Page 46 of Bittersweet Legacy

Once I helped him into the bed and covered him up, I ran my hand through his hair. “I’ll get you a bottle of water and some meds. There is a bucket on the floor if you need to vomit.”

He looked at me with blurry eyes. “You’re angel, Esmerima.”

I chuckled at the weird name. “Hardly.”

He nodded, running a shaky hand on his face. “This’s why she chose you. This’s why she saved you and left me.”

I frowned at his rambling. “Who? Mom? She died in a car accident going to a gala, Archie, she didn’t pick me.”

He had a humorless laugh. “She wasn’t going to a gala.” He shook his head, closing his eyes as the drunken stupor was starting to take him under. “He was ashamed, he lied. She was leaving him, leaving me.” He sighed. “She knew I was rotten, full of shadows. She picked you, the princess… she didn’t love me enough to save me,” he slurred.

I was stunned in shock, first at the potential revelation behind my mother’s death. I didn’t put it past my father to have lied to me about it. That man had an ego the size of a house and I didn’t need to know him well to figure that he was the type of person to bend the truth to meet his needs.

I looked at my brother’s sleeping form and I grieved for him in a whole different way – starting to see now why he was that broken, distant boy. Some wounds never healed, and I highly suspected that abandonment was one of them. In his head he was an abandoned child, something he was not going to forget, something I hoped I could fix with my mother’s journal. She wouldn’t have just walked away from one who she called her ‘beautiful boy’.

There had to be a reason which I hope I could find in the journal and help him reconstruct himself before it was too late.

Chapter 11

I woke up on Saturday with a banging headache, which was always the case when I was running on little sleep. With taking care of Archie, cleaning his mess and lying in bed with images of Caleb getting sucked off by that bimbo and my brother’s revelation about my mother playing in my head, I probably slept less than three hours before the maid woke me up saying that my father was expecting me in his office in 15 minutes.

It was good, maybe Archie told him about Caleb’s unfaithfulness, maybe he wanted to free me.

When I made it to the office, my father was sitting behind his desk, his hands flat on the rich mahogany desk, anger and disapproval radiating from him. I had to do my best not to roll my eyes, would that man ever approve of me? Actually, I would much rather he didn’t because if he ever started to approve of me It would mean I was becoming a person I never wanted to become.

Archie was sitting on the leather sofa, showered and perfectly dressed, looking fresh as a daisy. How could he pull that one seeing how trashed he was last night?

He met my eyes quickly, before looking away.

“I’ve been made aware that you drove my car yesterday,” my father announced, redirecting my interest toward him.

I quickly glanced to Archie. What the hell had he told my father?

“Yes…” I trailed off.

He nodded standing from his seat and ambled toward me.

“Why didn’t you ask for permission to take the car, Esmeralda?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Did Archie tell him I took the car? I glanced at Archie again who was doing his best to ignore me. I’d thought last night had helped us build a relationship, and now he was throwing me under the bus once more. There was no point hoping now, there was nothing to salvage between us.

“I didn’t think it’d be such a big deal. I’m sorry, father.” Oh, did I hate every word coming out of my mouth. I felt dirty, like I was selling myself.

He nodded, closing the gap between us. “The car you borrowed and damaged is a Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale.”

I remained silent, unsure where he was going with that.

“This car, Esmeralda, cost me over $26 million.”

I choked on my saliva. Who the fuck would spend that on a car?

He nodded again as realization hit me, I was not getting out of this room unscathed.

“What do you have to say for your defence?”

What could I say? Blame Archie? I couldn’t help but feel guilty for the abandonment he felt because, for some mysterious reason, my mother intended to leave him behind, or was it even the truth? I expected my father to be the kind of man to lie to a little boy to break his spirit.

“I didn’t know I was not allowed to borrow one of your cars.”

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