Page 17 of Crazy Rich Monsters (Necessary Evils 1)

I have it.

They don’t.

ChapterTen

NICK

Blood is supposed to be thicker than water, but right now the notion of family seems more like a swamp. I wonder how many people have ever drowned in a swamp, but I reckon I won’t be one of them. Addison and I have one thing in common and that’s running. She runs from her sins, and I run away from the sins of my family, but somehow always find myself being pulled back in as if I’m always hovering on the edge of a black hole.

Mama used to tell me that I inherited the gift of lying from my father. Even from a young age, I knew better. The innate ability I possess to string together lies was woven into the fabric of who I am by the environment I grew up in. A household filled with liars, lying to each other, lying to the neighbors, lying to family and most dastardly, lying to themselves.

Mom lies. She denies she’s complicit in the worst of my father’s sins. She looks the other way when there’s enough evidence for even the most naive person to know that her husband is having multiple affairs. Ignorant bliss is a form of lying too, in that it’s a form of lying to oneself. She lies about being a hands-on mother. She once stood in front of a crowd of a hundred donors at a charity event talking about how she’d take a bullet for any of her three kids. She’s as cold as ice, a queen fortified in a veil dark enough to never show emotion, and anybody can see that she’d throw any single living person in this world in front of a bus to save her own ass. Including her own children.

Dad lies. He’ll claim he’s faithful until the day he dies, even with the evidence suggesting otherwise. Late nights and expensive lunches, always out of town for business that could be handled over the phone. He’s never been happy at home. The biggest lie of all though is that he continues to pretend as if the only thing worth aspiring to in this world is money because that’s what separates the winners from the losers.

Emily lies. She says she’s clean, but I can see the ghastly shadows of addiction in her eyes, lulling her into a soon-to-be-permanent state of walking the world as a ghost. She runs around the town she grew up in, a hollow shadow of her former self. On a visceral level rooted in teenage angst, I understand why she runs away from the family name, but to pretend she’s financially stable and better off on her own is bullshit. She’s lying and everyone knows it, everyone but herself.

Carter was a liar too. Sometimes, I think he was worse than the rest of us. I remember the first time I caught him lying to me like most older siblings remember when their younger siblings first learned to ride a bike. I watched him from the terrace of Calloway Manor as he trotted along the beach shore down below. Like any other kid, he had a fondness for chasing the seagulls along the sunny stretches of shore. But somehow, he finally got his hands on one. Swear to God, my heart dropped in my chest. Seagulls aren’t a species to be fucked with. I’m pretty sure they can maim and mangle anyone in a flock. Carter smiled while the creature attempted to wrestle free of his grip, and that smile continued to persist even as he broke the bird’s neck. I watched as he buried the seagull in the sand and then returned home, cleaning the sand from his hands against his blue shorts. When confronted about what I witnessed, he looked me straight in the eyes and promised me he’d never do such a thing. If a seven-year-old kid can gaslight you, it’s safe to say he’ll grow up to be a professional liar.

Carter never got the chance to grow up, and the person that took that away from him walks freely amongst the streets. And now, his older brother is fucking obsessed with and fucking that same woman.

It’s perverted.

I guess that makes me a liar too, lying to myself, lying to Addison, and lying to everyone around me. That means Addison and I have one more thing in common and that fucking pains me to admit. For as much as I love thrusting my dick inside her, I still can’t bring myself to see her beyond anything other than a toy I like to play with. That’s what I tell myself, but there’s something else there and it fucking makes me sick.

Not as sick as secrets though.

The rest of the Calloway family is known for staged theatrics. They love putting on a show, but it’s always on their own terms with every move calculated to the most extreme integer. One of the biggest drawbacks to living within the social elite is that everything is up for public consumption, and nothing is allowed to remain secret. If you think my mother’s closet is filled to the brim with designer purses, then I’d love to see the look on everyone’s faces when they discover the skeletons hidden behind the name tags.

My parents are not fond of surprises. That fear is driven by the power of control. If they’re in control of a situation, if they know what’s happening and what’s to come, then they can never lose. The only way to win a game of chess with them is to take them by surprise. That’s why I hate them so much.

I suppose I inherited my own hatred of surprises from them. Addison and Emily ripped the proverbial rug from under my feet and now I’m left reeling, my mind muddled in half-truths and half-spoken secrets. That’s nothing compared to the feeling of being embarrassed by my arch nemesis.

I’m going to get to the bottom of what was said and I’m going to do that by interrupting a very important and very planned lunch my mother is currently having with her friends. And by friends, I mean the people she absolutely fucking cannot stand. The nosey neighbors and prominent townsfolk elected to city council by virtue of their last names. The last thing she’s expecting is for her problem child of a son to show up unannounced. I can’t wait to see the look on her face because it’ll tell me very fast whether she’s telling the truth.

Nobody drives their own cars to functions at the Manor. They are driven by private drivers, dropped off, and picked up exactly on the dot. Tardiness is not something my mother tolerates, and I’ve seen her turn people away for running five minutes behind. The large driveway that makes a u-shaped loop from the front gate to the front of the house is almost empty. The only car is my own, parked right in front of the front doors.

As I said before, my family is known for the dramatics of theatrics, so I make sure to push both of the front doors open wide as if I’m a tomb raider parting the doors to an ancient cathedral. The doors are tall and heavy, but they’re almost eerily quiet as they swing open. I pass over the familiar checkered floorboard that’s adorned by the stairs on either side and make my way forward towards the back of the house where floor-to-ceiling windows offer a picturesque view of the garden and patio.

There’s a pool that stretches the length of the tiled patio, with a two-story pool house situated to the left of it. To the right, there’s a terrace made of wooden lattice that’s wrapped with carefully manicured vines. Manufactured laughter echoes from the terrace. I approach slowly, hands in the pockets of my jeans. I’m completely underdressed for a Sunday morning at the manor, wearing denim, a tee-shirt, and sneakers. The dress code for any day of the week is something a little more formal.

Nobody likes keeping up with appearances more than my mother.

When I come to the backside of the terrace, my body obfuscated by the vined lattice, I take a peek around the corner. As expected, the devil herself is seated at the head of the table while her cronies are gathered around her, pretending to pick away at the modest salads before them. They’ve barely touched the first course of their meal and half of them look like they’re dead in the eyes.

I would be too.

As dead as they may seem, they still laugh when Mother makes a joke. She’s the least funny person I know. Anyone laughing as she speaks is doing so out of fear of being shunned. The upper echelons of society are climbed by deferring to those above you. If anyone wants to make it in the Hamptons, then they must kiss the passe ass of my parents.

My mother’s lips curl, the beginning of a cracked smile, as if she knows she’s about to make another terrible joke, but her lips flatten when she seems to spot me out of the corner of her eye. She’s quick on her feet though, feigning a smile as to not alert her guests that something is amiss.

“I’m afraid I must step away for a brief moment,” she says deadpan as she customarily dabs at the corner of her mouth with a washable napkin that’ll promptly be discarded in the trash. She scoots her chair back–her throne–and rises to her feet, passing by the five worshipers seated on the left side of the table. Without batting a muscle in her eyes, she grabs me by the arm and pulls me to the side and down the length of the pool. Her heels click against the hard surface beneath us, and I notice that the farther we walk, the more intense the sounds.

It’s almost as if she knows I came home to stir up some shit. She’s not wrong, but it’s kind of scary the way she seems to possess a sixth sense for trouble. She’s a master of deflection and shifting blame, which is why I needed to catch her off guard. It doesn’t appear that I have the upper hand. Somehow she innately knows something’s amiss.

She rips open the front door of the pool house and waits for me to join her inside before she promptly closes the door behind me. I wonder if she knows how many women I’ve fucked on these couches after a night of partying. Not that it matters. I’m pretty sure the only time she ventures to this part of the estate is when she intends to have a private moment with someone away from prying eyes. She’s never much liked the water anyways, whether that be the pool or the ocean. Makes me question why she never moved away from the sea. She seems like she’s much more the Manhattan type anyways.

She clears her throat loudly, snapping me out of my thoughts. “You know I don’t like when you show up unannounced.”

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