ℂ𝕒𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕠𝕟 𝔾𝕝𝕠𝕨 ➃

57. The Real Reason - ✭ Monica ✭

They left me here alone with Rhoen. The man that is the entire reason why Boston has been taken by some criminal. All because he wanted to fuck some woman that just had to be associated with a crime family. My inner-raging-bitch has been amplified tenfold. Considering I barely have any inner-raging-bitch in me on any given day, it feels like a ball of fire is swirling inside of me. I wish I could launch it directly at my father-in-law, the one currently soaking himself in gin and sitting across from me.

"I can feel you glaring at me." I cross my arms and continue to stare at him when he peers up at me over the rim of his glass. "You know, despite what you may think, I love my son dearly." He brings the cup down, holding it with both hands between his legs. "I have worked hard my entire life to ensure that he is taken care of. I created a business empire after he was born, willing the statistics of young parenthood to be damned. I did well for myself, for my family. I don't regret the man I am, the person I became to ensure success. I don't regret who I still need to be or the part I have to play so that I can pass something, anything, off to my sons. So that they're taken care of long after I'm gone."

"Yeah, well it seems like you recently passed Boston a heaping, steaming pile of shit." His eyes hold mine and glare just as hard as I am. "And I'm not stupid, by the way. That whole thing with the gala? That was a ploy at messing with our relationship. I don't get what your endgame in that was though."

He lets out a deep breath and looks heavenward. "The girl, Louisa, is infatuated with him and I needed to be in her father's good graces— so I obliged her the companionship of my son. Did I think either of them would take liberties?" He shrugs in non-commitment before knocking back the rest of his drink. "He's twenty-one, can do what he wants, should be able to do as he wants. He shouldn't have gotten married so soon; so foolishly." He gets up from his chair looking chagrined as he heads over to the bar. "Leave it to Luke to spare no expense." He sighed and the noise sounded thankful to my ears. Like he was glad there was some form of liquid luxury in the room. "Diana and I had Boston around your ages." His voice much more quiet, calculated. "It was a stupid, naive mistake on our parts to think we could handle something like that so young."

"Boston is not a mistake." My voice was unfamiliar, even to myself. It sounded foreign, guttural, on the brink of something dangerous. "Don't you dare say that. Ever."

He sits in front of me, completely unbothered by my tone. "I wasn't saying Boston was a mistake. I love my son very much. He pushed me to become the man I am, to be the provider I am and had to be. But I have done everything for him and he wants nothing to do with it." He sips his drink evenly. "I'd say he resents me nearly as much as Diana, maybe even hates me like she clearly seems to."

"And why, pray tell, does your ex-wife resent and hate you exactly?" I had an inkling it had something to do with fucking my brother's wife but I kept my mouth tight.

"Diana and I were failing long before our inevitable separation." He blows out a deep breath, settling deeper into his seat. I think the gin had something to do with why he was sharing the story with me because Rhoen didn't seem like the kind of man to open up to anyone, not really. "Years of a loveless marriage based around sex and raising a child so young together will do that to a relationship; smother it. Diana ended up resenting everything that I am and I became because she was left to look after Boston while I did so.

"She got the limelight. She got plastered on newspapers, tabloids, you name it, for being my wife— the mother of my child. That was her claim to fame— being married to Rhoen Rearick, to me. Where as I was on the cover of Forbes, GQ, The Times... you name it and I was on it. I've been praised for everything I'd accomplished so young, for being fit and attractive, and for being a father the entire time as well. Diana took it all as a slight eventually. Like taking care of our child so that I could do what I was doing condemned her to a simple life when she was more than capable of accomplishing even more than me. She sacrificed that— herself, to take care of Boston and for my success. And she now hates me for it.