Page 59 of Black Velvet

"Why not?" she presses, not realizing that what she’s really doing is forcing me to talk about my least favorite topic.

"You don't want to know."

She pouts. "Yes, Damon, I do. That's why I'm asking."

She uses her elbow to nudge me in the side. It's a tickle more than a shove, but it makes me flinch nonetheless.

"I don't have the best relationship with him," I confess. "Let's just leave it at that."

She sighs with disappointment. "I knew that much already."

I arch my eyebrows in surprise, casting her a quizzical look. She responds with a sheepish smile.

"You mentioned that you invested your trust fund in Bitcoin to piss off your parents," she explains. "No loving son would do that, if his family all got along."

Fine. She doesn't need to be a detective to figure that one out.

"My childhood wasn't exactly picture-perfect, you could say that," I admit.

I expect a sympathetic smile, even pity. But that’s not how Elene reacts. Instead of empathy, she just huffs.

"It's hard to feel sorry for a boy who grew up on a silver spoon," she says. "I mean, you told me about the private schools, nannies, a trust fund. A lot of us can only dream of such things."

"I never said I was poor," I say, agitatedly. "And I didn't ask you to feel sorry for me. There's obviously no reason for that."

"Damn straight," she says, playing off her words with a cute wink. "So, then, what was so terrible about your childhood?"

I sigh. "I didn't say it wasterrible. In a word, I guess you could say it was lacking one major thing."

She regards me with renewed curiosity.

"Parents in the full sense of the word," I answer her unspoken question. "Or parental guidance, parental love. Whatever you want to call it."

Her expression hardens as she nods along. "So, they weren't there for you."

"They paid people to be there for me," I elaborate. "And I wouldn't blame them, if that's all there was to it. They were goddamn busy building their company, especially during the first years of my life. It was the project of their life, their major centerpiece — not the child they never planned to have. But they provided all the necessities for me. It would be fair to call me ungrateful, if that was all there was to it."

"But it's not," she concludes, a questioning undertone accompanying her statement.

"It's not," I say, biting at my lip as I ponder whether I should go on. It may not be smart to tell her the truth, but the idea of sharing this grim detail of my past with someone other than Dean felt almost cathartic, like it could possibly lift a huge weight off my shoulders – from my life – one that I had tried my best to ignore for as long as I could remember.

"They were users," I finally blurt out. "Drugs, cocaine mostly. A lot of it."

"Oh, shit," she gasps, her blue eyes widening.

"Productive users, my father liked to insist on calling it," I add. "They started seeking solace in snow shortly after I was born, maybe even before that. I don't think pregnancy would have stopped my mother, if she had been into it back then. Of course, as a child I didn't know. At that young age, I just noticed that I didn't really have any parents. They were never around, and when they were, they were either drunk or high. They were either trying to push themselves to do more work or trying to force their active minds to slow down, so they could relax. They needed a hit for everything, but cocaine was really what got them into trouble in the end."

"They became addicted?"

I shake my head. “More like they got caught.” I pause and then pick up again. "Addiction isn't really the problem, but they got roped into some shit. They started accumulating large amounts of coke and storing it in our home without thinking twice about it. They got caught many, many times, but were always able to bail their way out — until they no longer could."

"They were in prison?" Elene asks, her voice a little too loud for my taste, and the expression on her face is one of shock.

"Were? They still are," I say. "And if it was up to me, they'd stay there for a very long time."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise. "That's harsh. They’re your parents."

I shrug, used to this kind of judgment. "Their attorney agrees with you. But I'm not sure I'm ready to forgive them for being so dumb, so fucking careless and stupid."

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