Page 22 of Deviant Illusions

My hand moves but I still stare at the navy ink. Why the fuck do I know that swirl? It’s a hollow shape, but it looks familiar. I can’t see any more of it as she rounds the desk and guides me through the building. The small talk is like static as I focus on her left wrist, waiting for the moment I’ll see more of the tattoo.

“I’ve heard many great things about you,” she says as we step into the glass elevator. That penetrates my whirring mindand I look up. “Your father is a very successful man. He’s also incredibly proud of his little princess.”

Bile burns up the back of my throat and changes the pH of my saliva at those two fucking words. I can’t escape her in this glass box, and she doesn’t look at me fully. Her eyes are fixed ahead as she presses a button. The edge of her sleeve pulls up. I definitely know that tattoo.

The cursive number three isn’t supposed to be a tattoo. It’s supposed to be cufflinks that my father would gift to his best employees when they were promoted. I’ve wrapped countless cufflinks with that emblem, and she doesn’t attempt to hide it.

For fuck’s fucking sake. I’m going into an interview with my father’s mistress. Heidi can’t be more than five years older than me. She’s not Harkin’s usual type. She’s too put together and confident in herself, so they can’t have been seeing each other long enough for him to ruin her. His lie about being proud of me is the usual expected bullshit, so I don’t react other than giving her a smile.

The elevator smoothly glides up and the shiny floors below us blur to the point I can’t make out the gray veins in the marble. A soft ping announces our arrival on the fifty-third floor, and Heidi gestures for me to walk ahead with her left hand. It feels purposeful, like she’s flashing that three in a claim when none of my father’s countless mistresses would ever graduate to a role more than a whore he uses then discards when they don’t satiate his ego anymore. If I was a kind person, I’d tell her to run and get away from him for her own sake.

Her eyes don’t leave my face and she doesn’t comment on the symbol as we walk through the corridor to a meeting room. All the previous light and airy luxury has been replaced with dark leather. Even the table is dark with a single pane of toughened black glass. It must be two fingers thick, and the leather chairs are tucked in with exactly three inches of space between the seatback and the table. Harkin’s requirements have re-entered my life. The urge to pull and push them out of their alignment is in my hands, but I stop myself as I take a seat.

She takes the seat next to me, far too close, and I’d forgotten about the need of my father’s mistresses. They don’tjustwant to fuck him. They have to attempt to befriend me like they’re interviewing for the role of my new mother. Heidi is no different as she forgoes a normal interview process to talk about the old bastard.

“Would your employment need to be a secret from Harkin, or would you be comfortable with him knowing?”

I nearly laugh at the thought of the face he’d pull when he finds out his last child has chosen working as a sex club host rather than having anything to do with him. It doesn’t match the image he tries to project. Although, his personality and marriage directly counteract the loving family businessman he’s tried so hard to portray.

“Feel free to inform him,” I say, leaning to the side when her arm brushes mine.

10

KANE

That cheating fucking bitch.

She’s dating some prick like nothing has happened. After everything I’ve done, she’s still able to move on with her life.

I haven’t seen anyone around her, and she doesn’t have any messages on her phone. Her emails reveal nothing. Unless she’s communicating with the fucker through a portal, there should be something to prove he exists. Or she really is crazy and she’s imagining the fucker.

But the idea that it’s a lie doesn’t abate my rage. It makes it more tumultuous, and I want to fucking choke her for putting the thought in my head.

That’s why I’m pacing in her bedroom—her empty fucking bedroom. It’s dark, and I stand at her window to see who Delilah’s Venus flytrap of a cunt has caught now. She told the doctor that it was someone from her past. Her time in Miami was supposed to be a break from Asher’s shit. She fucking promised me that she didn’t touch anyone else. It’s my fault for believing her—believing that someone who was cheating on my brotherwithme wouldn’t do that same fucking thingtome.

I hate that prick, the old me. The one who fell for her lies and convinced me that I was different. That she wasn’t cheating on me, but she was trying to escape Asher. He was a dick to her, controlling and conceited, but they were fairly matched. I was the one out of my depth.

Lights flash as a car pulls up outside her building. The slimy fucker gets out and opens her door, but he doesn’t fuck off. I can see his hand on her back, their heads together while they fucking laugh and talk like there’s a reality where Delilah is allowed a normal life, or any life with anyone other than me. I’m going to fucking throttle her.

11

DELILAH

Day one of having a job has been a success. Apart from the driver I’ve managed to pick up like a bad smell who doesn’t seem to fuck off. Jeremy doesn’t understand the ways of his employers, and that a laugh is condescending. Instead, he sticks to my side as we walk up the stairs.

“You weren’t expecting an immediate start, were you?” he asks, pointedly looking at my shoes.

The backs of my ankles are raw from standing in these stilts all day, but I wasn’t going to give Heidi the satisfaction of leaving. As much as it was supposed to be my interview, she ended up trying hard to audition for the role of my new stepmother.

I don’t respond to him, since I need him to leave so I can find out what my father is doing. The sex club, X, doesn’t belong to him, but Heidi has never worked for him so she shouldn’t have the emblem on her wrist. The cursive three belongs to his little boys’ club of professional ass lickers, and she wasn’t wearing the perfume he always gifts his mistresses. Old men have engrained habits that refuse to die, much like Harkin Leroux himself, the cockroach.

Jeremy is like a shadow as I enter my apartment, and he finally shuts the fuck up as he looks around my living space. There’s nothing personal in my life, so he can continue staring. I flick the lights on to give him an unobstructed view as I walk to the kitchen at the side of the open living room.

A shadow catches my eye at the side of the room. My bedroom door is ajar, but I’m certain that I can see the silhouette of a man standing beside the window. The long black outline cast on the floor could only be formed by the streetlights. I turn to hide my satisfied smile because Kane is losing. He’s hiding like a little bitch, and now he’s been caught.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Somehow, he’s morphed into Asher, and just like his brother, he has to have control of everything. That’s how he managed to play the role successfully. He knew every mannerism that his brother had and adopted them.

Turning to Jeremy, I use my sweetest voice to ask, “Would you like something to drink?”

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