“Charles Holsan, you’re an arrogant prick and you’ve been treating my best friend like shit. Now put a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly, or leave her the hell alone.” She laughs, her serious expression disintegrating into a broad smile that illuminates her whole face. She looks just like Lacey. Beautiful.
“He’s nowhere near as bad as everyone thinks he is. You should get to know him a little better. He really likes you two.”
“He doesn’t like me. He hates me,” my father says. “I can’t do anything right for the man.”
“He’s just never had an accountant before, Paul. Don’t worry. It’s just his dry English humor. It takes some getting used to. All right, I have to go. You,” the woman, Duchess, says to my mom, her manicured fingernails suddenly visible on screen as she points, “need to remember to show your husband some love. He’ll start to think you’re playing favorites.”
Mom smiles at Paul over her shoulder, hugging me tightly to her chest. “Awww, baby. You know I love you, right?” She breaks out into a wicked smile. “But I do love Zeth more. He came from you and me. He’s perfection. I will never love anything in the world as much as I love this little boy.”
My heart feels like it’s doing somersaults in my chest. My eyes are burning like crazy. I try to shunt myself into a more upright position, but my body is so fucking sore. I need to get up. I need to find Sloane and Michael. I grit my teeth, using a combination of what little upper body strength and momentum I have to lift myself.
A voice speaks out into the darkness, almost right on top of me. I nearly shit my pants. “That was always ’er fucking problem, y’know? She always did love you more than anything or anybody else.”
Charlie Holsan is sitting to my right, comfortably slouched in an upholstered seat. He turns and gives me a clinical once over. “Not lookin’ so hot, my boy. You got a bad ’eadache?”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“Ha! I fuckin’ love it. You always did have a fuckin’ mouth on you.” Charlie goes back to watching the screen, as though I don’t even exist. I take a moment to look around. No bodyguards. No Sloane. No Michael. No Lacey. No one. Just him and me in an empty movie theater. It’s an old place, traditional. The kind of place with brocaded curtains that draw apart at the beginning of a feature, unveiling the new, fantastical world you’re about to immerse yourself in. No drink holders or recline features on the seats. From the elaborately scrolled cornicing on the ceiling and the grand arch over the screen, this place was definitely built back in the twenties.
I wrestle myself to my knees, and then throw myself back into a chair to my left. “Where are the others, Charlie? Where the hell is Sloane? What the fuck are you up to?”
Charlie holds up a hand, pointing one finger in the air. The video reel of my mother and me starts all over again. Her laughter. Are you ready, baby? Oh my god, Paul. Watch. Watch. Me taking my bumbling first steps down an uneven pathway.
“I loved your mother from the very moment I set eyes on her. Did you know that?” Charlie says, ignoring my question.
I want to cut out the fucker’s tongue just for talking about her. I will not engage in this with him. I will find my friends, and then I will end this miserable bastard’s life. “Where. The. Fuck. Are. They?”
Charlie looks at me again, a small, amused smile on his face. “They’re watchin’ another movie, I’m afraid. They weren’t too keen on this feature. ’Specially not your sister. She’s had a rough few days.”
“Because you convinced her the Duchess was her mother, when she wasn’t, you fuck. And now the woman’s dead.”
“And now the woman’s dead,” Charlie agrees, slowly nodding his head. He taps his index finger against his chin, appearing to muse over something. “It was pretty shitty of me to do that, I suppose. But this life is a circular thing, if anything at all. The Duchess wanted kids so fuckin’ bad. She couldn’t ’ave ’em, though. And your mother stole Lacey away from me before I even ’ad a chance to get a look at her. So I thought it prudent to take Lacey away from ’er in the end. Give her to the Duchess.”
“The Duchess is dead. My mother’s dead. You can’t seek revenge against the dead, Charlie. You sure as fuck can’t make up for your failures as a human being by giving a dead woman a fake daughter, either.”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Zeth, my boy. I firmly believe in an afterlife, and I firmly believe your mother is watching down on ’er kids. So she can definitely hurt over me fucking with what Lacey believes. And she can definitely ’urt because ’er precious boy knows she was a fucking prostitute. I took everything from ’er. I made it so neither of ’em could work. Not a single person your parents knew would ’elp ’em for fear of what would ’appen if I found out, you see. I made it so there was only one option left open to her, and I made fucking sure it ruined your mother’s marriage.” He grins. “Exactly ’ow I wanted it. That was before I knew she was pregnant with my kid, of course, but still. All’s well that ends well, right?”