Page 59 of Embrace
Chapter Sixteen
Asher Christmas
Two Hours Ago
Isat at the table with Jasper and Bryn. We were in the den at the back of the house, sitting beneath a coffered ceiling. Nourished trees surrounded the large circular windows. The only reason I noticed those details was because Bryn mentioned how pleasant the room felt for once.
We’d just finished eating grilled salmon with roasted carrots, tomatoes, and baked rosemary new potatoes for lunch. Bart, the family chef, who had been with us since I was a kid, had prepared our meal. I’d forgotten how tasty his food was.
While eating, we mainly talked about Bryn’s plan to work with Spencer and his wife, Jada, in their efforts to fundraise for the Spencer and Jada Christmas Indemnity Fund. Spencer planned to use family investment funds to pay those who had been abused by our father or were close relatives of the abused. However, they had expanded the mission of their non-profit organization to include those who were not associated with Randolph but had also become victims of the sex trade, and their families. And it was for that reason they had chosen to procure outside financial resources and volunteer services as a means of support.
Jasper listened as I updated him on my morning meetings and how fast we were moving to advance the facility, recruit new physicians and nurses, and improve patient services. We discussed administrative hires, including Si staying on as chief of surgery. I presented some options to Jasper, and he listened attentively, asking the right questions regarding their backgrounds and experiences.
The servers had finished collecting our plates, and we were drinking coffee for dessert when Jasper asked the one question I’d known would eventually find its way to my ears.
“I’m not particularly interested in hospital administration,” I replied in response to taking the position as CEO of the hospital. I was a surgeon, not a paper pusher. “Although I want to know everything that’s going on.”
“That’s fair,” Jasper said.
Then we tossed names across the table. I wasn’t shocked that he knew who the major players were in the medical institution industry. When Jasper entered an industry, he made a point to know everything about it.
I knew the pleasantries were over after we fell silent and Jasper’s stern gaze shifted between Bryn and me. The time had come to discuss why we were meeting at the mansion and not at one of the best restaurants in the city.
“About Julia’s threat,” he said, then laced his fingers together in front of him. As I recalled, that was a good sign. It meant he wasn’t speaking from a position of vulnerability.
Bryn drew up her mouth as if she were smelling something bad. “She’s awful.”
I waited for her to add more, like calling Julia a cunt or a bitch and saying she should burn in hell. But that was it. “She’s awful” was as far as the new Bryn was willing to take an insult, and it was a true statement.
“We don’t need to rehash what occurred back then—the Redmond College ordeal,” Jasper said.
Bryn and I looked at each other. We were at the start of discussing one of the biggest mistakes of our lives. I had been a chemistry student. Even though Bryn and I were born on the same day, I was starting my junior year at university when she was a freshman. I was young and also pissed off at everything that had breath and a brain. My anger made me make bad, wrong decisions. It was the only way to quell my heat. I manufactured a recreational drug.
Before she went off to college for the first time, Bryn and I gave my invention a try. If we died, then so fucking what—we would finally be free of the Christmas mansion and our father’s control. I was halfway hoping Xynalycophene Yellow, which we called HOE, short for Heaven on Earth, would kill me, but it didn’t. Bryn and I enjoyed the high of our lives. When she went off to Redmond College, she asked if I could make more HOEs, and she would sell them.
We were in the backyard, smoking by the oak tree across from the guest lodge. The lodge was where we got high, brought our fuck buddies, and sometimes partied.
Inhaling on the cig,I look at her with one eye narrowed, barely believing she asked me that shit. “You want me to be a drug dealer?”
She slaps herself on the chest. “I’m the dealer. You’re my manufacturer and supplier. I’ll give you a cut.”
“I don’t want a cut.”
Then she pushes me in the shoulder, and I fall off balance but quickly recover.
“Come on, fucking Ash,” she explodes then displays one of my pills between her fingers. “Either you stock me with this shit, or I’ll find someone to tell me what’s in it, and I’ll make my own.”
That was how it happened.I remembered my deliberation process because I’d relived that moment over a thousand times. First, I wasn’t used to saying no to Bryn. So I used the excuse of not wanting anyone to learn what was in my formula to give her what she wanted.
Whenever I thought back to that day, I saw myself telling her to go fuck off. But I didn’t do that, and she’d dealt what I made. Then she met a guy who talked her into fucking with my recipe. I didn’t know what she’d done until the second user overdosed.
It was the fuckup of our lives. I could’ve gone to jail for a long time, and so could she. But Jasper, who had only been in his early twenties, made it all go away. And I never asked how he’d done it, simply because I took him for granted. Fixing our father’s shit and ours was my older brother’s responsibility.
When I looked back on Jasper’s role in our family, I saw the abuse and the burden. Being a neurosurgeon had taught me a lot about the brain—without it, we were not ourselves. Our father molded his older son into his greatest asset, but not out of love. Jasper was supposed to be his tool and ultimately his weapon. It never happened the way Randolph planned, though—not exactly. Jasper had never been our father’s ally. He was always the fox in the henhouse. I never knew why Jasper so often operated against our father until I readThe Dark Christmases, which was a book about our family, written by Jasper’s wife.
Jasper’s laser focus was set on me. “When you told me about Julia’s threat, I did some rechecking. I always wondered about Brian Moore.” He looked at Bryn when he said that name.
Her jaw dropped, and she swallowed.
