that because she never had a problem with that while I was deployed.

I have no idea what kind of scheme they’re cooking up. If I knew them, it couldn’t be on the up-and-up. I don’t know where they ever came up with the saying crime doesn’t pay, but whoever said that didn’t know my family.

I have to give them credit, they are always very careful in avoiding getting caught.

They could always make it appear that they didn’t have any direct involvement in anything overtly criminal. Even if they were somehow connected, someone else always took the fall.

My father, Edward, trained as a lawyer, never worked an honest day in his life. His father, my grandfather, made his money peddling real estate – and influence. The latter ended up being far more profitable than the first.

Money and politics always equals corruption, and there’s plenty of that to go around. And it feeds on itself. There’s never enough money. It gets to the point where you don’t need the money anymore, it’s just a game, like Monopoly gone mad.

The problem is, I can’t condemn it completely, I’ve become accustomed to the lifestyle. It was how my parents were able to send me to the best schools (and afford the tutors). We ate the finest food and had the nicest toys. Life was good. Still is to some extent.

Only before was I ever involved in the machinery that generated the means by which to accomplish all this. I was insulated. Now, I feared I was going to be asked to take my seat at the table.

Maybe my enlistment in the Navy was less a need to prove myself as it was the chance to get away from my family.

I need a drink.

“Mind if I make myself a scotch,” I ask Liam, moving over to his little bar set up in the corner.

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