“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is he going to be OK?”
“Would you like to sit down, Miss McCutcheon?” Doctor Washington asked.
“No, I’m fine standing. Just tell us what’s going on.”
The doctor studied first me and then my sister. “I’m afraid it’s not good news. Your father’s cancer has spread to his liver, and the prognosis is—”
“Prognosis? Stop with the science talk.” Kara interrupted, sitting forward, her fingers biting into the arms of the chair. “Just give it to us straight. When we can take him home?”
“I’m afraid he can’t go home. He has Stage 5 cancer. I’m so sorry,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “He’ll need to stay here.”
“I don’t understand,” Kara said. “What… what does that mean?”
I cleared my throat, but the lump wouldn’t budge. “How long?” I asked. “Until… how long?” Tears stung my eyes.
“A few weeks, maybe a month,” Doctor Washington said, those kind eyes boring into me. “I’m sorry, Miss McCutcheon.”
“Isn’t there something you can do? Anything?”
“We can make him comfortable,” the doctor said.
My world collapsed inward. I stumbled and sat down, heavily, barely making it into a chair. Kara’s sobbing buzzed like white noise in the background. My hands came up and covered my eyes, blotting out the ugliness of the room. But not the reality of what this meant.
I’d failed him.
31
Damien
My asshole of a father had made me wait thirty minutes before he’d “come out of his meeting” to talk to me. Given, he’d actually had a meeting this time with a pit bull of a man, who gave me the stink eye on his way to the elevator. He looked like a two-bit mafioso, but I didn’t give a fuck what that was about today.
Inside Mortimer’s office with the door shut, the euphemistic massive table with my father seated behind it—well, that was my version of fresh hell.
I stood behind the “visitor’s chair,” otherwise known as the prime spot for inquisition, my hands resting on the worn leather. “You summoned, crypt lord?”
My father smiled.
Alarm bells went off in my mind. Mortimer never had time for my shitty jokes. He was rarely happy about anything, unless it was a power move in business or another successful humiliation of one of his enemies.
“You,” Mortimer said, pointing a finger at me. “I knew you would let me down.”
“Huh?”
“I wanted to believe that you’d step up to the plate and do what a grateful son would do, but you couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Mortimer’s smirk grew broader.
“Did you take a holiday to the Swiss Alps, tumble off a cliff and hit your head?”
“I know everything.”
I leaned my forearms on the back of the chair. “Good for you. I assume you’re working on an environmentally-friendly source of renewable energy, then?”
Mortimer didn’t rise to the joke. He opened one of the drawers in his forever-desk and extracted a phone. He tapped on the screen, still grinning like he’d just won a vacation to a porn star retreat, then sat back.
“—not calling the deal off.” My voice from the phone’s speaker. “You need the money.”
“Aren’t you such a sweetheart?” And that was Hazel speaking.
“You need me. You need the money. So, don’t fake that you’re going to do anything other than—”
“Don’t fake?” A pause. “That’s just the thing. I’m tired of being fake.”
“Meaning what?”
“I need to get my father out of your house.”
“Hazel. No.”
“Don’t tell me no. It’s my choice where my father goes and what I do. It’s not up to you.”
“You signed a contract.”
My father hit the screen to pause the recording, and if I’d thought he’d been happy before, he was a pig in shit now. “Oh, Damien,” he sighed. “Did you really think you could fool me? Everyone has a price. You do, your mother did, your brothers do, and Hazel… oh, her price was higher than most, but she gave me what I wanted eventually.”
Not Hazel. She wouldn’t…
But it explained so much. Why she had removed the engagement ring, why we’d had the conversation that night, why she’d caved again and stuck around. All part of my father’s sick little game to catch me out.
“You see, I mean it when I say that I really did want you to be the next CEO of Woods Enterprises. I wanted to believe that you and this McCutcheon girl were the real deal, but… I can’t trust you. I had to check for myself.”
“How?” It squeezed between my teeth.
“Simple. I saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. Hazel seemed unhappy with you on the night of the event, so I drew her to the side and presented her with an option. She could tell me the truth about what was going on between you two, and I’d pay for her father’s hospital bills,” Mortimer said, easily. “And she graciously accepted. Of course, she continued playing the fiancée with you, likely hoping she could make a quick buck. Is it true you fixed up her father’s house after the fire that took place there?”
I kept my mouth shut.
Anger pulsed through me.
She wouldn’t do that.
“Hazel was more than happy to oblige. After all, she’s still furious at you for what transpired years ago,” Mortimer laughed. “And she needs the money for her budding career in pornography.”
I stiffened. “What the fuck are you—?”
Mortimer removed a folder from another drawer. He threw a picture across the table. It skidded toward me, and I picked it up. A still frame of Hazel in the middle of a salacious act with another man. The timestamp was dated to a couple weeks ago.
My stomach turned. It took all my willpower not to tear up the picture.
“You didn’t really think she was genuinely interested in you, did you?” Mortimer asked, sick joy twisting his features. “If only she had been, then
