Wayo is... MINE

30

Park thought back to the summer that deadened his heart and the person that brought him back to life...

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Park POV

I sat on my bed dressed in a black tux dreading having to face the night's event. Tonight, was the charity benefit event my mother had wanted me to attend with her. I remembered back to the animated expression on her face when she was trying to get me to agree to go. She kept waving the invitation in my face and taunted me, "Come on Love, you know you want to go. Don't you want to make your mother happy?" She teased with a bright smile on her face.

She'd been diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago and that was the first time in a long time that I had seen her laugh and smile.

Growing up, I had thought our family was happy, the three of us together. It wasn't until 6 months after my mother started receiving treatments, that I learned the truth. After an afternoon of taking care of her, I had found an envelope on her bedside table. In it were documents about my father embezzling money from some of the companies that were in her name, dating from right after my mother got sick, as well as multiple pictures of him with different women.

I had looked at my mother's frail sick body resting on the bed. Up until that point in my life I don't think I'd ever felt rage, pure hateful rage.

That night I confronted my father. He laughed at me and said that my mother had kept him on a leash all those years refusing to sign the companies she owned over to him and as a man he wasn't going to allow her to control him any longer. That now that she was sick, this was his opportunity.

I got angry and tried to hit him. He pushed me to the floor and told me I was weak, and there was nothing I was going to be able to do to stop him.

Over the years his behavior and affairs had become more blatant. He no longer cared about hiding them from my mother. Every time we saw another picture of him with a women in the tabloids, or had to cover up another theft, my mother's sickness would worsen. I could see the physical toll it took on her, but she never said a word to me.

The night of my 18th birthday, she informed me that she had met with her lawyers and that she had signed full ownership of all the companies over to me and that with these responsibilities would come the power that I would need to live my life anyway that I chose. That was her gift to me. Freedom.

She died of heart complications the summer before my first year of college started. That was 2 months ago.

Now, here I was dressed, invitation in hand, waiting to enter the event location. I wasn't good around people anymore. I hadn't been for a long time. After I found out the kind of man my father really was, I developed trust issues.

I started to watch the people around me and my mother closely. I took notice of their habits; good and bad. How often they lied or made excuses. How the nurses, staff, and even my own father tried taking advantage of my mother.

I began to hate people. I couldn't see the good in them anymore. I had closed myself off.

Now standing in this room filled with people, enjoying themselves, I could only feel disgust. I handed my invitation to the guard and entered the party.

I spent the next two hours speaking to business acquaintances and making new ones. While speaking to the owner of a company I was thinking about buying, we heard a commotion. I turned and saw my father enter the room with one of the women he was keeping.

I took a deep breath and tried to steady my shaking hands. I reached for a glass of champagne and my hand slipped and I  dropped it. On instinct I reached down to pick up the glass and cut my hand. A waiter directed me towards a private bathroom where he said someone would bring me bandages and antiseptic.