The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,137

secrets. In all of the years that I’ve mourned my grandfather, I never imagined that I’d ever be glad he was gone.

I can’t imagine how I would feel having this conversation with him. The thought alone is more painful than I can bear.

She shrinks, her chest caving in before she recovers, squares her jaw and holds my angry gaze with her defiant one. I see so much of myself in her right now, it frightens me. Would I have been capable of it?

“Remi, we wanted to protect you.” She says with no remorse.

“You are a liar,” I roar in her face and she leans back as if my words were hands that were shoving her away from me. We’ve butted heads my whole life. But she has never seen me lose my cool.

Her eyes widen, but then relax again and she swallows and composes herself. Like she’s an actor who has rehearsed a scene and is now preparing to perform it for an audience. Her chin tilts up, her expression is stoic, nearly regal. “I am what life has made me. Your grandfather and I thought it best you didn’t know the truth.”

“People get divorced all the time. Men leave their wives all of the time. Why did you have to pretend he died? You held a fucking funeral.” I shake my head in disbelief when she merely nods. The last vestiges of my restraint force my hands into fists at my side. I throw my head back, feel the strain of the tendons in my neck as I hold back the howl of pain clawing at the back of my throat. “Why?” I shout.

“Because everyone was told that he died. It wasn’t just you—”

“Do you hear yourself? He was my father.” I bellow at her, just completely beside myself at this point.

In the blink of an eyes, nothing is the same.

Including me. I’ve lived my entire adult life in service of living up to the legend they built in my father’s name. It’s all a fucking lie. And now, I’m done with it. I knew she was manipulative. But this…I’ll never be able to understand.

“How could you do it?” Wonder seeps through the brittle cracks in my anger as I take her in. “I’ve spent my entire life wondering why he died so young. The night before my thirty-second birthday I was crippled with fear because I was sure it would be the year I died, too. Regan and Tyson have so many of the same fears. How could you do that to your children?” I ask, knowing that there’s no answer that would suffice.

“Remi, your father wasn’t just anybody. He was the heir to this empire we were building. His name wasn’t his own. It belongs to all of us. We weren’t going to let his selfishness ruin everything we’d built.” She spits out.

“He left you. Not his family.” I remind her.

Her face contorts with anger

“He didn’t just leave me.” She slaps her chest with her open palm. “He left you and Regan and Tyson. And his father. His entire family.”

I can see that, even now, she feels no remorse. In the instant it takes to snuff out a candle, any lingering affection I had for her disappears.

“He betrayed us. Spectacularly, callously. He left you.” She insists. A day ago, those words would have hurt, but I know they’re not true.

I read his letter. I put my hand in my pocket and stroke the outline of the key inside the envelope.

“We gave him a choice. Us or her. And he chose her.”

“I don’t blame him. You were the alternative.”

She marches up to me and slaps me. Hard enough to turn my head. But, I barely feel it. I don’t feel anything but empty and rudderless.

“He loved me.” Her voice wobbles and she pants, her breaths coming hard and shallow. “I was his wife. I gave him children. We had plans. Then, she came back.” She deflates and sinks into the seat behind her. Her body droops like a broken doll.

“It happened so fast. Your grandfather warned him. Then he followed through on it. Cut him out.”

“Because he loved someone else?” I shake my head in disgust.

“Because he was disloyal,” her retort comes out as a growl. “A year later he left her too. Walked out and never came back. Probably fell face down in a ditch somewhere, piss drunk and never woke up.”

“She thinks he’s alive.”

My mother blinks like I splashed water in her eyes.

“She’s delusional.” Her eyes