Page 87 of Unhinged Cain

“I still don’t like having sex in her room, Mrs. L. I get what you said about this being a ‘fuck you’ to her, but it feels weird like she’s watching us.”

“Turn that off right now,” my mother ordered from the bed. I looked between her and the video. She was scared.

“No, I think I’ll let this play out. What else did you say, Mother?”

“Don’t be silly, Peter. No one is watching, and besides, my daughter is a selfish train wreck that would be going nowhere without me. She was lucky to have you and couldn’t even manage to hang on to the one good thing in her life.”

Cain hit pause, and I covered my mouth.

“There is a lot more, but you get the idea,” he said, and my mother tried to look around me to see who was talking.

“What is this? Did you hire a P.I.?”

“You would think that,” I said.

That question made me laugh. Peter began to moan and blink, and the look on his face was one that I wanted to photograph and frame.

He tried to speak through the ball gag in his mouth, and I caught the word ‘sorry’ in his jumbled mumble. I held up my hand, stopping him.

“Save it. I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“So, you’ve been caught in your lie,” I said to my mother. “What else should I know?” I directed the question over my shoulder to Cain.

“Ask her about your father,” he said, and my eyebrows shot up.

Turning back to my mother, I cocked my head as she licked her lips. “What about my father?”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about. I told you before I don’t know who he is. Your father and I were going through a tough time, and I made a mistake. Why are you stirring up these old wounds? Are you purposely trying to upset my daughter and drive a wedge between us?”

“Don’t get pissy with him. He’s the only one in this room that has been honest with me from the day we met.” Walking forward, I leaned over my mother and grabbed her chin as Cain had once done to me. “What should I know about my father?”

“I told you. Nothing,” she said and tried to yank her head away, but I held it firm.

“She’s lying,” Cain said. He was my calm, my steady as the turmoil of emotion began to brew.

“Shut up,” my mother snarled at Cain. Not a smart move, but she didn’t know that yet.

“Tell me,” I said to her, and she clamped her mouth shut. “Unbelievable. Even now, you can’t be straight with me. Fine, have it your way.” I glanced back at Cain, who was still hovering in the shadows. “What should I know?”

“Do you want to know all of it?”

“Yes.”

“Your father that you call Dad didn’t simply drift apart from you. When he and your mother got a divorce, he was a stay-at-home father and would’ve taken your mother for half of everything. She didn’t like that, so she told him she’d press charges against him for abuse. She said that she’d use the full power of her position to make his life miserable and ruin him if he didn’t leave you behind, and she wasn’t giving him a cent.”

My mouth fell open, and I looked back at my mother. “You were blackmailing Dad with fake charges? What kind of demon mother are you? You first cheat on him, rip apart our family, and then proceed to threaten him?”

“I’d worked my entire life to get where I was. I had to fight tooth and nail and claw over anyone that got in my way to reach the top of my game, and I wasn’t letting your father drag me down into a heated battle in court over money that was mine. If he’d been a better husband in the first place, I wouldn’t have stepped out.”

I stumbled back from the bed. “What the fuck? Do you even hear yourself? I spent years agonizing over why Dad didn’t want anything to do with me, I blamed myself for him leaving, and this whole time you knew why and kept your mouth shut?”

“Don’t be so soft and naive, Kirby. I’m a woman working in a man’s world. You do what you have to do to stay ahead. That means in your professional and personal life. Besides, you were hanging around him too much. Your head was always in the clouds like his, wanting to flit from thing to thing with no purpose. He supported you to do whatever you wanted, even when it was a stupid idea. Not that separating you two did any good. You’re still a waif of a personality. So embarrassing.”

I bit my lip but refused to cry. This woman wasn’t getting any more of my tears. “Arrogant, always so fucking arrogant. What else should I know?”

“That’s it, now you know everything, so can you untie me now?”

“That’s not all,” Cain chimed in. His voice was soft and yet as lethal as a blade.