Page 28 of Jayson
The fight ignites before the elevator even seals us inside the penthouse.
My father’s voice—booming, venom-laced—shatters the hush of his glass-walled throne like a sniper round. It ricochets off polished floorboards, off the gold-framed newspaper clippings that canonize him, off the dusty portrait of a woman and a little girl who don’t smile anymore.
“You think I don’t notice?” he thunders, his glass trembling in his hand. “You think I don’t feel it—your guilt—every time I look at you?”
I stand still. Silent. Because with men like him, the truth is useless. Grief demands a target, and he chose me years ago.
The accident.
The shattered SUV on the side of the highway. The flashing lights. The blood.
My mother died instantly.
My little sister lasted just long enough to whisper my name before the medics dragged me from the wreckage.
We were hit by a drunk driver. Broad daylight. No warning. No chance to swerve.
And yet?—
“You were at the wheel,” he spits, pacing the floor like a lion with a thorn in its paw. “You were supposed to protect them.”
“I was seventeen,” I murmur. The words feel brittle in my mouth. “I tried?—”
“You failed.”
He spins, eyes locked on me like crosshairs. “You walked away. They didn’t. That’s all I see when I look at you. Two bodies, and the son who survived.”
I bite down on the scream in my throat. I remember my mother’s voice—soft, warm, full of songs. I remember Lila’s laugh. Her pink sneakers. Her hands clutching mine as we sang along to the radio.
I remember the sound. The crunch of impact. Her whisper. My failure.
And I remember the way he looked at me at the funeral, like I was a loaded gun that had gone off in his face.
“I didn’t kill them,” I say.
“No?” he snarls, stepping in close. “Then why are they in the ground and you’re still breathing?”
Because I wore a seatbelt.Because the world is unfair.Because sometimes death has a sense of humor so cruel, it leaves the guilty alive just to see what they’ll become.
He grabs the front of my shirt, dragging me close.
“I built a dynasty for you,” he growls, eyes glassy with grief. “Icarved this empire with my own two hands—and you repay me with coffins.”
My voice cracks, but I force it out. “You lost a wife and a daughter. I lost them too. I lost a mother and a sister.”
“No. You took them from me.”
Something inside me snaps. I inhale, taste smoke that isn’t in the room. Flashbulbs of memory slam behind my eyes—screeching tires, my sister’s scream, my mother’s blood on my hands while the SUV burned in the ditch. A guardrail that gave way, the smell of smoke in my nostrils. But monsters rewrite history to keep their crowns.
“I begged Mom to drive,” I say. “I tried. But you don't want the truth. You want someone to punish.”
He shoves me back. Rage burns off him like a second skin.
“You’ll never be a man. You’re just a walking scar.”
I straighten. My heart’s a riot, but my spine stays locked.
“I’m a scar you gave yourself,” I whisper.
