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“You were groomed to know it. Wilde World built is bigger than all of us. It will live longer than all of us. What we want isn’t important.” She waves her arms around the room. “This family is an institution now. We built Rivers Wilde. We are one of the largest grocers in the United States. We service nearly every single prison system in the country. We run the food programs for eight countries in South America. Do you think you can just dismantle that because you didn’t get to grow up with your father and his whore?” She sneers at me.
“She was his wife,” I remind her, just to twist the knife in.
“I was his wife.” She points at her chest. Then she looks at me the same way I looked at her a few minutes ago. As if the light around me had shifted and she could finally see me clearly.
“Oh, the irony.” She throws her head back and laughs dryly.
“What?”
“After all of my efforts to make you a better man, you still ended up just like
him. At least he knew he couldn’t have both. You still think life is fair. You’re such a fool.” She sneers at me.
“I think I hate you.”
Her face falls. The sorrow in her eyes isn’t feigned. She folds her hands in front of her and nods.
“I know you do.” It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Yet, I feel nothing.
We stare at each other. Mother and son. Enemies. Broken. With nothing between us but a sea of broken glass neither of us are willing to hazard crossing.
This isn’t my family. This isn’t my home. I don’t know who I am. Or what I am. I’ve lived my entire life with a lie guiding my decisions. The man I tried to be was shaped by myth. It grew roots that bound me when the woman I love slipped out of my grasp.
And it was all a fucking lie.
Including me.
An hour later, I drive away from Rivers Wilde and if I have my way, I’ll never be back.
I
The Start
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
HOUSTON, TEXAS.
1
LEGENDS AND LIES
KAL
The door to the library opens and I stop writing. My heart races and my hands tremble so badly that my notebook slips from my fingers and lands with a thud on the floor. Loud voices and the blare of music that flood the room disguise the noise. I pick it up and press my body close to the wall and hold my breath.
My mother will kill me if I get caught in here. We haven’t even been at the party for thirty minutes. I thought I’d have at least another couple of hours before I had to go looking for her.
The sound of approaching footsteps sends my pulse into a wild gallop. My heart feels like it’s attached to a boomerang inside my chest. But for those footsteps, the library is as quiet as it had been when I’d snuck in here.
The door opens again and I lift my feet off the ground and hug my knees tightly to my chest and hold my breath.
“I told you to get upstairs,” a woman’s voice cracks through the air like a whip even over the loud din from outside, and I nearly jump out of my skin and my eyes widen in terror. All I can see is the dark blue backing of the curtain.
“Don’t just stand there, answer me.” Her voice is so cold, so hard that I close my eyes again the figure forming in my mind. I imagine her to be tall, with a narrow face that’s shrouded by the thousands of snakes that slither on her head where her hair should be. They hiss and bite each other constantly.
I imagine that her eyes are entirely black. But her mouth is strangely beautiful—it’s heart shaped with lips that are coated with a poisonous apple-red lipstick.
“I just came to get my books.” The boy’s voice is frightened and sad. I wish I could give him a hug. The way he sounds is the way I feel a lot. With my eyes closed, I can just imagine him. He’s small and skinny, with hair that needs cutting and shoes with that are so small, the toes are rubbed thin. The worn cuff of his two sizes too small pants stop above his bony ankles.
