1
Dom
THE CUFFLINKS WERE still there, glinting under the morning light as he adjusted them. I’d forgotten about them until now. But walking into Rutherford & Blake, intohisoffice, they were all I could look at.
Jack & Margaret - Forever
A lie etched into a metal that outlived her. My throat felt like someone had poured concrete down it.
The office looked exactly the same, smelled the same. It had been many years since I’d set foot in this place, and yet the moment I crossed the threshold, I was dragged back to that day. Raw. Angry. Bleeding from wounds, all compliments to this man.
Even now, Jack Rutherford didn’t disappoint.
He leaned back in his chair, every inch the king holding court. Perfectly composed. Perfectly cold. He’d been lecturing me for the last five minutes about God knows what, and I’d let him talk because I was curious how long it’d take him to get to the point.
I hoped he was dying. That would be news worth listening to. Still, it didn’t warrant a face-to-face.
His hand moved to his other wrist, adjusting the matching cufflink. That fucking piece of gold Mom gave him on their anniversary. I remembered because she’d been so excited about it. The fact that he still wore it wasn’t about love or memory. It was performance art. Guilt dressed up as devotion.
“You think you can coast through life forever?” His voice cut through my thoughts. “You want to keep acting like a child, do it on your own money. I’m done enabling you.”
There it was. The point.
My chest tightened, but not from disappointment. From the sheer predictability. Jack Rutherford’s solution to everything uncomfortable: throw money at it or take money away from it. Never mind that I hadn’t touched his money in years. Never mind that cutting me off financially was about as threatening as cutting off my access to his golf club.
What I heard was noise. Empty air from a man who’d stopped being a father the day he decided my grief was an inconvenience to his life.
Refusing to waste another breath on him, I flashed him a smile. It wasn’t a real smile, more like baring teeth. “You cut me off because you like control. Let’s not dress it up as fatherly concern.”
He paused, and if I hadn’t been watching his face, I would have missed the way a muscle ticked in his jaw. It was the only sign that he was holding back violence.
“Tell me, Dominic.” His voice dropped, taking on a lawyer tone that could cut steel. “What are you doing with your life?”
I let the question sit. It was the same one that kept me awake most nights, wondering if my broken pieces would ever fit back. But I’d be damned if I gave him the satisfaction of seeing that wound.
So I stared at him instead, at this stranger wearing my father’s face, before delivering the blow I’d been saving.
“Better than someone who’s fucking his secretary even before his wife’s cold.”
I watched the words land. His face went white, then red. His hand moved to those goddamn cufflinks again, gripping them like they could anchor him to shore.
Damn, that felt good. I could almost taste the salt of an old wound splitting open. The satisfaction of making him bleed the way he’d made me bleed.
But then his mask slammed back into place. Back to the impenetrable lawyer who knew nothing about pain or loss or what it meant to watch your father replace your mother’s memory with some random woman—his secretary.
He cleared his throat, the sound sharp in the sudden quiet. “This conversation is over.” His voice was flat. “You know where to find me when you’re ready to grow up.”
I shrugged like I hadn’t heard a thing and lifted my middle finger, holding it in the air long enough for him to get a good look, enough for the insult to sink in.
Then I walked out.
The door slammed behind me with a sound that ricocheted down the hallway. At thirty-five, flipping off my father and slamming doors were perhaps childish. But the look on his face was worth every bit of his disappointment.
My legs moved faster with each step, eating up the burgundy carpet with its gold patterns. Even this fucking carpet was the same. Everything here was frozen in time, and it irritated me that Mom’s memory still lived here. It just felt like another lie in this building that bore my name.
The walls felt like they were closing in. My chest was getting heavy, like someone had wrapped a wire around my ribs and kept twisting it tighter. The air in this place was too thick, too full of ghosts and lies and betrayal.
I needed to get the hell out of here before I did something that would land me in a cell.
