Splice took a step toward him, paused when he heard the word mugging.
That was how his father had died. A supposed mugging. Back then, his dad would bag up the day’s takings and walk them down to the bank a few blocks away. The case remains unsolved to this day. No one was held responsible for stabbing his dad multiple times and leaving him to bleed out in a back alley behind the dealership.
“It all went wrong. I swear it. I never wanted him dead, just to scare him enough that he’d sell the dealership to me. The guy I paid went off script. He said Guire fought back, and the guy panicked. That’s what I thought Lisa overheard. The guy came looking for me that day; he wanted a bigger payoff so he could get out of town.”
For Splice, absorbing every detail of his uncle’s account of the most traumatic experience of Splice’s younger life felt as if Vince were narrating a fictional tale, causing an unprecedented explosion inside his brain.
Pain and rage warred inside Splice.
Vince hadkilledhis father.
When Splice broke his heart at his dad’s funeral, it was Vince who picked him up from the floor. When Splice’s mom went into a deep depression, it was Vince who came by the house every single day to make sure she was eating. It was Vince who kept Splice out of jail, who’d paid for Bart to go to school. This reliable man, the pillar of their family, had been the catalyst for all that pain and grief.
Splice felt the sting of betrayal with each breath, barely holding himself together.
Vince had just signed his own death warrant.
There was no getting out of this shed.
“I’m so fucking sorry, son,” Vince wheezed, his head hanging low, slumped in the chair, only held up by the ties behind his arms. “It was never meant to go that far. Believe me. I beg you, believe me. I’ve tried to make it up to you all these years; shit just spiraled out of my control.”
One minute. Then two.
Splice was fixed to the floor, trying to digest that the one man he loved as a father had killed his dad and had gone on living as if nothing had happened. Vince had happily been in Splice’s life, living a lie.
“What happened to the guy who stabbed my dad?”
“I got rid of him long ago. He was a fucking leech and wanted more money from me.”
That took a job off Splice’s plate, or he would have hunted him down.
The silence felt like a bomb trapped in his sternum.
“You killed my dad.” He said the words out loud, and they tasted like blood and death in his mouth.
“Splice, listen.”
“You killed my dad.”
“We can talk it through, okay, son? Listen to me, please.”
“You. Killed. My. Dad.” His fists balled, and a red mist entered his vision. He was going to fucking destroy Vince so goddamn slowly, their ancestors would feel the pain of it.
“YOU KILLED MY DAD,” Splice yelled, and he heard Vince’s breathing increase, his face twisted, like he was so over talking about it, like he thought Splice should get over it already.
“Yes,” Vince shrieked. “Yeah, alright! Yes, it was me. I did it!” he was red in the face, wild in the eyes. Something Splice acknowledged thatthiswas the real Vince.
It was as if his mask had fallen.
“Guire always had the life that was fucking mine!” he spat. “I got rid of him!”
Rage burned his veins to dust. “What life? You both owned the business. You both had the same amount of money. What fucking life? Why did you have to kill my dad?”
“He wasn’t your goddamn dad!I’m your dad!He had the life that was mine!”
If Splice had been shot in the chest with a gun made of cheese, he wouldn’t have been as shocked as he was hearing those words ringing through his ear canal.
I’m your dad.
