Page 48 of Downfall

My stomach churns, bile rising up my throat at the image he paints.

It’s almost three in the morning when I sneak in through the back door of my house. I’m ready to punch in the code for the alarm but it doesn’t start beeping. They must have forgotten to set it tonight. Oh, well. Not my problem. Toeing off my boots, I start to head upstairs when I hear a noise, like a glass clinking. I turn around and my father is right there in the living room, pouring himself another whiskey from the decanter.

“Who’d you fuck tonight, son?” he asks, his usually controlled voice weighted with a slight slur. He’s drunk.

Shaking my head, I turn to go upstairs but his voice rings out louder now.

“I asked you a fucking question, Declan.”

“No one,” I say, partly because it’s the truth. What I did with Skylar wasn’t fucking—it was…I’m not sure I even have words for it— and partly because if I tell him to go fuck himself like I really want to, it will make things worse.

“Bullshit,” he sneers, and I already know this is going to be bad. My dad has berated me, belittled me, and humiliated me more times than I can count, but he usually does it with world-class restraint. The fact that he's cursing now means he's lost his composure. “Come here.”

Shoving off the staircase, I take my time walking over to him.

He picks up his glass, taking a gulp before he sets it back down on the monogrammed coaster laid out in front of him. “You think I don’t know what they say about you?” His laugh is cruel, mocking.“That my son is a whore. That he’ll fuck anyone with a pulse.”

My chest burns, but I don’t let on that his words have any effect on me. I stand there stoic, taking every blow he hurls at me, unblinking, unfeeling.

“Who was it this time? One of the little cheerleader sluts you like to sneak into your room at night? Or that Galloway girl who follows you around like a lost fucking puppy?”

My jaw tenses at the mention of Skylar, and even though he’s drunk, I can tell the second he notices the shift.

“Ah, I see. Well, I can’t say I’m angry. She comes from a good family.” By "good family," he means wealthy. “From what I’ve heard, she doesn’t have any interest in running her father’s company, which means as his son-in-law, you could convince him to let you take it over. Think of the deal we could make to acquire it.”

I feel physically sick, like I might throw up as his eyes gleam with greed. All he sees is money. That’s all he’s ever cared about. That and making me feel like shit as some sort of power play.

“She’s not bad to look at either.” His voice wraps around my neck, squeezing like a boa constrictor. “I bet she’d be submissive like your mother.”

That’s all it takes. I see red. In one swift move, I stalk forward, knocking everything off the coffee table. The decanter bounces off the floor and spills all over the Persian rug that probably costs more than my future college tuition. It’s not good enough, though. I snatch it up, hurling it at the wall, where it shatters into tiny pieces, spraying the remaining brown liquid over the white walls.

If my father is shocked, he doesn’t show it. He remains seated, his glass in his hand as if my tantrum is nothing but a mild annoyance. That won’t do either. Stomping forward, I take the glass from him, hurling it at the wall, before I get so close to his face that our foreheads almost touch.

“Don’t ever fucking talk about her again.” I realize he may not know whether I’m referring to Skylar or my mother, but that’s okay. There’s a part of me that still wants to protect my mom like when I was little, but then there’s the part that died in that closet. I tell myself she didn’t know because the alternative is too painful, but how could she not?

It doesn’t matter because Skylar will never be like her. I won’t allow it.

He backs up, slowly removing himself from his spot on the couch, and before I know it, he’s towering over me. He flicks his eyes to the mess I’ve made before turning back to me, his lips spreading in a caustic grin. “You think you’re so different from me? You think I didn’t use and discard girls when I was your age? You think I still don’t? It’s called discretion, Declan. You may be stupid and weak, but someday you’ll realize that when it comes to women, you and I…” he gestures between us. “are exactly the same.”

With that, he walks up the stairs without sparing me a second glance. That’s when I understand how stupid I really am for thinking I could have her, that things could be different. But they can’t. Even if it means losing the only light I have left, I won’t extinguish it like he did to my mother. I have to let her go even if it hurts both of us in the process. She’ll be better off without me.

“I asked you a question, Declan.”

My father’s voice pulls me back to the present, cutting through the memories of that night when I chose to destroy what Skylar and I had because I didn’t know any better. His condescending tone is the same, even if he is sober and using different words, and it still grates against my skin.

I force my eyes to meet his, knowing exactly why he’s here. He doesn’t give a fuck about the house, but he does care about the same thing he did all those years ago. The very thing that is no longer theoretical, but very real.

As his son-in-law, you could convince him to let you take it over.

Now that Skylar’s father is gone, there is no convincing needed.

“Get the fuck out, Marshall,” I snap.

He holds his hands up, the gold cufflinks at his wrists shining in the sunlight spilling in from outside. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

Even after he disappears into his black car, leaving nothing but tire marks in the gravel driveway, his threat hangs heavy in the air.

He’ll be in touch.