Chapter 3Rigging My Father's Deadly Game

CRACK—

A sharp clap of thunder rattled the bedroom windows.

The heavy, official paper slipped from my trembling fingers and fluttered to the carpet.

Betty wasn't my mother's daughter.

She was my father's child, born from an affair with another woman.

The "moon and the stars." The "will of the universe." The sacred altar of "fairness."

It was all a grotesque, meticulously crafted lie.

He didn't worship fairness. He worshipped his own ego. He engineered this entire charade so he could shamelessly siphon the lifeblood from my mother and me, funneling every dollar, every opportunity, and every drop of devotion to his golden, illegitimate child.

I snatched the paper off the floor and stormed back upstairs, throwing my weight against the locked door of his office.

Inside, I could hear them laughing—a warm, cozy chuckle between a father and daughter charting out a glorious, European future. Meanwhile, the woman who had raised her, the woman whose marriage he had desecrated, was rotting away a few walls over.

"Open the door!"

I pounded my fists against the wood until my knuckles cracked and bled.

"Richard! Open this goddamn door!"

The laughter inside cut off abruptly.

A heavy silence followed before the lock finally clicked, and the door swung open.

My father stood in the doorway. His eyes dropped to the crumpled paternity test in my bleeding hand, and all the color drained from his face, leaving him a sickly, ashen gray.

Behind him, Betty clutched the edge of the mahogany desk, her eyes wide with a panicked, cornered look.

"Where... where did you get that?" he demanded, his voice tight.

I ignored the question, shoved past him into the sanctum of his office, and slammed the paper down onto his immaculate leather blotter.

"Is this your fairness?" I screamed, my voice tearing at the seams. "Is this the will of the universe?"

I pointed a shaking, bloodied finger at Betty.

"To give your little bastard a glamorous life, you were willing to sacrifice me? To sacrifice Mom?"

"Are you even human?!"

"Shut your mouth!"

His face flushed a violent, mottled purple. He lunged at me, raising his hand high.

This time, Betty didn't step in.

SMACK.

The back of his hand connected squarely with my jaw. The sheer force of the blow sent me crashing into the bookshelf and down to the hardwood floor. The right side of my face went entirely numb, and the hot, metallic taste of copper flooded my mouth.

He stood over me, his chest heaving, his eyes bloodshot and feral.

"I told you from the very beginning. She is the moon, and you are just a star!"

"A star's only job is to stay in the background! You were put on this earth to give her everything she needs!"

"Your mother should be on her knees thanking God that her pathetic life could help build Betty's future!"

He was finally done pretending.

He had ripped off the mask of the benevolent, spiritually enlightened patriarch, revealing the rotting, profoundly selfish monster underneath.

Betty stood behind him, looking down at me. The panic in her eyes had dissolved, replaced by a chilling mixture of triumphant gloating and condescending pity.

Right at that moment, the office door pushed open wider.

My mother stood in the doorway. She gripped the doorframe with skeletal hands, looking less like a person and more like a ghost tethered to the earth by sheer willpower.

She had heard every word.

Those cloudy, sunken eyes didn't hold anger or sorrow. They were completely, devastatingly hollow. A total dead zone.

She looked at my father, taking in his twisted, rage-fueled face.

Slowly, agonizingly, she dragged her failing body across the floor until she stood right in front of him.

She raised her frail, paper-thin hand.

Smack.

It was a pathetic, barely audible sound. A slap with no physical force behind it.

But it broke my father's brain.

He stared at her, utterly bewildered. He couldn't comprehend that this woman—the woman who had bowed her head and swallowed his poison for decades—dared to strike him.

His shock instantly curdled into volcanic rage, and he needed a target. He spun around, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and hauled me off the floor.

"This is all your fault! You little plague!" he spat, spittle flying onto my face. "You're killing your mother!"

With a guttural roar, he shoved me backward with all his strength.

My spine hit the edge of the heavy desk, and the back of my skull slammed violently against the paneled wall. A brilliant flash of white light exploded behind my eyes, followed by a suffocating darkness.

Right before I lost consciousness, I saw my mother staring at me, her eyes stretched wide in horror.

The very last flicker of life in her gaze snuffed out.

She collapsed backward, stiff and sudden, like a felled tree crashing to the forest floor.