What They've Done To Us

04 ➹ not yet in my casket

TWO AND A HALF WEEKS AGO

I DON'T FUCKING care for Nayelie Angelo's. She's a liar, a cheat. The McAllister men don't do cheats. We do clean, we do precise, we do public appearances and most importantly we do reputable.

"This was all her?" Dad's pacing around the dining room, his tie already thrown somewhere in the living room the second the news had hit town as the Silvers went public. I have to give it to the silvers, they're creative but fucking annoyingly so.

"Dad -" I try.

"I can't even look at you right now Atlas." I sink further into the seat. I shouldn't have trusted her, I should've stopped it the second she'd approached me in the hallway at school all confident. I took her confidence for cockiness when it was all just calculation.

"You know how bad this is Atlas?" Now its mom on my case, she shakes her head disappointment vivid.

Dad might be pissed, but he's got nothing on her. "The entire McAllister family unit is going to be brought down because of what...a girlfriend of yours?" She wasn't my girlfriend, not really anyways.

"Calebs a father, Luca is getting with his father's girlfriend, Sage is...god, Sage is getting with the maid. Are you boys crazy?"

"Well -"

"Thats a rhetorical question Atlas. Meaning your answer is not wanted, not needed because the question is answered in itself." Mom cuts in.

"I bet it's because of her father, he gave it to her. That's how she did it." Dad mutters to himself, probably regretting having Mr. Angelo's as his lawyer.

"Well actually she just walked in and got it." Mom and Dad both look at me with fury in their gazes and I raise my hands in surrender. I'm not stupid, I know how bad this looks.

Son of Mayor McAllister swindled by rumored girlfriend who also happens to be daughter to Mayor McAllister's lawyer.

We had been just working our way out of the whole 'new brother' scandal too. I knew Damien would be pissed, I didn't really know much of my brother – dad never brought him up. Never brought up anything related to his past with me up until the leak.

But I always had an idea. Because once during my snooping era when I was fourteen, I had been going through dad's office aimlessly. Searching through cupboards, drawers, anything that could be unlocked with his key that he'd left behind whilst going overseas. When I stumbled across a letter written from a woman whose name was familiar but awkwardly not - so I'd opened it.

I read it. I wish I hadn't. I felt so sick after the realisation. She'd been contacting my father for years, talking about how their son Damien, who was born may thirty first, and how had wanted to speak to his dad. Just to see him once.

'I know you have another life, a wife, a child. But you've got to see your kid once in your life. He looks just like you.' 

The doorbell rings snapping me out of my daze and almost robotically I stand up seeing it as an exit to the growing tension in the dining room. The last time I've seen any of my parents remotely pissed was when dad had walked in on me and Kyra Philips when I was fifteen in the sunbeds outside.

That was a mess.

I walk to the door ignoring mom and dad's sour moods as I plant a practiced smile on my face waiting for the worst on the other side. However, when I open the door and I just see Sage standing with a wide smile my own drops.

"Well, that's not how most people would greet me, but you know." He shrugs before trying to walk past me inside, but I stop him, reluctantly.

"Sage, I don't think it's a really good time right now -"

His face falls and he looks me in my eyes with a kind of vulnerability I've only seen a handful of times from him. "Ivy's back." He swallows. Shit.

Ivy Evander's, also known as Poison-Ivy to me. Is Sage's older sister, but you wouldn't even guess they grew up in the same household by mere personalities alone.

She is everything bad personified, in fact she reminds me of someone I know named Cassie DuVall, but Ivy would put Cassie's reputation to shame with her bitchiness.

I open the door letting him in. "Go straight upstairs, mom and dad are grilling me about Nai."

"Yes sir," unlike everything else about Sage I'm the only one that knows just how bad his and Ivy's relationship is. I was over once changing into my bathers behind a door when I'd heard her have a go at him.

The thing is, I know the difference between normal sibling relationships where insults are thrown around – ergo my cousins, and just pure hatred. She has pure hatred.

The things she'd said to him, I never want to repeat again. That shit hurt me. Me. And she wasn't even talking to me, so I wonder how he must've felt. Especially with how easily he'd brushed it off as soon as I'd entered the scene.

I watch as Sage disappears down the hallway and I go to mom and dad once again but moms left leaving dad only. He looks up from his phone not even in the mood to question who was at the door. "We'll talk about this later Atlas. Go pack for your new school." Right, the boarding school.

"Dad we still have another three weeks." I reason, why would I need to pack now?

Dads fingers stop furiously tapping at the screen and he looks back up at me again. "Atlas don't test me right now. Go pack." Fine. I head up the stairs pissed. Don't hear me out. I don't care.

'Do this Atlas.'

'Do that Atlas.'

'Smile for the camera Atlas.'

'I don't care if you're crying, suck it up.'

'Just give them what they wan't.'

"Fuck!" The door slams behind me and I enter my bedroom room. I walk straight into Sage whose spinning himself on my chair. "Sage?"

"Wait, it's get one more spin in it." The chair spins, and he's right because it's only once more before he's facing me. "Yes Atlas." He grins, doing a complete one eighty from where he was a couple minutes ago, but I'm not stupid I know Sage. He's masking.

"What'd you parents say after finding out Ambers the one who exposed you?" I ask, needing the bed where I take a seat at the edge of it.

He looks up at me for a second, "well, right now as we speak Moms probably pouring gasoline over her lawn whilst dads got the lighter. Why?"

I roll my eyes, "I'm being serious Sage."

"I don't know I left before they could say anything."

"So you're in hiding?"

He nods. "Yes."

"At my house?"

"Yes."

"And your mother is on the loose?"

"Yes."

"Get the fuck out! Are you serious?" No way am I facing the wrath of Helem Evanders. That woman has had me in fear of her ever since the first time I saw chasing Sage around the house with a wet mop.

"Dead."

"Well, we're fucked."

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