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But when I woke up that night, I went to her room and found the nanny gone.
I shushed my sister and put her back to sleep before I went in search of her.
The fucking nanny.
I was only eight but I was raging. I was furious that she wasn’t there to take care of my sister. And then, I heard noises coming out of my dad’s study and there she was. The nanny.
Instead of taking care of my sister, she was taking care of my father. I had her fired the following day; I planted Mom’s jewelry in her room and made it look like she’d stolen it.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that my father is a douchebag and by the time I was eight, I’d decided something.
I decided that I hated him.
That I loathed him for making my mother miserable. I loathed him for never giving any attention to my sister. And I loathed him because even then he thought he could control me.
So when I was eight, I decided to do everything in my power not to. Not to be controlled by him. Or not to be his devoted little son.
If he wanted to show me off to his business partners when I was a kid, the future CEO of the company, or show me the ropes of how it’s all done, I made sure to make myself scarce. I made sure to stay busy, stay lost in the town, stay drunk at the party he’d thrown where he wanted to show me off.
If he hated that I was wasting my time on soccer and that my coaches thought that I had some real talent, I made sure to play harder. I made sure to run away to that soccer summer camp he hadn’t wanted me to go to. If he asked me to quit the team, I decided to get a fucking scholarship.
I decided to go pro, get a million-dollar contract and throw it in his face.
Not that I could do it now because you know, I don’t play anymore, but it was a nice little wish to have, that kept me going while I was growing up.
So my father and I, we’re at war.
We’ve been at war ever since I was a kid.
Every war has collateral damage, doesn’t it, though?
The collateral damage of ours is her.
The girl I saw spinning on the playground when I was nine. The little blonde ballerina. The one who dances like a fairy and who stole my car when I broke her heart to hurt me.
She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. At the time I didn’t know either. I was high on my win, on the fact that I’d done the exact opposite of what my father wanted, of what my father had asked the previous night.
Yeah, I broke her innocent little heart in the process. But what do you expect of a villain anyway?
Not to mention, I defied him in style.
I won.
But somehow my father got wind of it, that a girl had stolen my car. Or maybe he was keeping better tabs on me than I’d arrogantly expected. And since he’d had it with me and my tantrums, he took advantage of the situation.
He used her to get what he wanted.
We Jackson men are real bastards, aren’t we?
I used her to win at soccer so I could piss off my father and he used her to get to me.
“Nice song.”
My thoughts break at the rough, gravelly voice and I pull myself from under the ’68 Chevy that I’m working on. It’s a sweet ride, or at least has the potential to be.
Right now it’s a dump though.
Salvaged from a yard, it’s all rusted and banged up. Needs a new engine, new tires, new paint job. It’s got alignment issues when you drive and the sound of it starting is like an animal being tortured.
But I’ve got plans for it.
Especially for that engine. I’m going to build it from scratch, rebore the cylinders, put in new pistons. It’s going to be fucking sexy when it’s done and it’s going to purr like a kitten.
And Pete knows that. The guy who just interrupted me.
That’s why he gave me the job even though I don’t work with him anymore. He knows I can make it run and look like a million bucks.
I press a few buttons on my phone and lower the volume of the song I’ve been playing. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Time for you to go home.”
I chuckle and get up and put away the wrench as I shoot back, “Which means it’s past your bedtime, isn’t it, old man?”
Pete is old, yeah.
He’s probably north of sixty and you can see every inch of that age on his ruddy face and his white beard. Pair that with a beer belly and the red and white checkered shirt that he’s wearing right now, Pete is a regular Santa Claus.
