Page 7 of Side Hustle
“Hey, Mom. May I come in?”
Yep, I had to knock on my own front door. We didn’t have the kind of family life that lent itself to unlocked doors and the casualness of just walking in unannounced. I’d moved out the day I graduated high school, thanks to a trust fund from my grandfather that had been mine on my eighteenth birthday. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t need much either. I was a simple man, much to my parents’ disappointment.
“What brings you by?” Mom waved me in and I followed her to the formal sitting room, feeling a lot like a stranger trying to get a word with the mayor.
“Well, I was hoping to speak to you and Dad about—”
A horn beeped twice out front, interrupting me.
“Oh! That’s Penelope, picking me up for the town council meeting.” Mom patted my cheek. “Can we talk later, son?”
I nodded, feeling that same sense of disappointment churning in my gut. That was the way it always was. My parents didn’t have time for me, and on the off chance they did, it was to tell me all the ways I hadn’t lived up to the Bennett name.
She beamed at me and dammit if my traitor heart didn’t lift a little at seeing that smile aimed my way. “Make sure you lock up, would you?”
I nodded again and she was off, the front door clicking behind her and the grandfather clock marking my time alone in this house. Looking around, I took in the antique tables without a speck of dust on their surfaces and the framed pictures of my parents with famous politicians on the mantle. Not one of those pictures held my smiling face. Or my more usually frowning face for that matter. According to the pictures on display, I didn’t exist. Self-loathing mixed with the disappointment and I had the cocktail I always got served when I visited my parents. Or tried to visit, rather.
Then Hazel’s excited face hit my brain and a ribbon of positive energy made me stand taller. I didn’t want to let her down. Hell, I didn’t want to let myself down. I’d done that enough to last a lifetime. I rushed down the hallway to Dad’s home office, ignoring the expensive paintings on the wall, or my bedroom they’d turned into an exercise room the day after I moved out.
The door was unlocked, which to me meant an open invitation to explore. It wasn’t really breaking and entering when your mom let you in and the doors were all unlocked, right? The heavy maple desk sat in its familiar location, the dark leather chair as imposing with my dad in it or not. A faint whiff of cigar smoke still permeated the air. I rolled my eyes. What a fucking cliché he was.
Marching over, I ripped open the bottom drawer of his desk, looking for anything that could tell me who owned that land in town. For as much as I disliked my biological donor, I had to admit he was blessedly anal with his filing system. Even the little labels on top of the file folders were typed out. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.
I pulled the folder and put it on the desk, opening it and spreading out the pages to see what I was looking at with this plot of land. My grandfather had held the title until my father took it over decades ago. Another flip of the page and a new title lay there. A title that had my name on it as the owner. Dated eight years ago.
Eight fucking years ago.
The land was mine and had been for quite some time, and my father hadn’t said a word to me about it. What an ass—
Holy shit.
I stood straight up, shock pulsing all the way to my toes. The land was mine. Thegoldwas mine.
The tip of my nose went numb and I wondered if I might pass out. Scrambling now with shaky hands, I pushed all the pages back into the file and closed it, tucking it under my arm. I turned to leave in a mad rush and bashed my shin against the open file drawer.
“Shit!” I said out loud, pain reverberating up my leg.
I leaned down to slam the drawer shut when another file folder met my eye.
Megan Lizzarro
I’d never heard of her and being raised in a small town my whole life, I would have remembered her name. Why did my father have a whole folder for her in his home office? If it was official city business, wouldn’t he have kept the folder at his office in the City Hall building?
I snatched the folder up and opened it, part of me wondering if I’d finally catch Dad in something shady that I could use as leverage against him. Unfortunately, all I saw was row upon row of dates, dollar amounts, and addresses. None of it rang a bell, but then again, why was my dad receiving money from some lady named Megan? And it wasn’t just a paltry hundred dollars here and there. We’re talking six figures in payments.
The slamming of a car door out front of the house had my head snapping up. Tingles of alarm raced up my spine and I knew my time alone in this house was up. I shoved the papers back in the folder, put it under my arm with the other folder, closed the drawer as silently as I could, and slipped out of the office. Thankfully, I knew this house like the back of my hand. I knew which floorboards to step over to avoid a loud groan and exactly where the back door was located.
The front door slammed shut and Dad’s voice echoed down the hallway, probably barking at some assistant on the phone who worked her tail off for minimum wage and daily abuse. I didn’t plan to stick around long enough to hear his latest drama. I had my hand on the doorknob of the back door when I heard him rattle off instructions.
“Book a hotel room again for M. Smith at Hill Hotel for day after tomorrow. She’ll pay for the room with cash when she checks in, like usual.”
I turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door, cringing over a tiny squeak that sounded louder than a gunshot. Sliding out the door, I paced myself closing it again, escape so close I could taste it. The second the door was closed, I turned and ran, hopping over the fence and hightailing it down the street to where I’d parked my truck. Thank God my parents had always yelled at me for parking that ugly thing in front of their house. I’d gotten used to parking down the street just to save them from the embarrassment. The file folders went under my seat where they’d stay protected until I figured out what I wanted to do with them.
My heart and lungs thundered, not comprehending the danger was gone. As I zoomed down the road, the windows rolled down to let in the fresh, salty air of Auburn Hill, I fought with unfamiliar emotions. Elation, the kind I hadn’t felt maybe in forever, mixed with the anger that always simmered below the surface when it came to matters of my father. I was still pissed at him, but now that I knew that land was mine, I also had hope. The kind of hope that made me feel like I was flying down the road on a cloud.
Even more strangely, the only person I wanted to talk to right then and there was Hazel Redding. So I did.
“Rip? Everything okay?” she said by way of answering the phone.
