Page 45 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
“Not at all.”
That sounded suspicious. Since when was being late not a problem? I once had to stand in the corner for two hours because I was two minutes late. It didn’t make me want to be any more punctual, especially when it came to my father. But no snide comment or argument about it was strange. He was up to something.
“Ravi’s not here yet,” Levi blurted out.
If it wouldn’t break the silent stare down I was having with my father, I would drop my face in my palm. He could plainly see that Ravi wasn’t here.
Surprisingly, my father answered him. “Unlike you three, Ravi was here on time.”
He leaned to the side so I could see into the office. Sure enough, there sat Ravi, with a look on his face that I didn’t like.
“You could’ve said something,” Slater grumbled, causing my father to shift his stare his way.
“Waste my time and I’ll waste yours.”
Slater rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut.
After a few minutes of silence, my father turned and walked back into the office while waving for us to follow.
I assumed he meant all three of us, but when Levi and Slater stood up, he looked back at them and said, “You two can go.”
We all shared a look before I clarified, “Just them?”
“This doesn’t concern them,” was my father’s answer, meaning one thing.
“So, she’s mine or Ravi’s?”
“Yes. Why?” I felt his eyes boring into me before he turned around. “Are you still planning on defiling someone’s bride? Because I knowmy sonwouldn’t go against the Society doctrine.”
The way he said my son made me grit my teeth.
“Of course not,” I ground out while thinking about lighting his tailored Armani suit on fire.
He narrowed his glare on me, searching for signs of deception that I learned to hide from him long ago.
Consequences in my house went far beyond groundings and spankings. The missing pinky toe on my left foot was a testament to that. And what infraction did I commit? I cried when I stubbed my toe. That was the great Andrew Kratz’s way of parenting.
“That’s what I thought,” my father said, making me hate the way my eyes shone with the same dark blue hue as his.
I also hated how the cowlick in his sandy hair curled to the left like mine, or the way the muscle in our jaws tensed when we were angry, and how sometimes, when I looked in the mirror, I saw more of him than my mother. But mostly, I hated how something deep inside me craved his respect.
We stood there having a father/son stare down for a few minutes before he tore his eyes off me to look at Slater and Levi. “Why are you still here?”
Not having his instructions immediately followed annoyed my father. Having my question ignored annoyed me.
“Is she mine or Ravi’s?” I repeated.
“She’s yours, Issac.” But it wasn’t my father who spoke.
My glare snapped over to Ravi. “She’s mine?”
“Yes,” Ravi nodded.
Something about the way he casually sat there didn’t sit right with me. It was almost as if this wasn’t new information to him.
Son of a bitch.“How long have you known?”
“I talked to him last night.” My father answered. “Ravi is your second.”
