Page 168 of Sinful Desires
My mother sat on one of the antique sofas designed to mimic Versailles, legs crossed, judgment thick in her silence.
My father stood with his back to me, facing the towering portraits of the LeRoy dynasty. Centuries of ghosts stared down from the walls, every one of them wearing the same grey eyes I saw in the mirror.
My mother was the first to speak.
“We gave you this island because we believed you might understand what it meant. Clearly, we were mistaken. It is not a playground, Théo. It is a legacy. And you’ve dragged it through filth.”
There it fucking was. That word again.
Legacy.
My father didn’t even look at me. He turned to the window, hands folded behind his back, watching the ocean.
My mother stood, smoothing her dress like my disgrace was something she could simply press flat.
“You had diplomats’ children here, Théo. Saudi heirs. The son of the Minister of Justice. The Belgian Crown Prince’s niece. The grandson of a UN Secretary-General. The De Vallois twins. A Rothschild nephew, for God’s sake. And now there are photos of them half naked on our docks, covered in neon paint, grinding on each other like animals.”
She looked at me like I was something rotting on silk.
Not hatred. Worse.
Disappointment sharp enough to bleed.
And it gutted me, because it wasn’t the look she usually gave me. Not the quiet pride. Not the way her eyes always softened when they landed on me.
This was different. This was cold.
Her eyes were sad now. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
My father turned then, slowly. His eyes were grey, like mine, but nothing warm in them.
Only shame.
“You are aspoiled little brat,” he said, calm and lethal. “I suppose this is what we get for coddling you. For mistaking softness for strength. We gave you everything. Freedom. Comfort. Love. A name that opens doors. And you turned it into a fucking joke. All we asked was that you grasp the weight of your privilege. But even that was beneath you.”
I let out a low, dark laugh and leaned my shoulder against the wall, too drunk to pretend I gave a shit.
“Guess you should’ve tried harder, then.”
My mother flinched. My father didn’t blink.
“You gave meeverything, right? I’m just using it how I want. Don’t get all moral now.”
The words came out poisoned, slurred from too much vodka, but somewhere in my wrecked mind, I knew they were fucking right.
The truth was already burning holes in my throat.
Any other fucked-up kid raised through coldness, beatings, and shame would’ve killed to be in my place.
They’d never raised their voices. Had never once made me feel unloved.
They were everything I couldn’t be, and I ruined them anyway.
The kind of parents who stayed present when they could’ve vanished into their privilege. But they weren’t. They were the blueprint of success. Not just the empire-building, handshaking kind.
They were good people. Steady. Better than the world they ruled. And that’s what made it worse.
Because deep down, I knew I didn’t deserve them.
