The smile he presented me with was cold and ugly. “You’re right, throwing around baseless accusations is for the uneducated riff-raff, so I’m not surprised you’re doing it.”
I laughed. “Good one. You got me. That would actually hurt if I gave a shit what you thought about me. Good thing I never did.”
His smile fell away, and he leaned forward. “Dakota, stop wasting my time. And if you have this much free time on your hands, then?—”
“So it’s true? Wow. You’re a bigger piece of shit than I thought.”
If it wasn’t true, he would’ve kept smiling. If it wasn’t true, he would’ve laughed in my face.
This motherfucker.
A muscle in Albert’s jaw ticced as he glared at me, and for the first time in my life, I felt like punching someone.
Was this how Reese felt all the time? That vicious little tiger was so quick to throw his fists around, and I was starting to understand why.
“I don’t know why you think?—”
I didn’t want to listen to a single word of him trying to lie and cover his ass. “Well you can thank your perfect, lovely, kind-hearted, do-no-wrong son Everett for telling me. Though I guess he’s not so perfect now, huh?”
Oh, I waslivingfor the rage in his eyes. I’d finally gotten under his skin, and I planned on staying for a while.
I leaned forward and smiled. “Yeah. So here’s what we’re gonna do, Albert. Well, here’s whatyou’regonna do. You’re gonna back the fuck off Reese and never talk to him again unless it’s to tell him congratulations on graduating.”
Now he did smile. “And what makes you think I’ll do any of that? He’s absolutely nothing. He’s been useless, anyway. Not worth a single second of my time.”
I scratched my jaw, trying to dispel this buzz of anger that was trying to spread through my body. Fuck, I really hated him. “Okay. Whatisworth your time? A scandal? I can just imagine the look on the boards’ faces when they read the headlines.Dean of prestigious arts academy has been having an affair with his secretary, who’s twenty-five years younger than him—and he’s married!” I gasped dramatically. “Gosh, what will they think? What willEvelynthink? No, wait, I guess you were counting on the fact that there’s not much going on upstairs anymore, weren’t you? Too bad the rest of the world is still capable of critical thinking.”
His face was getting redder and redder with every word I spoke, and the desire to crush him into nothing was growing stronger. It was ugly, that feeling; I hated it and loved it at the same time.
“You think you can just fuck around with people you consider beneath you forever? You’ve been looking down your nose at the rest of us for way too long, and you’re nothing but garbage wrapped in gold foil.”
The expression on his face was strained, like he had to take a shit. “I think perhaps it’s time to excise the dead limbs from the tree. Spouting nonsense with no evidence, as usual.”
He’d threatened to disown me before—and always with the same ridiculous analogy—so that was nothing new. And that’s all it was—a threat. He’d never actually do it because it would make him look bad.
It always came back to maintaining his perfect image. What a superficial, shallow existence he had. I didn’t feel bad for him, though. He’d chosen this.
“Oh, yeah, that’s perfectly fine with me. And maybe I don’t have concrete evidence, but wouldn’t a smartly placed rumor have the same effect? Once it gets going, there’s no stopping it, and the truth gets muddied in what people are eager to believe. I should know.” I huffed a humorless laugh. “But a rumor that holds the weight of the truth is even more effective, and it’ll get people poking around in places you really don’t want them. Won’t it, Albie?”
Maybe I harbored extra resentment toward him because he’d sired the most evil offspring I’d ever had the displeasure to meet, and he let him get away with everything.
I didn’t feel like putting up with any of it anymore. It was bad enough that Val was occasionally affected by Everett’s malice. Val was part of the family and he knew the deal. But for Reese to be dragged into my family’s bullshit…that crossed the line.
Albert drummed his fingers on the desk, then rapped it with a knuckle. “Well. I was going to tell him I had no need for him anyway, so this just speeds things along. As you were, Dakota.”
He turned toward his computer, dismissing me.
I would let him have the last word because I’d won, in the end.
Except as I walked out of the building and made my way back to the dorm, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
The only way to get rid of it would be to confront Reese, and I wasn’t looking forward to that.
What if I asked him about it and he said it was true? What if that completely ended things between us?
I was terrified of losing him.
For the first time in my life, I was excited to wake up in the morning. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time anything made me excited to wake up in the morning. Apathy and indifference and this need to provoke were all I’d known for so long that they became integral parts of me, and it felt like they’d never leave. Like rust I couldn’t chip away.
