Authors: K. Ryan
"I know."
"You probably look at all those numbers and see all the mistakes I've been making..." she trails off, pausing just long enough for my silence to confirm what we both already know. "I'm not sure I'd even know what half the stuff on the spreadsheet means. God, I have no idea what I'm doing."
"It'll be okay," I whisper in her ear. "We'll figure this out. You don't have to decide anything right now. Dad will—"
"Be furious," she finishes for me.
I shake my head furiously. "It doesn't matter. You can't be scared of him, Luce."
"That's easy for you to say," she huffs and pulls herself out of my grasp.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I frown.
"Come on," she shakes her head as her eyes lift to the ceiling, but her next words sent shockwaves through the room. "You're...just so
you.
You don't care what anybody thinks. You walk around with this confidence that I just...I don't know how you do it. It's not fair."
God, if I'd been sitting, I would've fallen out of my chair.
"What?"
Lucy wipes away a stray tear with the back of her hand and squeezes her eyes shut. "You've never cared what Dad thought and you've always done your own thing. I wish I could. I wish I knew how to be like that."
"I've always done my own thing?" I shake my head incredulously. "You know I've been to rehab, right? Twice? And I've
always
cared what he thinks. You want to know what I wish? I wish I knew how to stand up to him. I wish I knew how to get him to really see me without looking right through me."
Even now, knowing what I know, emotions don't have an off switch. Undoing years of training myself to bend to his every whim is probably going to take, well, years. How Lucy could think otherwise is just mind-boggling.
Lucy pales and vehemently shakes her head as another tear escapes down her cheek. "No, I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry—I didn't mean to bring that up. I know how much you've been through. And I know how far you've come...that's what I meant. I wish I could be like you. You really have your shit together now, Rae. I wish I knew how to do that."
She says she knows what I'd been through, but I wonder how much she knows. How much she's really seen. Does she know the depths her father has gone to get ahead in this city? How embedded he is in crime, lies, intimidation...probably even murder?
And if she doesn't, how do I even begin to bring that to light?
All you had to do was tell the truth...
Maybe that should be my new mantra in life. For the love of Stefani Germanotta, tell the damn truth.
"Look," my eyes fall to the floor, but I've never felt stronger. I've never felt more like myself than I do in this moment. "He isn't a good person. He's done...really terrible, awful things that I can't even begin to tell you about. He's not someone whose opinion should matter. I know he's your—
our
dad, but he hasn't earned the right to have any say in our lives."
"What do you mean
bad things
?" she frowns and I suck in a grateful sigh that she didn't catch my slip. "What are you talking about?"
Now I have to backpedal a little.
More
than a little.
"He's never made me feel like I was part of this family. Never made me feel like anybody really cared about me. Hell, most of the time, I think he'd rather I didn't even exist at all. Do you know what he said to me the first time I went to rehab? He said he was glad I was going because then the press would finally get off his back about his 'delinquent daughter'. You know, I don't remember a single time he ever told me he loved me. When he ever even
smiled
at me. Anything you've seen, anything you think I am, I'm that way because I had to be."
Her eyes widen with each new revelation and I wish, more than anything, that we would've had this conversation sooner. Everything would've been so much easier between us if we'd just been more honest with each other.
"I'm so sorry, Rae," she whispers. "I didn't know. Here I thought you were this kick-ass, independent woman and I never really thought about how you got that way."
"It's okay."
"No," she huffs out another laugh and shakes her head. "It's really not. It's not okay at all. I mean, I knew you guys didn't get along, but I never knew it was like that. Why am I just hearing this now?"
"I don't know," I shrug. "Maybe because you're his perfect little princess who can do no wrong—and I mean that in the nicest way possible, Luce."
"I'm not his—"
"Come on," I laugh, my eyebrows lifting high into my forehead. "You know he'd let you get away with murder. You've got him wrapped around your little finger. Why else would he buy you a store you have no idea how to run?"
To her credit, she just huffs out a loud laugh, but she has to see I'm right. She has to see that for our entire lives, she's always had the advantage when it came to Valentino Moretti, even if she never knew it.
The more that comes out, the more I see what the fundamental problems were between us. She believed I just didn't care about our family. I believed she was too wrapped up in herself to notice. Between the two of us, we were both utterly and completely terrified of the mayor. And it makes sense too. She's been just as scared of disappointing him and letting him down as I was—that terror just manifested itself in each of us differently. I rebelled and she fell in line. I partied and drank until it made me forget and until I got caught too many times to be ignored. She followed the rules and played his game, loathe to do anything but toe the party line.
Lucy shoots me a smile, albeit a sad and tired one. "I guess it's always different when you're the one outside looking in, huh?"
"I guess I never thought of it that way before."
Her smile widens and I let out a yelp of surprise when she pulls me into a hug.
"Whatever you decide," I whisper. "I'm here for you."
"I know," she whispers back.
Jack
"So lemme get this straight," Brennan glances at me out of the corner of his eye before shifting sharply back to Sean, who sits stoically across from us. "You're tellin' me Pop cheated on Ma, had a kid with this other broad, and that kid is Raena Moretti."
Those words hang in the air around us, slicing through the tension despite the noise around us. At this point, I know I've made the right call. Bringing Brennan here, giving myself some back-up, it was the only way this has even a prayer of working.
"That's right," Sean tells him calmly. "Rae's our sister."
We've been through all the dirty details already, every last scrap of sordid history, and I'm pretty sure the only thing keeping Brennan from throwing a chair is the knowledge that if he actually did that, he'd never be allowed to visit Sean again.
His fists clench into tight, pale balls on top of the table and a hard line ticks down his jaw. This is the most controlled I've ever seen him when he's pissed, so I have to give him some credit for that.
When he starts shaking his head and when his cheeks flush a deep, scary shade of crimson, I ready myself to pounce before a CO can get there first.
"I just don't..." Brennan trails off, his eyes boring holes into the table. "How the hell did that happen?"
"It's not too difficult to figure out," Sean shrugs. "Pop wanted to have his cake and eat it too."
My lips pull apart in a grimace at
that
particular imagery, but I get where he's coming from.
"He had another kid, but he just walked away from her," Sean's face tightens the longer he speaks. "From
both
of them."
"So what are yah saying?" Brennan leans forward, resting both elbows menacingly on the table and I clamp a hand on his shoulder to keep him seated. "He should've left Ma? Left us?"
Sean grins, but there's no humor there, and he shakes his head. "Anything would've been better than what he did. He threw them away and went back to his normal life like nothing happened. Never owned up to it. Never took responsibility for it. What do you call that, huh, Brennan? What's that called?"
Pussy,
I think to myself.
Douchebaggery at its finest. All the things he always taught us to never be. Never walk away from family. Never back down from a fight. Always look ahead, but keep one eye behind you. What a dick.
Brennan tears his eyes away, clearly unable to handle this for much longer, and I squeeze his shoulder just for good measure.
"I know this hurts like a bitch to hear," Sean pushes on, but this time, his voice is softer, generous with sympathy. "But Pop isn't who we thought he was."
Sean's had years to process this. I haven't had quite as much time, but I've still had more time than Brennan. I know exactly how I felt when I first realized what Roark Callahan really was, but there are still things we don't know, pieces to the puzzle that haven't been discovered yet.
"To be fair," I tip my chin up at Sean, whose eyes narrow in response. "We don't really know how all that went down. You're assuming a lot of things here, Sean, but we don't know the rest of the story. How do we know he never owned up to it? How do we know he really chose to walk away?"
Sean opens his mouth to retort, but I beat him to the punch.
"We don't know," I tell him tersely. "Unless we ask him. And I don't know about you, but I don't really feel like talking to him about this anytime soon. But I think we all know there are plenty of explanations other than that he just abandoned Rae and her mom."
"Maybe he didn't think she was his kid," Brennan throws out in a desperate attempt at redeeming someone who can't be redeemed.
Sean just barks out a laugh and grins at our brother. "You've seen Rae before right?"
An image of Rae floods my mind—her shiny, auburn hair that kisses her shoulders, those wide, emerald eyes, the way her laugh seems to take over her entire body and light up the room, the way her lips curve up just enough to let you know she knew you were full of shit...
My thoughts trailed off when Sean's voice breaks through my self-inflicted haze.
"If you've ever seen a picture of Jillian Moretti, you know those two might as well be twins. But you take one good look at Rae, and you know there's no way she's Val Moretti's kid. Put her and Pop side by side and tell me different, Brennan. Tell me she's not his."
Brennan's shoulders slump and he falls back against his chair. If that was his last hope that maybe there was some other explanation for all this shit, it's long gone. The problem now is that I can't stop my mind from putting Rae and my dad face to face and shoulder to shoulder.
Her stubbornness, her fierce determination when she's set her mind to something—those are all things I can draw a line from her right to Roark Callahan. Her smile is nearly identical to his. The same as Brennan's. The same as Sean's. I'd been on the receiving end of that smile my whole life and it's amazing I didn't recognize it sooner. But her goodness, her generosity, her ability to admit when she's screwed up, her kindness...I don't know where that comes from. Maybe that's just all her.
My hands suddenly feel clammy and I rub them absentmindedly against my jeans. I swallow hard, pushing back all those comparisons I just made in my head because they're so damn uncomfortable.
There are so many things wrong with where my thoughts had been heading it's not even funny. Best not to think about that anymore.
"I just can't believe it," Brennan murmurs next to me and scrubs his face with both hands. "I just can't feckin' believe it."
"You're gonna have to," Sean leans forward on the table.
When Brennan unearths his ashen face from his hands, his eyes dart between Sean and me. "Do you think Ma knows?"
Sean and I speak at the exact same time:
"I don't know."
"Of course she does."
That stings, even though I've heard it before, so I know exactly what Brennan's feeling right now, too. I know all about denial, about refusing to accept that the man you've grown up idolizing could be capable of this kind of deception, but at the end of the day, the facts are still the facts. Brennan's just going to have to find a way to make peace with it like the rest of us.
Brennan's lips part to offer yet another denial, but Sean cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head.
"He paid for Rae's college tuition. You know that. And you also know there's no way that kind of money ever leaves the house for four years straight without Ma at least being aware of it."
There's nothing anyone else can say about that. He's right. Our mom has always watched our family's finances with eagle-eye precision and even if she doesn't do the books for the bar, she'd be very aware of such a large sum of money leaving my dad's bank account. Even if the bastard took a little at a time and tried to hide it away somewhere until he could write out a check for Rae, she'd still notice.
"Shit," Brennan exhales and squeezes his eyes shut.
Sean's gaze shifts to me and I know it's my turn to speak up.
"I think Ma and Pop have been lying to us for years," I murmur. Admitting that out loud is harder than I thought it was going to be—the words stick in my throat, heavy with truth and edged with razor blades. They burn and sear all the way down.