Page 123 of Chad's Chase

“And you do?”

I kept quiet. I thought I’d known him, but apparently I hadn’t. I hadn’t known he was a coward who would just give his life up without a fight. I hadn’t anticipated him just handing me over to someone else like an out-of-season toy. Kill me? Yeah, that wouldn’t have been a surprise. But not this shit with Sambo.

It’s me or no one. What an empty threat that had been.

“Sambo tells me you want to move to Barbados?” Org said, taking advantage of my silence to change the subject.

“The circumstances might be different from when Rafail did it,” I said, ignoring his question, “but this is still imprisonment.”

For a man who was supposed to be my father, his voice was so cold and removed, doing nothing to make me want to know him. “But I was told you two are getting along well. Is this not so?”

“I’m simply making lemonade with my lemons.”

He sighed down the line like I was some whiny brat he was annoyed with. “You know you have a choice, Jhay. You could kill Sambo and take your freedom then spend the rest of your life running from Rafail. But know this, I will cease protecting you from him. You are safe from Rafail with Sambo. Away from him, you are on your own.”

“What kind of asshole father are you?” I hoarsely said down the line, tears springing to my eyes for the first time in over a month. “You’re no better than Rafail, you callous jerk.”

Cool and untroubled, he returned, “You said you would never accept me as your father, did you not?”

I didn’t reply. That message I had Sambo deliver to him was biting me in the ass now.

“Michael Byrd is dead and powerless. I am alive and supremely powerful. But you choose to love and recognize only him. The helpless dead.” A painfully long pause. “Give me one reason to care and I will.”

Was that hurt I detected? He took my words to heart and was punishing me? What the hell had he expected me to do? Jump up and down with glee that my whole life had been a lie? That the man I’d known and cherished as my father really wasn’t? That my mother was a deceitful slutwhore? That I was a product of lies and infidelities? That I wasn’t fully American but part-Russian? That my real father was a rotten rich, omnipotent, master murderer?

Screw him. If he wanted me to live a normal life and under his command, then I would choose to be a carping brat that he’ll never, ever be able to please. Draining him dry.

“Yes, I want to live in Barbados,” I said, answering his previous question. “In the wealthiest neighborhood, and in the biggest house on the island.Father.”