Page 62 of Twisted Empire

“I’m near the Lodge. Just up the road.”

His tone was thunderous. “I’m driving up from the office in New Marwick. I’m less than ten minutes away. Stay right where you are. You hear me?”

“Yes. I’m not going anywhere.” I made my voice sound as tweaked-out and pathetic as possible. “I really need you to help me. I messed up. I’ve been using again.”

“Using what?”

“What the hell do you think? The same shit that got me in trouble last time. When I crashed my car.”

“For the love of fucking Christ,” he muttered. “You’re doing coke again?”

“Yes. Other stuff too.”

“I guess that explains this recent behavior of yours. But it doesn’t excuse it.” His voice was calm yet icily malevolent.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I said in a reedy, pitiful manner. I was actually pretty fucking good at this whole acting thing, if I said so myself.

“You’d deserve it if I did, wouldn’t you?” he snarled. “You knew the deal when you got to third, and you blew it almost right away, you ungrateful fucking bastard. Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused? Not to mention the shame you’ve brought upon our name!”

“I know I fucked up when I left, but I need you to listen. It’s different this time; I really messed things up. I did something… bad.”

He snorted. “Oh, you mean how you ran away with that little whore Tatum, ruined our hunt and stabbed Towne? Believe me, I’m well aware.”

I took a deep breath and dropped my trump card. “No. I killed her, Dad. I fucking killed her.”

There was a long pause. I knew I had him on the hook. My father could never resist the idea of having things to hold over other people’s heads, including mine. A murder was perfect. He would view it as the ultimate material to blackmail me with, forcing me to do his bidding as his puppet till the end of time.

“You killed Tatum,” he said slowly.

“Yeah. She was the reason I started using again. She was just… just so fucked up. I had to take it just to deal with her crazy shit all these months.”

He sniffed derisively. “So my son is weak as well as a traitor.”

“You don’t understand what a fucking monster she is. I mean… was. She was poisoning my mind.”

“How?”

“She kept making up all this shit, and she was so convincing. She’d tell me all these things that you supposedly said about me and other people when you went to see her. At first I thought she was full of shit, but then I actually started to believe her after a while. It was fucked up stuff. Really fucked up. It’s like she knows exactly how to worm her way right into a person’s fucking soul. She was trying to turn me against you and the society, and she almost succeeded.”

“It seems that she did succeed, given your recent actions,” he said stiffly.

“No. I woke up this morning and I finally realized what she was doing.” I paused and let out a deep, shaky breath. “All you ever wanted was a son to carry on your legacy. She convinced me you were wrong for wanting that and convinced me you’d somehow brainwashed me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a conniving little bitch she was. What’s wrong with wanting to carry on old family traditions?”

I knew I was hitting him right in his weakest spot. His relentless need to have the perfect heir to carry on his legacy was the only part of him that could be exploited. I was his only hope. The only child he’d ever have. No matter what I did, no matter how terribly I betrayed him, part of him would always cling to that.

“Please, Dad,” I said, forcing my voice to the whiniest pitch I could reach. “She got me all kinds of fucked up. But I stopped her. I did it for you.”

“She’s really dead?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it. When I confronted her this morning, she started screaming at me. I shoved her against a wall and she fell and started bleeding. She was screaming about the baby. Something about losing it. I was so sick of hearing all her shit, so I shoved her again and she hit her head. Then while she was down I started choking her. I was just so fucking angry. So sick of her lies. And then she stopped moving. I dunno if it was because she hit her head so hard or because I choked her, but she hasn’t moved in hours and there’s blood everywhere. I can’t feel a pulse, either.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he replied, not even acknowledging the fact that his son had just described the murder of a supposedly pregnant woman to him. “I’m sending the gate guards down the road to make sure you don’t move. Got it?”

“Yes.”

He abruptly hung up. I waited a few minutes, my pulse quickening as my father’s sleek black car pulled up along with two guards from the gate.

“Elias,” he said, approaching me with a grim look on his face. There were bags under his eyes and lines in his forehead that hadn’t been there before. “You might be weak in some ways, but I have to say, you’ve still got some fucking balls on you for showing up here after what you did.”

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