Page 25

Dinner was served that evening. The cook made pot roast. I can still smell the fragrance of the meat, potatoes, and seasoning. I remember when I brushed my teeth before bed, and I had to take extra care with flossing my teeth because some of the meat was stuck between them. Just like every other night, Mother and Father came to my bed and wished me a good night, telling me they loved me. They had smiles on their faces when they left my room.
In the middle of the night, everything changed. The police were there, my father was missing, and my mother was found unconscious on the floor, her body beaten and bruised. And there was blood everywhere. No one knew who the blood belonged to, but they were guessing it was my father’s.
For a week, I stayed in the mansion with the household cook, Mrs. Myers, while my mother was in the hospital.
Then my aunt showed up, who was my only known living relative, aside from my mother.
I continue to spoon the soup to my mother until the bowl is empty. Thirty minutes later, I’m pushing her wheelchair along a row of yellow forsythias and purple dahlias. These two colors, along with blue, are the only colors allowed in the garden. The yellow and purple because they’re her favorite, and the blue because it was what I liked when I was a boy.
I park her chair just before we get to the end of the row of flowers. Pulling out a pair of cutters from my back pocket, I pluck one of the purple dahlias, then turn to Mother. I weave the stem behind her ear, the color going well with her blonde hair.
“Beautiful,” I murmur, looking into my mother’s beautiful eyes. I swipe my thumb over her cheek. She doesn’t so much as twitch an eyelid at the touch.
I went through a period of years where I hated my mother for being like this. I hated her with a passion born from a child who felt unloved and unprotected from the cruel happenings of life and unfathomable circumstances. But I am who I am today because of those circumstances. I’ve long since accepted who I became and the things I like. There’s no use denying what you are or dwelling on what you can’t change.
I wheel my mother’s chair over to a bench that faces the garden. I park it beside the concrete slab and take a seat. Her head faces forward, but her unfocused eyes don’t see the multitude of yellow, purple, or blue flowers. She doesn’t get the enjoyment she used to when we would come out here and sit for hours when I was a child.
The soft, briny breeze blows a few strands of hair in her face, and I gently brush them away, tucking them behind the flower in her ear.
I take my phone out of my pocket and pull up the program I’m looking for. I tap on the thumbnail that shows me what I want to see. It’s a live feed of Savina lying out by the pool at her friend Emersyn’s house. I have cameras set up all over the island, including her friend’s property. Anywhere Savina visits, I have eyes on her. Emersyn and their other friend, Tomas, are on either side of her, but I only focus on the brunette. She’s wearing a bright-yellow bikini that complements her tanned complexion and shows off too much of her gorgeous body. Her thick, dark hair is twisted up into a loose knot on top of her head. Sunglassesprotect her eyes from the sun, and she’s holding a bottle of water.
Every Tuesday, from one to two in the afternoon, this is what she and her friends do. Savina does it to please Emersyn because Emersyn wants to fuck the pool boy. Or rather, the pool man.
Karter Sinclair is thirty-nine years old, owns his own pool cleaning company, has never been married, has no kids, is healthy, and owns a three-bedroom, two-bath house on the north end of the island. He grills his steak medium rare, prefers baked potatoes over mashed, wears boxers instead of briefs, and has good stamina in bed, whether he’s fucking a woman or a man, in which he isn’t picky. And his blood type is AB negative.
I know all of this from the file I have on him. I have a filing cabinet full of dossiers. All of them belong to people who come in contact with my woman.
My eyes move to the man who’s occupying the lounge chair beside Savina.
Tomas Moretti is of Italian Irish descent. His grandfather is full-blooded Italian, and his grandmother is half Irish. They met when his grandmother visited Italy one summer with her family. It was insta-love, or some shit like that. They married, and five years after Dante Moretti, Tomas’ father, was born, they moved to the States.
Savina and Tomas became friends when Tomas and his father moved to the island twelve years ago after his mother died from cancer. They, including Emersyn, have been inseparable since. He’s been a good friend to her, treating her like a little sister, and is protective like a big brother.
The only reason I allow their relationship to continue, despite his affectionate nature, is because he only likes dicks. In the two years I’ve been watching Savina, I’ve never seen Tomas look at her in any way other than brotherly affection. The touches aren’t intimate—an arm around her shoulder, a hand onher arm, a ruffle of her hair. It’s the innocence in those touches that gives Tomas the freedom to keep breathing.
The same applies to Karter Sinclair. In the year that Savina and her friends have been hanging around the pool while Karter cleans it, he’s never looked at her. He doesn’t even pay any attention to Emersyn. Or Tomas, for that matter. And Savina doesn’t look at him either. It’s the only reason Karter still has a beating heart in his chest.
My eyes move back to Savina. She uncrosses her legs and pulls her knees up a few inches so her heels rest against the hinge in the chair. One arm lays on the armrest while the other holds her water bottle to her lips. When she pulls it away, she laughs at something Emersyn says, and the move makes her tits bounce a little.
My cock twitches and fills with blood, and it doesn’t even fucking matter that I’m sitting next to my mother with a rapidly filling dick. Not that I don’t care for her sensibilities, but it’s also not like she’ll notice and become embarrassed by it.
I ignore my cock and continue to watch Savina as she and her friends lounge around the pool. I press the button on the side of my phone to turn up the volume.
Emersyn gets up from her lounger and makes a show of walking to the cooler, swaying her hips. She bends over, pointing her ass in Karter’s direction and even wiggles it a little. After grabbing a bottle of water, she bounces her way back to her seat. She literally bounces so her tits jiggle. The entire scene was meant to entice, and having a direct view of her assets through the camera, my cock doesn’t take notice. Since Savina entered the picture, other women don’t exist to me.
“You know he’s not even looking, right?” Savina asks.
“So? Hecould havelooked. I’m just giving him something to look at if his eyes do wander this way.”
Savina snorts, shaking her head.
“He’s nearly old enough to be your father, Em,” Tomas remarks.
She drops her glasses down an inch so she can eye him over the top rim. Her lips curl into a lascivious grin. “I know. That’s what makes it even hotter.”
“Ew. Gross,” Savina says, wrinkling her nose.
“Oh, come on, Sav. You can’t tell me you’ve never had a crush on an older man.”