Page 82 of Unorthodox
I pretended, for three entire days, that my life wasfine.
My father called on the fourth day.
He booked a flight to Pretoria, and I took it. The prodigal son returned home, having learned his lesson.
And I did learn. I found out what happened to Ollie before I shot my father. I got the money I was owed as his heir, and I left my childhood home a murderer and a rich boy.
I buried my mother first.
Her corpse was bloated, blood-streaked foam leaking from her mouth. Still in the bathroom where I’d left her, because there was no one left to care for us after she was gone.
I stayed in that apartment for three years, in case Ollie came back. In case he ever returned home, I wanted to be right where he last remembered me. I wanted tobe there.
I took Luca’s small jobs, hoarded away my own wealth.
Then I left.
Sometimes, in those early nightmares, I could still see my father smiling at me as I held the gun to his head. He clutched his thigh, blood pooling beneath his hands. But still, he looked me in the eye andsmiled.He didn’t say a word—never got the opportunity to, because I shot him in the head a moment after that—but I knew what he was thinking.
He was thinking I was still the same weak, spineless boy who he ordered his men to rape. I was still the same boy too scared to hit the girls he kept, so I got hit in their steed,and was still forced to hurt them afterward.
I was still the boy trying to hide my brother in the floorboards, so he didn’t get the same fate. I was still the same boy who got beat with an extension cord until the skin was flayed from my back. I was still the useless little bitch who took too long to get an erection to fuck one of his slaves.
The same boy who beat against his legs when he attacked my mother or my brother, only to get that beating directed to me. The same piece of shit who couldn’t hit Ollie to save him from my father’s fist, all for having an accident.
That’s not the worst thing that ever happened to Ollie because of me.
Not in Pretoria, and not in South Carolina.
But in that last moment of my father’s life, I was still weak.
Still spineless.
Tearing my eyes away from Dante, I find Addison, nearly far enough away now that it’s hard to track her.
She thinks I’m a monster.
I wonder if she knows, though, that that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to be.
I don’t stop running,even as my chest heaves.
Even when my lungs feel like they might collapse, and my calves ache and my body can’t quite draw in enough oxygen.
I don’t stop.
Gasping for breath, pumping my arms, I keep tearing through the forest. I’m drenched in sweat, and the trees are thinning, the sun beating down on me as I run.
But I still don’t stop.
I can see nothing up ahead. Nothing but the same fucking forest, stretching on for what feels like miles.
Dreading what I might see, I glance over my shoulder, unable to stop myself.
At first, there’s nothing, and a spark of hope flares in me. But just as I start to turn back, I see him.
Coming for me.
I turn away. Run faster.
