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They say everything I’ve been holding in for so long, but now that it’s all out in the open, I don’t feel the satisfaction I thought I would. Instead, I find myself watching the scene unfold before me, an unwilling bystander to my own story.
A heavy sigh escapes my lips as I realize that all this pent-up resentment feels like an anchor tied around my heart, a barnacle that just won’t let go.What do I do with the pain? If I took a knife and sliced his throat right now, would my pain go away?
There is so much anger at this table; it feels like it has a life of its own, and it is whip-lashing anybody and everybody. Dick is so angry he doesn’t know who to direct his anger at. He’s out for blood.
This man killed our father, and even though it seemed like time had indeed dulled our pain over the years, sitting across the table from the murderer has awoken that pain, and we are all bleeding.
Throughout the night, we throw everything we can think of at Liam, but nothing seems to stick on that bespoke million-dollar jacket he is wearing. He gets frustrated sometimes, even irritated, mostly when responding to Dick, I notice, and that irks me.What does he think? That we are little ole ladies that can’t fight back? The hubris of the man. I fucking hate you.
Chapter three
THE BOY WHO HAD EVERYTHING / THE MAN WHO HAS NOTHING.
LIAM
The aftermath of the auction and the crazy “date” with the even crazier Ricardo clan still lingers on the periphery of my conscience, but amidst the chaos, I find myself grappling with an even deeper dilemma than them.
The one thing I want in this life is to do something noble and noteworthy before I die—give back to society we have ripped.
This is a goal that has consumed me since I was seven. To the average man, it may seem futile on its face, yet I can’t seem to go past it. Here I am, a man who supposedly has everything, and yet there is an emptiness that gnaws at me relentlessly.
My entire family has never forgotten the sacrifice I made for this family . . . the secret I keep, and to show their appreciation, they are all constantly falling over themselves wanting to please me . . . trying to buy my goodwill— it isn’t even funny.
At this point, I do not have to lift a finger, and if I live to be a hundred and spend a hundred thousand dollars a day, I will still not spend it all, and yet my life feels empty, and I am unfulfilled. All I want is a sense of purpose, and I can never get it. I am a can of cheap soup at the 99c store with a beautiful label and no takers. My life is worthless.
My great, great, great grandfather started trading in diamonds, offering divorcees and widows pitiable recompense for their diamond rings, then reselling them at a premium cost to those still chasing butterflies and Happily Ever Afters.
In his little corner shop on the corner of desperation and hope, there was a constant influx of winners and losers, givers and takers. My great, great, great grandfather’s business grew so fast before you knew it; he had expanded his influence across the 50 States and then across the borders. We are rich.
One day, when I was only 11 or 12 years old, some older kids in my school taunted me, saying that I had nothing to be proud of; in fact, my family should be ashamed of how we made all that money.
“You probably got rich on blood diamonds,” Patrick Maloy, the school bully had said, then went to great lengths to educate me on what “Blood Diamonds” meant.
From that day, I have had this dream of one day doing something to give back to the land and the people my “family” and people like them had robbed. I am very aware that I cannottake the diamonds we have stolen over the years and put them back in the ground, but I could do something meaningful to help the African people.
I’ve had this idea swirling in my brain for years, a way to do something in return for the people whose natural resources we took, and they did not benefit from it . . . solar panels.
My dream is to supply every African home with light and renewable energy that can be channeled to perform other ordinary tasks that are likely to enhance their quality of life.
Right this minute, poor air quality caused by pollution from kerosene-fueled lamps and stoves is responsible for millions, if not billions, of premature deaths in Sub-Sahara Africa, with women and children suffering the most from pulmonary, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular diseases.
Africa has sunlight almost all year round. This should be easy, right—yet not.
The most affordable solar panels are made in China. That statement in itself unleashes a hydra of complications, making my vision a virtual impossibility.
Chapter four
HOLDING A GRUDGE.
TONY
They say that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. I wonder who coined that statement.
As I sat there at the dinner table watching him watching me, I wondered. Fifteen years have passed, and for me, the wound still bleeds . . . the pain is like it all happened yesterday.
What did he feel sitting there at the table, across from the very people whose lives he upended? Does he ever think of my dad? Does he have nightmares? How I wish he would wake up one morning to find grass growing on his tongue . . . an extraterrestrial case of out-of-this-world thrush, with no terrestrial antibiotic.
It has been fifteen years since Liam killed my father, and soon, I will lose my mother. Can a twenty-six-year-old woman brand herself an orphan? My mother is not dead yet, and I have already started the mourning process. My mother haspancreatic cancer . . . one of the fastest acting cancers. Mom just got diagnosed, but I know it won’t be long. I’m not playing God, claiming to know everything. I am a third-year nursing student . . . I know a thing or two about cancer. It won’t be long now.
