Page 16 of The King (Masterpiece Duet 1)
All the street lamps have blown out here, maybe on purpose. The only light is the moon, and when it shines over his dark eyes, the reflection makes them look silver.
He may not work with his father, but he’s become him.
“And that’s supposed to make it better?” I manage to ask. “That you do them for your own gain instead of working for your father?”
“Better? No, but it’s definitely more lucrative this way.”
It’s upsetting that he looks so clean and crisp and beautiful standing beside a run-down tenement. Upsetting that he looks so good when he’s clearly a bad man. That his movie star smile hides a terrible broken soul. “You’re not the boy I knew.”
“No,” he agrees. “Are you the girl I knew?”
“You’ll never find out.”
He tilts his head to the side, as if demurring. Too much of a gentleman to tell me I’m wrong. Except he’s no gentleman. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to speak to your father.”
My heart thuds. “Why?”
“He owes me money.”
Oh God. Daddy, what have you done? “He doesn’t.”
I’m only delaying the inevitable, but I can’t think right now. Can’t deal with the fact that we have rent due in two days and barely enough money to cover it. How will we pay back hundreds of dollars?
Damon looks to the side a little. As if he’s embarrassed by my horror. Or maybe bored. He straightens the cuffs of his fine white shirt, perfectly tailored to his broad chest and narrow waist. He might be waiting in the eaves for an opera to begin, so casually refined.
“How dare you?” I whisper, waiting for him to meet my eyes, daring him.
He glances back at me, one dark eyebrow raised. “Pardon?”
“You know he doesn’t have a way to pay you back. How dare you loan him money? Charging insane interest rates he’ll never be able to afford. How dare you?”
A small laugh. “Would you have preferred I told him no? He would have gone straight to my father, who would have charged him higher interest than I did.”
“I hate you,” I say, tears stinging my eyes. “I hate you both.”
“And it’s not quite true that he doesn’t have a way to pay the money back.”
The silence spins out in brutal possibility. “How?”
“He has you.”
Part Two
The King
Chapter Seven
When I first came to live with Daddy he worked in a prison-release program at Goodwill. He would pick things out of the donation piles to bring home. A Barbie with her hair cut jagged. A half-empty box of tinker toys. It was when he brought home the Rubik’s Cube that we hit the jackpot.
Some of the stickers had been torn or smudged away, but the colors were still visible. Only one sticker was gone completely, but a quick count of the sides told me it was yellow.
I sat down in front of the armchair, still worn and lumpy then. My legs crisscrossed, my heart pumping. And in twenty minutes solved the cube for the first time.
Daddy watched with a strange look in his eyes.
When I was done he turned the columns this way and that, trying his best to make sure no two colors were side by side. This time I already had practice. It took fifteen minutes.
So many evenings we sat like that, him messing up the cube, me putting it right.
That was before he lost the job at Goodwill, before he turned heavy to gambling. Before I met Damon Scott and began to hide what I could do.
Though I guess we’re still in old patterns. Daddy messing things up.
Me putting it right.
I can tell Daddy’s home before I put my key in the lock. Something about the air feels heavy with despair, with guilt—though maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I want him to be sorry for what he’s done. But the only thing I feel when I feed my addiction, when I breathe in the sharp tang of numbers is relief.
He sits in his lumpy armchair, the secondhand metal cane leaning against the side.
My feet seem to slow down as I approach him. As much as I need to have this confrontation, as many questions and accusations are swirling inside me, I wish I were anywhere but here.
I don’t bother to sit on the lumpy couch or the wooden coffee table with a crack down the side. Instead I sit down at his feet, crossing my legs. In the same place I sat so many times. The same way I did when I was a little girl.
That’s how I feel right now. Small and helpless.
In Daddy’s eyes I find terrible confirmation.
“I’m sorry,” he says gruffly.
“I don’t understand. Why would you borrow from Damon Scott?” When his lips press together, my heart stops. “Oh God. You owe someone else.”
He shakes his head, as if struggling to understand it himself. “I thought if I could pay off the debt with Damon Scott I’d have more time. So I borrowed from someone else. Pretty soon I owed almost everyone in the city money.”
