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"Oh."
"Exactly. Oh."
"So, what happened to him?"
Atticus pressed his lips together. "He died in the house at Montauk."
"What? How?"
"Yeah, it was pretty gruesome.” He winced. “Somebody bashed his head in."
My stomach went into freefall. "Oh, for fuck's sake."
"The best I can figure out is that he and my mother met out there. Her health and mental state was deteriorating, and I think he suspected my father was behind it in some way."
"I'm really sorry, but I hate your father."
"The feeling is mutual. But every piece of evidence we have says that Dad was in the city that night, not on Montauk. Mom and Brian were the only ones out there."
"Are you sure?"
"The best we can tell, yes. We've had Pierce on it. Gavin. Micah. Micah is a decent hacker in his own right. We’ve checked everything from phones, car GPS, and security cameras. Everything points to Dad being in the city."
"Jesus."
"I know."
"But your mother couldn't…" My voice trailed. I didn’t know her well, but I knew this about her. She couldn’t hurt someone like that.
"Oh, under normal circumstances, I agree. But you have seen what she's like when she's having a bad day. One time, she took one of the fireplace pokers and came at me with it."
"Oh, Jesus, Atticus."
"She was convinced I was my father and that I had to die."
What was left of my heart broke into pieces. "Oh shit, I'm so sorry."
He shrugged. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, she is fantastic. The sheer act of getting her out from under his thumb improved her health immensely."
"I know. I mean, is it the island air that's making her feel better?"
"I would love to believe it was that simple. But something tells me it's not."
"Do you have evidence he was doing something to her?"
He shook his head. "Nothing concrete. And believe me, we've been looking for years. He cleaned everything up. Even her initial doctor's reports when she first started getting sick are gone. There was a mysterious fire at the doctor's office."
"There were no digital records?"
"The fire destroyed the server at the doctor's office as well, and we can’t find a trace of him anywhere either."
"Fucking hell."
"When we couldn't hide my mother's condition anymore and it was clear how ill she really was, she had to be hospitalized. My father thought that he would take over her voting shares because he was her husband and he had power of attorney. But he didn’t realize that my grandfather had a little clause to account for that, which his lawyer quickly informed us of. If she died or became incapacitated, I got her voting shares. Which made me more powerful than him."
"Oh, okay. I see now." I knew there had to be a reason his father hated him so much. It was almost a relief to find out it was pure old-fashioned greed. Atticus was his son. He looked just like him. How could he hate him so much?
How can your father hate you?
