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Planned to apologize.
My lips parted and I fought to keep my face neutral. I swallowed a knot the size of a golf ball and wanted to choke. The back of my neck prickled with heat, and it was in that moment I understood why I had that gut feeling of dread when I arrived home, like it was some sort of intuition this visit would end badly.
"Always were a daddy's girl," Mom said with a slight curve of her lips. She lifted her crystal tumbler near her head. The whites of her eyes were glossy. "I guessed it on the first try."
My face fell. Dread consumed me.
My passcode was my dad's birthday.
The pulse in my neck thumped rapidly. I began to sweat. I took low and controlled breaths like I would if I was doing my floor routine. This was bad. This was very bad.
"Imagine your dad finds out? What do you think he'd do? To you? To his dear old friend?" She pouted and lowered her voice. "He'd take a baseball bat to his face, that's what he'd do."
My lungs constricted. I could hardly breathe. A sinister chuckle rolled off her lips as she finally looked me straight in the eye. She was a polished woman with a heart full of hate.
"He'd probably pull you from your precious gymnastics and send you to an all-girl finishing school." She tapped her chin and looked up at the ceiling. "You know, that doesn't sound like a bad idea, now that I think about it. I could have you out of my hair for good."
I couldn't do anything but sit there and stare. I was up against a woman with a vendetta larger than life and no way to fight it. There was no way I could talk myself out of this, not with the evidence she had.
"What? Cat got your tongue? Don't have anything to say now, Ria?"
"Mom." Holy shit she knew his nickname for me. "Please…"
"I think your dad needs another look at the photos from the newspaper again, sweetheart," she said, the endearment meant to mock me. "The way he holds you, how you look at him… It's as clear as day now. I'm sure I could request a transcript of your cell phone records for your dad as well." She paused, then said, "I was right to use the word slut the other day."
"Why… Why are you doing this?" I asked.
She ignored me.
"Why haven't you asked me for Hayden's sports coat?"
"What?" I asked, confused.
"The jacket Hayden left on your balcony. You said he was looking for it, so why haven't you asked me for it so you could bring it to him?"
My body was cold to the bone, yet my cheeks felt flushed. I chewed my lip for a split second. "Oh, I forgot all about that." It was the best I could come up with but something flashed in her eyes.
"Don't worry, I shipped it to Katja. You know, his fiancée."
My lips parted and blood drained from my face. Katja wasn't Kova's fiancée. There was no way he had proposed to her. He would’ve told me first. I know he would have. Mom was just saying that to get a rise out of me, but thankfully I played it well.
"She was so thankful to have it back since it was a gift from Russia she had custom tailored for him."
The room was thick with a mixture of hostility and bewilderment. The silence was deafening. I didn't know how to respond to the chilling tone she used. I didn’t know how to do anything but sit there. All I could do was stare at the woman who birthed me and question why she hated me so much.
"What did you ship to Katja," Dad asked curiously as he waltzed into the room with Xavier. The kitchen doors flew open behind them and servers came out carrying the first entrée. Everyone stayed silent as trays of food were removed and new ones were placed down. The food looked divine, but there was no way I could eat even a crumb with the way my nerves were on edge.
Mom looked me dead in the eye. "Just Konstantin's coat he left behind at our New Year’s Eve party."
Please, God. I will do anything if you could stop her right now. Anything at all.
"That was nice of you," Dad responded, sitting down.
"Your precious daughter is turning out to be just like you, Frank." Her eyes glistened with devious intentions that had my pulse sky rocketing.
Dad took a long pull of his amber liquid before he responded. He smiled at me and winked. "I would say that's a good thing.
"Or maybe she takes after her mother."
