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“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. He just knew it was important to you. You’d said once you wanted to have your kids there, remember?”
“I didn’t realize Sly did that.”
“Well, he tried anyway. And yeah, there’s a lot you don’t know about what my dad’s done for you.”
I do see through this. I do.
“He was outbid though. You’ll never guess by whom.” Before I can even process where this is going, he continues, “Fucking Silas Cruz.”
“Silas?” I ask, stunned.
“Now that he’s made some money, I guess he wants to show it off. Hope he doesn’t plan on moving in. I don’t think my parents want him for a neighbor.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask aloud, but it’s not really a question I’m directing at Ethan.
“To fuck with us,” he answers anyway.
“Are you sure, Ethan? It makes no sense.”
He nods.
I can’t imagine why Silas would want the house, why would he ever move back to Sinistral given all the memories.
“I guess I’m not really surprised if I think about it. He’s an asshole. I swear he’s still got a thing for you. Just stay away from him tomorrow night.”
“He’ll be there?”
“Always wanted anything that was mine,” he says, coming toward me and wrapping his arms around me almost like the last few minutes didn’t happen. He shakes his head and releases me. I’m not even sure he heard the panic in my voice just now. “Anyway, go get ready. Mom’s on my ass about getting there so we’d better go.”
16
SILAS
Idrive my rented SUV to the cul-de-sac where only the top of the Fox mansion is visible behind the stone wall they’ve erected. Pretentious pricks. That’s not my destination, though. It’s the smaller house that belongs to the Harts. Well, at least for another few days.
Is it considered breaking and entering once a number is agreed upon and paperwork finalized even if money hasn’t changed hands? Not that it matters for my purposes tonight. I need to get inside because I have a sense that time is running out.
I think about my meeting last night with the Foxes. How smug they are still, even when they come to me, their enemy, for money. I should have made them beg, but I remind myself that is not the goal. My game is a long one. I will swallow what I need to now to have the final laugh in the end.
But I know it hurt arrogant, self-satisfied Sly’s ego to have to come to me for money.
My father is a self-made man. His money is as new as it comes, and as filthy.
Born dirt poor, Sly was an only child, which maybe explains his inability to play well with others. His mother, my grandmother whom of course I never met, waited tables at a greasy diner in Boston while his father, a goliath of a man, worked in construction all his life. Both were hard working. Together they made ends meet, giving the best they could to their ungrateful son and working themselves to their graves before either of them reached fifty-five.
My father took after his mother physically, and, I imagine to everyone’s surprise, he had a talent for numbers that was discovered fairly early on. That talent got him into a prestigious private boarding school for boys on scholarship. Well, that talent and his Colombian heritage on his mother’s side. His father came from a white, working-class family in the Midwest. I guess I don’t really blame Sly for having used his background to his advantage and land a scholarship. I may have done the same to get ahead if I’d needed a scholarship. With Sly paying for my education, though, I’d wanted to bleed as much money from the man as possible.
It's not so much how he got that scholarship that bothers me, though. It’s what he did afterward that shows the kind of man he would one day become. Hedistanced himself from the less white part of his heritage when, after graduation from an Ivy league university, it no longer served him. Although maybe that’s not fair because truly, he essentially cut off ties with both of his parents as soon as he left high school.
Sly always was clever, calculated, cunning even. Maybe he didn’t completely forget his parents because he worked for a real-estate developer, the same one who owned the construction company his father worked for. He climbed the ranks, slowly at first, which I know because I researched his career path for years.
Then, when he was in his mid-thirties, boom! He catapulted to the top, replacing much of the management once he got there.
I know how he did it, although I don’t really have proof because no one will talk, of course. It’s the nature of blackmail, after all.
My father collected secrets. He always had his ears open, and he held on to whispered words spoken in confidence until the time was right to topple one man after another after another.
So yeah, dirty money.
