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My father has never made it a secret how he keeps Sandra in line, no doubt angry that I don’t share his penchant for public humiliation.
She glares at me before staggering out of the room, closing the door behind us to leave me and my father amidst the mass of tension swathing us.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” he says slowly. “I want you to bring… Indigo… to the house.” He speaks her name as if it repulses him to utter it.
“Why? So that you can pick her to pieces? Scare her off? Is that the plan?”
“You clearly feel something for her. It’s only right we meet the woman who has fucked up what we’ve been planning for years.”
“You’vebeen planning,” I counter. “I've wanted nothing to do with it since I was twenty-five years old. I’ve spent half a decade trying to make you understand… to no avail.”
“That’s because you only think of your fucking self,” he snarls.
“Is that so? Believe it or not, most sons are not pressured into marriage in this day and age. If refusing to be part of your sick game means being calledselfish, then so be it.”
“We all have fucking responsibilities. Mine were to you. I brought you up, not expecting this lack of fucking respect in return.”
“Did it ever occur to you that this chaos we’re now dealing with is caused by you refusing to respect my fucking wishes? I don’t love Gabriella. I don’t even like the fucking woman.”
“This isn’t aboutlove,” he snarls. “You don’t need to be inlove. Nor faithful for that matter. You can keep that little plaything on the side once you’re married. This is about securing your family’s future prosperity. Our protection. Or don’t you care about your parents? Your siblings? We’re arranging marriages for them and neither is complaining like you.”
“They haven’t had the same life experiences as me, Father. As you well know.”
The tension, already thick, becomes smog in the room. He and I have not spoken about that day since I was seven years old and forced kicking and screaming back into a car for him to drive me to his home in, but it is constantly rebirthed in the shadows around us, silently polluting the air, causing cold wrath to seep into my lungs.
“You’re full of excuses,” he finally growls. “Let me make it clear to you. You bring her to meet us or I’ll dig out the PIs and have them investigate her themselves. And I’ll make sure it gets messy.”
My fingers curl around the arm of the chair as I restrain myself from getting to my feet and choking the life from him, but I can’t allow him to see how much I do care. I suspect that he already knows. He could always see inside me. He always knew what I was thinking… and what would hurt me the most.
“Why would I invite someone you wish us to be rid of?”
His pale brown eyes narrow. “She’s clearly important enough to you to fuck up everything we’ve been working for.”
“It’s not her that’s fucked up anything. I’ve told you for years I want nothing to do with this sham marriage. Do you even care how it would make me feel? Do you even care about how much distress it leaves me in that you continue to pressure me to do something after I’ve asked you so many times to stop? Do you even know what that does to me? Or is that the point?”
I kick myself as the words emerge. I know full well that he takes pleasure from my pain because my pain is usually a sign of my capitulation to him—either to his demands or to his disdain.
Why, when I know what he is, do I still hold onto the hope that if I explain my hurtone final time, something will shift? That this heavy blackness I hold inside me at never being seen or understood will dissipate? That one day, he’ll see me as human and not an extension of him?
“Life is pain,” he responds, his voice treacherously soft. “No one escapes that.”
“And do we have a responsibility to ensure we don’t add to other people’s?”
His jaw tightens as he contemplates my question. “I want her brought here. I want to understand why she means so much to you that you would defy your father’s wishes.”
“I won’t bring her around people who will hurt her.”
“That’s a shame. I was hoping not to have to speak to Indigo myself.”
I propel myself to my feet faster than I can stop it, finding myself standing over him, my hands fisting as I attempt to discharge the wrath pummeling my body.
“Go anywhere near her—”
He gets to his feet, slowly walking towards me until we’re a foot away from each other, so close that I see every pale gray fleck in his brown eyes. “I don’t want to have to.”
“You go near that girl—”
“As I said. I don’t want to do that. Which is why I want you bringing her here. It will be less messy.”
