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As I leaned in to kiss him, the doors opened and what felt like at least twenty people burst into the room, all bustling around doing their jobs. I very quickly felt surplus to requirements, and was told by a nurse that I needed to leave the room so that they could finish preparing for the surgery.
I kissed my dad one more time, and left. Moments later, as I headed for the waiting area, a woman who introduced herself as the transplant coordinator came out of the room and explained the procedure and timelines to me again.
“Do you have anyone who can stay with you while you wait?”
“Yes, my cousin and my best friend are on their way.”
“Great. We do advise people to have someone with them for moral support.”
Chapter 43
Drew
As I walked through the vacant reception area of the Cavanagh Corp building for what might well be the last time, I felt nothing but relief. It was after hours, but I knew that my father would have been well aware of my presence, and I was all out of fucks to give. So much so, that I gave the security camera the finger right before I swiped my passcode and walked out of the door.
Crossing the parking lot to get to my car, I smiled to myself, reflecting on the events of the previous three weeks. It had been hard not seeing or having any contact with Kik in that time, but I knew that after our conversation at the gala, Victor would be having the two of us trailed, and probably tapping our phones too, if he could. The one downside of my stunt at the gala was that having publicly established a link between the two of them with the photographs, he no longer had need to stay away from her.
It would have been a source of confusion and frustration when he’d found that we’d had zero contact in that time. Even more so when he noted, however, that she was in fact working with Tom Williams, just like we’d told him she would be. If I knew my father at all—and sadly, I really did—the curiosity and concern would have been eating him up inside. Yes, fucking with him that way was childish and petty, but as I’d told him that night, I’d learned from the best.
The unintended benefit of this course of action, other than simply pissing Victor off, was that it had given me time to work whatever the fuck I’d been feeling about Kik out of my system, and now that those demons had been exorcised, I could go back to the advertised programming, reminding myself that the battle with Victor had been about screwing him over, and ending his reign of terror, rather than rescuing Kik.
At first she’d been collateral damage, then she’d been a tool in the arsenal I was using to bring my father down. Somewhere in there she’d also become an unhealthy obsession for me—one I knew I had to nix before it got out of control. I’d seen firsthand that no good could come of giving in to those kinds of feelings. I only had to look at my mom to see how that panned out.
As I jumped in the truck, I turned on the entertainment system and pressed play on the sound file on my phone.
“Listen, you moronic little fucktard—”
“Less of the little, if you don’t mind, Daddy dearest. The way I held my own when we went head-to-head the other day shows you I’m no longer the boy you can beat into submission.”
“Regardless, don’t think I won’t kill you, if you don’t do as we agreed.”
“You mean if I don’t make Kristina Sanchez, drop the planned class action suit against Cavanagh Corp as well as ruining Mom and Grampsie’s lives, you’ll off me?”
“That’s what I said. And hurry the fuck up. I expected you to have fixed this already, though I can’t say I’m surprised you haven’t. You really are your mother’s son—useless till the end—I bet you still need someone to shake your fucking dick for you when you pee.”
“Now, you listen Victor. Don’t raise your blood pressure, it’s not healthy for guys of your age. Just chill. You told me to make the problem go away by any means necessary, right?” I didn’t wait for his response. “I’m a man of my word. I said I’d fix it, and I will, so back the fuck up and let me handle it. Watch this space, old man.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, I will. Very. Closely. Until you’ve kicked that piece of trash back into the gutter where she belongs, and we ensure that nobody else like her gets any smart ideas about chasing down compensation, I’ll be watching you like a hawk.”
It was the tail end of our conversation at the gala, and what Daddy dearest hadn’t realized was that I’d recorded the whole thing. He was about to find out, though, either when he entered the Cavanagh Corp building in the morning, and it started playing on a continuous loop through the public address system, or when his phone started ringing off the hook with the journalists who’d received it, all seeking comment from the man himself. The USB I’d left on his desk featuring the full recording was more for the theater of it than anything.
I started the truck and wound my way through the city to Mom’s retreat, and pulled up outside, taking a moment to work out exactly what I was going to say to her. There was so much, in so many ways, but in others, I just needed to keep things simple. I’d called on the way to make sure she’d be awake—if she’d taken a sleeping pill, there would have been no talking to her—and she’d assured me she had no plans to go to bed for the next few hours, at least. That in itself was a good sign. On a bad day, she could barely make it out of bed, and would be back in it again before the sun went down.
I swung the car into the lot, got out with a spring in my step, and jogged toward Mom’s apartment. When she buzzed me in, too impatient to wait for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time, then barreled into her place like my ass was on fire. As I bowled into the living room, Mom look startled, but happy to see me, her lips curling into a broad smile.
“Drew, baby, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure.” From her lips, the words held their true meaning.
“I came to deliver the news personally. I wanted to see your face when you heard you were free.”
“Free? What do you mean?”
“You’re free from Victor. I’ve fixed it so that you and Grampsie are no longer dependent on him. It’s over.”
The look of confused shock on her face was totally understandable.
“Umm… This is still not making much sense to me. I think I need to sit down, and for you to explain the whole thing from the beginning.”
I did exactly that, interrupted frequently when Mom needed further clarification, but soon the picture clearly started to take shape in her mind.
