“He’ll do nothing.”
I laugh softly. “You’re wrong. You are so wrong. Trust me on this, I know better than you.”
“Then we just won’t tell him.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Tell him what, exactly?”
“Whatever it is you don’t want him to know.”
“There is nothing I don’t want him to know.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is!”
A third voice bursts in: “There you are!”
I snap my head toward the house, see Dad storming out into the garden. Duncan just smirks at me, like this is all a game.
“You really don’t want to be pissing my Dad off,” I say to him quickly. “I mean, about anything at all. He’s got a temper.”
“I can handle your father.”
“Duncan!”
“Yes, Glass,” Duncan says, turning toward Dad, his voice more than a little bored.
“Get inside! Let’s spar.”
“I thought you had business to attend to.”
“Well, it fell through. Come on, show me what all my money has bought me.”
Duncan looks back at me for a moment.
“You’d better go,” I whisper at him.
“I’ll see you tonight, Dee.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Good luck.”
“Don’t need it.”
He swaggers off toward Dad, who glares at me for a moment – as if I’m somehow responsible for his rotten mood – and then walks with Duncan back toward the house.
Again, I catch Duncan looking over his shoulder at me, and I look at him.
And I’m terrified at how their sparring session is going to go.
I know Dad hates to lose, and I have no doubt that Duncan can win.
I just wonder if he’ll be smart enough to not win so convincingly.
Chapter Nine
Someone I have never seen sets down a bowl of steaming soup in front of me. I turn to the woman, short, round, eyes-down.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Thank you, sir,” she says immediately, her voice quiet, before disappearing out of the door.
“Who is that?” I ask.
Glass clears his throat. I look at him, see the bright purple welt on his forehead, and the dark line of his split lip. Unconsciously, my hand goes to my own face, where I run over the slight swelling at the side of my jaw.
It was a good sparring session. I won, but he surprised me for an old man.
“That’s Susan,” Glass says irritably. “She’s on my staff, forget about her.”
Forget about her.
He just treats people like disposable things, even the people who work for him.
I turn to Deidre, sitting opposite me along the lengthy, narrow table. She doesn’t meet my eyes, and instead looks down at her soup.
“Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?” Glass growls, and when I snap my head to him, I notice he’s staring angrily at Deidre.
“Glass,” I say, pulling his attention away. “What was that move, you spun on your heel, like a pivot, but it was a fake, you bounced off and went the other way.”
He grins at me, slurps soup off his spoon. “I came up with that.”
“Yeah? It was good.” I rub my jaw, sell it. “You got me good.”
“Damn right I did, boy. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, we don’t talk about work at the table.”
But now his mood has lightened, and I look at Deidre, and her eyes are on me.
We all drink our soup in uncomfortable silence.
“Excuse me,” Glass says after a moment, as if unable to bear it any longer. “I have to make a telephone call.”
He exits the dining room, and once the door is closed, Dee says to me, “Oh my God, did you do that to his face?”
I nod at her. “Yeah, but we were wearing padded helmets. Is he always like this at dinner?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he always get on you?”
She nods slowly.
Distantly, through the heavy wooden doors we can hear his angry voice shouting on the phone.
“Does he always do business during dinner?”
“We haven’t had an uninterrupted dinner in years,” Dee tells me. “Not that I mind. It’s not like we talk.”
“Why not?”
She frowns, bristles almost. “How the hell should I know? He’s just a prick.”
“You shouldn’t let him push you around. He’s a bully.”
“He’s my father.”
“So?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I set down my spoon. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t have a father.”
“Yeah, but there were plenty of bullies in my life.”
“You just joined this family,” she says. “Don’t think you understand how it works.”