Page 39 of Clean Slade
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Apologize. Tell me you’ve been busy. At the very least, say you missed me.”
“You and I both know lying makes us sick.”
“And yet here you are, living a fake life under a fake name.”
“That’s different.”
He raised his hand and clicked his fingers, and one of his goons brought him a chair. He sat with the same air of authority he’d always had.
All that was missing was his cigar—
Ugh, spoke too soon. Another man stepped forward and lit one for him.
“Isn’t that cozy,” I said, fighting to not cough from the pungent smoke.
My father didn’t answer. He watched me and smoked as if waiting for answers I would never give.
“If you wouldn’t mind getting to the point, I’ve got places to be.”
“Yes. I know all about the places you need to be, but first, we need to talk,” he said.
“I’m all ears.”
He contemplated me for a second, took a big puff, and built up the smoke around him as if he was doing it on purpose to add more intrigue and suspense.
“You left.”
“I think that much is obvious.”
I shouldn’t antagonize him. I knew that. I had better chances of making it out of here alive—however slim—if I didn’t.
“Why did you leave?”
I looked up at the ceiling, spotting several spiderwebs, and tried to hide the shivers that ran down my spine.
“If you’re going to act like you’re stupid, you may as well go ahead and shoot me now because I can’t deal with that torture.”
My father jumped out of his chair, drawing a gun and pressing the barrel to my forehead.
This is it. This is how it all ends, isn’t it? I failed. I failed my daughter and myself.
“Why did you turn your back on the family?” he shouted.
“I thought you weren’t going to play stupid anymore.”
“You’re right. So the minute I showed you who your girlfriend really was, you ran, huh? Is that how I raised you? Is that how you treat me after everything I’ve done for you?”
“You killed my best friend! What did you expect me to do?”
“She was poison!”
“She was my daughter’s mother!”
“She was a perv, just like you. And she was a traitor. And she made you one too. I just never expected you’d be a coward.”
Images of Annie’s dead body—her empty glassy eyes, her skin cold to the touch, the blood soaking in her hair—flashed before my eyes.
Images I’d tried so hard to bury, forget, drown. I may have done and seen some terrible things in my life, but that was the one thing that still haunted me to this day.
