It’ll be our little secret.
Granted, had Wheedon not been a repeated child rapist, I might have turned Benchley in myself to get him out of my fucking hair and ratfuck the GOP by painting them with the same brush, but this is better.
Muchbetter.
This is something I can use to our benefit.
It means Owen’s nearly guaranteed to win and, officer of the court or not, I don’t have to hurt Susa, or her chances for political office, by turning her father in for premeditated murder.
All I have to do is keep Owen moving forward and doing what we tell him to do.
In retrospect, I sometimes wonder, despite how outlandish I know the thought is, if Benchley’s heart attack a mere three weeks before the general election was his own kind offuck youto me. Because Michelle forced him to retire from politics at the end of his Senate term.
Doesn’t matter. News about his heart attack might have even gained us a few sympathy votes. Owen wins the general by twenty-two points, biggest win any Independent candidate has ever managed in any Hillsborough County Commission race.
I suppose a better man might wonder if the extra stress and work I heaped on Benchley by pressuring him to stump for Owen contributed in some way to his heart attack.
But I am not, and have never claimed to be, a better man.
I amabsolutelya bastard.
Benchley will never know how much of one.
Hopefully, neither will Susa or Owen.
Chapter Fourteen
Before the Bastard…
I am nineteen and turned loose for the first time in a foreign country as an adult. I am back in Germany, finally, and damned glad to be here. My German isn’t fantastic, but I speak it better than many of the other soldiers, mostly because I learned it as a kid. Certainly better than any of my brothers’ German. I lived here for four years, and still remember a lot.
There are things that fourteen-year-old me learned hints of while living here before, as a military brat, but couldn’t investigate before we moved back to the States at the end of Dad’s hitch here.
Partly because of my age and lack of freedom back then, and partly because of my fear of my parents—especially my father—finding out. I had no clue who might have known me through my older brothers, of which, at that time, I had three stationed here.
Now, I’m an adult.
And I wanted to know all those things previously denied to menow.
I don’t understand why I’m so drawn to this lifestyle. I wasn’t abused by my parents while growing up. We were disciplined, yeah, but Mom never had to spank us. We were just…terrified of her. Maybe Park or Charlie might have been, but they were already teenagers when I was born.
By the time Mom got to me, she had keeping order with her six other sons down to a science.
And we were all scared she might bring Dad into the mix, when he was home and not on deployment.
I hated scrubbing toilets and floors, and would do anything to avoid that punishment. Our homes might have been crowded and definitely not expensive, especially if we lived on-base somewhere, but they were always clean and tidy.
And wealwaysfelt loved. Our birthdays were always recognized, we spent as many holidays as possible together, when everyone was home. And while my older brothers might have teased each other or me, god help anyone that tried to fuck with one of our brothers. The Wilson boys would dogpile the motherfucker. We were a force of nature.
Mom and Dad made time every day for each of us individually, even if only a few minutes, to sit with us and talk to us about our day. Meals were family time, with everyone sitting down and talking. When Dad was home, we did morning PT with him, and when he wasn’t, it was Park or Charlie, or sometimes Gene, who led us on a morning run from when I was old enough to keep up. Every day, regardless of weather, before school.
It was funny that Dad was willing to go easy on us in that regard, but Mom insisted on it. Said it was the only way to help us burn off the excess energy. As an adult and Army soldier, yeah, now I can see her point. It was a way to help keep us in line, a routine for us.
As my brothers started leaving home for college and, later, enlisting, our numbers grew smaller, but Mom and the rest of us kept up the routines. As many of us could gather together did so for holidays.
It devastated all of us to lose Pete and Tom, but I think I took it even harder than my other brothers, because they’d been the next youngest to me. Tom was only two years older than me, and Pete was four. By then I knew I did not want to enlist, definitely didn’t want to make it my career, but knew I needed to. It’d be the only way to keep the peace in my family. It would have been seen as an insult to their memories to not enlist.
Not going in never crossed my mind, so I rebelled the only way I felt I could, by going straight in from high school and not doing ROTC and college first.
