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“No way.” A smile twitched her lips.
“Yep. I believe he said something along the lines of ‘Fuck this, nobody else is seeing the woman I love up on a stage,’ and married her. Just like that.”
“He was different then, huh?”
“No doubt about it. My mom made him a better person. A few years after they got married, I was born. Mom had helped him run the business up until that point, so she found it pretty boring to be home with me all the time with nothing to do. I think that was when the problems started—she wanted to put me in daycare when I turned one, just for a few hours a week, but Dad refused. He believed it was her duty to stay home with me. He’d just bought another club and didn’t have time to reintroduce her to all the ins and outs of the ones they owned. Professionally, it was getting better, but personally, it was turning to shit.”
I leaned back against the sofa and ran my fingers through my hair.
“They fought pretty much all the time. For years. But neither left, because they loved each other, even if they didn’t have a relationship. After I started school, my mom would take me to a ‘friends’ house. What I didn’t know then was that she was cheating on my dad. He worked all the time and didn’t pay her attention, so although she loved him…” I shook my head and laughed bitterly. “It was fucked up. He had her heart and the money, but they were both fucking miserable all the time. The guy she was seeing made her happy, and I was too young to understand it. Anyway, she got pregnant by him, and my dad kicked her out.”
“Was it definitely not your dad’s baby?”
I shook my head. “When I was older and asked Mom if there was a chance Perrie was Dad’s, she said no, because basically, at that point, they didn’t have sex anymore. There were no doubts.”
“Wow. Did they get divorced?”
“No. Mom didn’t want to marry this new guy. We moved in with him on the rougher side of town—or it was back then. She’d never intended for it to be serious, and the longer we lived with him, the more obvious it was that he was hoping my parents would divorce, Mom would get a good-sized settlement because of me, and then he’d marry her, divorce her, and get the money.”
“What a dick.”
That was one way to put it—and she hadn’t even heard the worst yet. “Well, my mother wasn’t innocent in it all. She fell down the social pole like a brick being dropped off a roof. That was her own fault. She should have guessed what he really wanted. Fact is, he wasn’t a nice guy. He was abusive to her, both verbally and physically. He never touched me, but he made it known that he hated me, while he pretended to dote on Perrie.”
“Pretended to?”
“She was his meal ticket. Looking back now, I think he intended to beat my mother into submission, claim full custody of her, and get the money that way.” I scratched my jaw, anger nudging at my consciousness. “She couldn’t leave, of course. She had nowhere to go, and the only money she had was the child support my father paid her. It was very little, just enough to get by on, because he knew what the other guy was like.
“I think Perrie was almost two when it all changed. I remember going downstairs for something. I might have been thirsty or just woken up by their arguments, but it was the first time I saw Roy hit my mother. I wasn’t an angry kid. I never had been, but the moment I saw him hit her, I understood why people got so angry.”
Dahlia’s eyes widened, and she placed her hand delicately on her chest.
“I acted on stupid, childish impulses. I screamed, ran toward him, and hit him with the nearest thing I could find, which was a remote control.”
“That’s…different.”
I shrugged, a slight smile on my face. “Like I said… it was impulse. And the reason for a black eye on his mugshot.”
Her lips tugged up to the side.
“Now, I wish I hadn’t done it.” My smile disappeared, and I let out a long breath. “I should have called nine-one-one before he knew I was there, but I didn’t. He grabbed me and threw me into the dining table for daring to touch him.”
She drew in a deep breath.
I tapped a finger to my scar. “I was a scrawny kid. I flew through the air like a fucking bullet, and I still don’t know how I didn’t get blinded that day. But, the corner of the table cut right through my skin.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed, covering her mouth with a shaky hand. “Your sister?”
