Page 66 of The Villain's Beast

We just hadn’t found the time.

“What do you want?” I asked, tossing the towel in the community hamper against the wall.

My father looked so out of place in the pool, sitting on damp metal bleachers in his three thousand dollar suit and his alligator leather shoes. One day, I would tiehisarms behindhisback. Bindhisankles together sohecouldn’t kick. I would put a cloth gag inhismouth, the knot digging into the base ofhisskull, and I would shove him over the edge into the deep end. If he managed to break the surface, it would be my fingers tangled in his hair, my hand pressing him back beneath the water.

“You’re not even listening.” His annoyed drawl snapped me out of my recurring daydream, and I made a show of tipping my head to the side to shake water out of my ear.

“I’m always listening,” I said.

“How did you handle things with the offering exchange?” he asked.

“As expected.”

“I mean with Sinclair.”

I frowned, scratching an invisible itch at the corner of my mouth.

“As expected,” I repeated, even though he didn’t understand I meant in the “our fates are inevitably intertwined” kind of way, and not the “I hate him the way you hate his father” kind of way.

“Glad to hear you’re over that old dalliance of yours.”

I remembered waking up at home, screaming for my father, screaming for my mother, for Fletcher, for anyone. Screaming until my throat bled, only to wake up another morning alone and ignored.

“You ensured that years ago,” I reminded him. “That can’t possibly be why you drove all the way out here.”

“No,” he said, standing up and smoothing out the creases in the lap of his slacks.

He was older than I remembered him, shorter, less muscular. Maybe I didn’t even need rope to drown him. I could just wrap my arms and legs around his body and take him to the bottom with me. Maybe I’d kill myself in the process…

No.

Not that.

Not anymore.

“I just wanted to check in, son,” my father said, buttoning his jacket. He came to stand next to me beside the pool, and it took all my willpower to not throw him in, to not worry he was going to throwmein. “Make sure all was well. That you remember everything expected of you.”

He poked the brand in the middle of my chest, twisting his fingernail until he’d cut into the scab and drawn a trickle of blood out. It raced toward my stomach, diluted pink from the water I’d yet to wipe dry. If he expected a reaction, a grimace or a groan, he wasn’t going to get it.

Fletcher had done far worse.

“I remember.”

“The longevity of our family relies on you,” he said. “Everything I’ve built will soon be yours to carry.”

“I know.”

“And it doesn’t matter if you don’t want it.” He spit at my feet, wiping his bottom lip with the side of his thumb. I wanted to tear out his tongue. “There’s things bigger than you, bigger than me, than all of this.”

“I know,” I said again, staring down at him.

He was such a small man.

“You’re not capable of changing any of it, Gideon. I know you used to think you were, that you wished you could.”

“You made sure to take those ideas away, Father,” I told him. “When you tried to kill me.”

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I did no such thing, Gideon.”