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“Ha! Don’t flatter yourself kid. I don’t need you to do anything.”
“Well then why do you want me to handle it?” Especially as he was always at such pains to tell me how stupid I was. “Can’t you keep trying? Get the PI to dig some dirt, then blackmail her right back?”
“Nope. If she really has something—which she doesn’t—or even if it doesn’t, but the press get ahold of it, if it becomes public knowledge that I’ve taken action to quash it, it will blow up like a cheap firework. I need to be clean. What we’ve done so far was risky enough, but it was a calculated risk, as we figured she’d take the cash and disappear back into the hole she came from. Obviously that didn’t work out the way we anticipated, so it’s time to change up the tactics completely.”
“You can’t just up the offer?”
“The fact that she didn’t take the first one, or even try to negotiate, shows that money isn’t her main motivation. If it was, she would have cut and run by now. I don’t know what her angle is, but there’s a bigger play here, or at least she thinks there is. I want to quash it before it gets out of hand. That’s where you come in.”
“I still don’t see what I can do that hasn’t already been done.”
“Of course you don’t. Because your stupidity is boundless. Jesus, if you didn’t look so much like me—” It was true, apart from my steel-gray eyes, which were the mirror image of my mother’s, I was his carbon copy. A fact I hated. “—I’d honestly wonder if you were even my kid. I’ll spell this out as slowly and simply as I can for you. She’s about your age. You do the fucking math.”
“So you want me to deal with her because we’re both young, and maybe I can work some kind of magic?” He was officially insane.
“Finally the dots connect in your dense brain. Ordinarily I wouldn’t think anything of the kind, and I definitely wouldn’t send a boy to do a man’s work, but this is the only option, so that’s exactly what I’m saying. Fuck her. Scare her. Make her fall in love with you. Destroy her reputation in whatever way you can so that she’s no longer a credible witness. All of the above. I mean it. Whatever. You. Have. To. Do. And I mean anything.”
“But I’m connected to you, so if I’m found to have done anything to her, you’ll be implicated.”
“Except I’d issue a sworn affidavit making it clear that you acted alone, and without my knowledge, probably due to the mental health struggles you’ve been facing as result of the pressure of your studies, blah, blah, blah…With your mother’s history, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe that you’d suffered a similar fate.” Of course. He was going to throw me under the bus by going on record to tell the world I was having a breakdown. I wasn’t even surprised. Nothing he did shocked me these days.
“And what if I refuse?” As I had every intention of doing.
“I figured you would, because you’re a bleeding-heart pussy like that. And of course, that’s your right. It’s a free country, after all.”
There had to be a catch. I said nothing, and waited for the other shoe to drop. My father slid another file across the counter to me. There was a catch. I knew it. I opened it slowly.
“It’s also my right to cut your mother off totally. She signed a prenup, remember? The conditions of which mean that unless things go my way, her little ‘holidays’ at the ‘resort’ would be a thing of the past, so would the apartment, and the freedom to live her life away from me, except at public engagements.”
I shuddered internally. A life shackled to the ogre that was my father was what had caused her to need respite at the ‘resort’ in the first place. Being trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience with the most mean-spirited and conscienceless person I’d ever met would take a toll on even the strongest of people, and my mother was hardly that.
I refrained from clenching my fists, though I wanted to. I knew from bitter experience that my father wouldn’t take well to an act of hostility, no matter how minor.
“And what about your beloved ‘Grampsie’?” His voice brought my mind back into the room. He was referring to my maternal grandfather.
“What about him?” I leveled him with an icy glare.
“How long do you think he’d survive without my patronage, at his advanced age? Months? Days? The care he requires doesn’t come cheap, nor do his whisky and golfing habits. Given that I currently foot the bill for all of that, as well as for your mother, you’d do well to mind your manners and do what the fuck I tell you.”
I reached out for the first folder again, bringing it closer to my face, and squinting. “You said Kristina. This is a dude.”
“You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but look again. Despite resembling a teenage boy from some angles, Kristina ‘Kik’ Sanchez, is in fact, all woman.” I flicked through more photos, most of which seemed to be of “Kik” leaving or entering the same building. Though it looked vaguely familiar, I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before, and due to the poor quality of the photo, couldn’t read the sign.
“What is that place?”
“A tacky theme bar called Rollergirl.”
“She works at a theme bar? She doesn’t look like the kind of girl to waitress somewhere like that. She’s not exactly the typical T&A type.”
“You’re more astute than I gave you credit for. Yes, she works there. No, she’s not a waitress. She has a performance act, for want of a better phrase. She’s there a few times a week. She seems to work most Wednesdays.”
“So?”
“Jesus Christ, are you trying to piss me off?” I was. Not that I could tell him that. “Today is Wednesday, you gormless guppy. Go there and scope her out.” What?
“It’s my birthday.”
“As you know, I’m well aware of this fact, though I fail to see the relevance of it right now.”
