Page 71 of State of Ruin

“And you were an ungrateful little trollop.”

They grin at each other as if it’s an old joke, and I get a glimpse of how well matched these two are. No wonder Felix tends to reserve more glowing terms for his stepmom than for his own mother.

Gen turns back to me. “I was dealing with some unsavory twats who opened a rival club and had no qualms about playing dirty. Anton stepped in after being specifically told not to, got his little henchman to hack their accounts, and reported them to HMRC—that’s the IRS to you. Even though I was handling it.”

Yikes. “Brave man,” I say.

“Foolish man.” This from Gen.

“How did you fix it?”

“That’s not a story my son needs to hear,” Anton says, stroking his wife’s shoulder. “But she had my balls on a platter, basically. I learned my lesson.”

Felix just laughs. I guess if your father met your stepmom at a sex club that she founded, your family is a little more liberated than my family’s brand of WASPy repression.

“So he persuaded you to trust him?” I press, because if either of these two has any advice on how to get Elyse to trust me enough to even have a conversation, then I’d be a fool not to take it.

Gen makes a face. “More like he persuaded me that he wasn’t stupid enough to pull a stunt like that ever again. That said, the shit you pulled on that girl was a million times worse. You blew up her entire life.”

I may run a multibillion-dollar company, but in the face of her contempt, I feel like a piece of shit beneath her shoe. She says it so matter-of-factly, and it has me wondering once more why the hell it took a trip to Jersey and a dossier from Mickey for me to fully appreciate the sheer horror of what I did to Elyse. Am I such a self-obsessed, sociopathic asshole that it’s only through the perspective of other, regular people with actual moral compasses that I can calibrate it properly? And how the fuck am I ever supposed to get her to trust me again when I can’t even trust my own judgment?

“I know,” I say. “I did.” I don’t bother mentioning that I’ve repaid the medical debt, because these two would scoff at that. Putting your hand in your pocket is the easiest way for guys like me to soothe their conscience and stroke their ego. Understanding and respecting the agency of others is what this is really about.

Gen nods, like Glad you realize that.

“Honestly, he knows he fucked up,” says Felix, whose shoulder I’ve cried on for the past two weeks. “The question is, is there any reality in which he can get Elyse to trust him again?”

“Highly unlikely,” Gen spits. I flinch. Anton arches an eyebrow at his wife’s brutal honesty. “But,” she says, “utter capitulation aside, he does have one hand left to play.”

I lean forward. I’ll take anything she’s got. A hand suggests agency. A hand suggests I’m not out of options just yet. “But what?”

“Easy,” she says, closing her menu. “If she won’t trust you, and nor should she, your only option is to trust her. Trust her with everything you’ve got. Give her every last moldy old skeleton in that big Voss cupboard and put your entire self in her hands. In other words, you’re done being in control here. Hand every last vestige of it over to her.” She turns to the hovering waiter. “I’ll have the mussels, please.”

CHAPTER 37

Sinclair

Ihave not stopped thinking about Gen’s advice since that dinner the other day, and I’m still ruminating on it as I drive myself out to Glen Cove for Thanksgiving drinks and dinner, Andrew having taken a well-deserved few days off to celebrate the holiday with his family.

I’m grateful for the privacy, to be honest. Driving is a useful activity for processing, and it strikes me that Felix’s stepmom is some kind of sage. Because of course her solution is the only one that works. Nothing I do will persuade Elyse to trust me again, except trusting her. I abused my power, so the only way to restore balance and equality in our relationship is to hand every last bit of that power over to her.

There’s something circular about it that pleases my logic-loving brain, but it’s more than that. As I drive through the quiet streets, I feel almost fatalistic. Everything I do, everything my family does, is driven by this deep-rooted obsession with optics and control. With editing and erasing experiences. Messy is bad. Vulnerability is bad. And risk of exposure, no matter how faint, is worse.

All of which raises the question:

How would it feel to blow the whole fucking thing up for the woman I love?

Fairwater at Thanksgiving is a study in the same kind of restraint that causes my mother to eschew makeup and jewelry. There isn’t a pumpkin to be seen. Rather, Mom has her staff decorate the house with bounty from the estate in a way that intentionally looks like an hour’s work and not a week’s.

I park in front of The Lindens and open the door just long enough to drop off my overnight bag. Any longer, and I’ll be tempted to crawl into an armchair in bleak solitude and blow my family off altogether. But my God, it’s an alluring option compared to the obligatory networking. When I crunch across the gravel to the main house, the light from the drawing room spills out onto the dim driveway, illuminating a scene as old as time and as tiresome as hell.

The Vosses have a longstanding and wholly inflexible arrangement of “neighborhood drinks” on Thanksgiving afternoon. It’s been in place since we were kids and is strictly limited to the dozen or so families at the top of the Glen Cove social hierarchy. It takes place strictly from four o’clock until five thirty, at which point everyone heads home for their family dinner, and the only foods served are chips and olives, to ensure no one spoils their appetite. Given the strength of my parents’ gimlets, this combination usually feels ill-judged, but whatever. It’s certainly loosened a few tongues over the years.

As always, the only nod to the holiday from the outside is the urns bearing copper beech branches and a foraged-looking wreath, spruced up with a few pheasant feathers. Inside the entry hall, Mom’s gone with a single, oversized arrangement on the central table: more branches from the grounds, mixed in with papery dried hydrangeas.

The cocktail party is in full swing. I’ve taken advantage of the fact that, oddly, Mom never seems to mind if I turn up to these things a little late. My take is that she thinks it gives the impression that I am Very Busy and Important. I suspect she gets a kick out of seeing me make an entrance—except that, this year, I shuffle into the drawing room as unobtrusively as possible, surveying the scene as I take a gimlet from a silver tray. Ugh. It’s the same old crowd, year after year: senators, and scions of industry, and a few illustrious doctors. My parents’ friends, and their kids, and their kids.

The generations grow up, but the names don’t change: Pratt, and Van Duyn, and Prescott. It’s my normal, a bubble I’ve existed in my entire life without really questioning it, but as I look around now, I can’t help but consider what on earth Elyse would make of it. Would she see my patrician bubble as the very opposite of normal? Most probably.