Decisions.
Grief ...if that’s even what I should call it, can wait a few more days.
The next morning, I’m going through the motions like a goddamn machine.Filling out paperwork with shaking hands.Answering questions that don’t deserve answers.A stranger in a beige suit asks if I want a viewing, and I almost laugh.Actually laugh.
A viewing?For him?
The idea of people gathering to mourn Connor Dempsey as if he were some kind of legend.Like he wasn’t the man who broke more than he built.Like he didn’t damage everything he claimed to love—including me.
“No, cremation,” I say.“There won’t be a service.He doesn’t deserve a eulogy or flowers.Definitely no flowers.”
Let the fire do what it does best.
Let it erase what’s left.
I walk into the agency a week later, and the air feels wrong.Off.Like everything is still holding its breath, waiting for him to appear and rip the silence wide open.It’s been waiting for him since April when he had the stroke.
The thing is that he won’t be coming back.It’s over.
Bernice is behind his desk, sitting like she doesn’t belong there.Her blouse is starched, pristine, but her eyes are rimmed in red and her hands won’t stop twisting.She stands when she sees me, but she remains where she is.
What stretches between us isn’t just space—it’s grief lodged between bones, blame caked into the walls, and every conversation we never had because silence was safer.It’s years of pretending the cracks weren’t widening.It’s my mother’s legacy buried beneath Connor’s empire of manipulation and polished smiles.It’s all the lies Bernice swallowed because she believed in him more than she ever believed in herself.Because she made herself small to fit inside his world, his rules.Because loyalty, in her hands, was blindfolded and bound to a man who taught her that pleasing him was the only way to survive.
She swallows, and I can almost taste the bitterness on her tongue.The words inside her have turned rotten from too many years locked behind clenched teeth.
“What happens to the agency?”
Her voice barely rises above a whisper, frayed and tattered, as if she’s already played out the conversation in her head and hated every version of it.
And it doesn’t surprise me—this quiet pivot back to business.There’s no “How are you holding up?”No “I’m sorry about your dad.”
I’m not surprised.Bernice stopped asking how I was the moment I left Serena in New York and said I was done with the agency.And if I’m being honest, she probably stopped caring long before that.Everything with her has always been about Connor—keeping him calm, keeping him satisfied, keeping him from lashing out and taking the whole room with him.
She lived in his orbit like a moon tethered to a dying planet, and she never even realized she was burning up on entry.
The one thing she could never forgive was disobedience.Especially when it came to my father.Especially when it came from me.
I don’t answer right away.
I let the silence stretch.I take in the office—the clean lines, the polished furniture, the smell of wood polish and expensive ink.
I wonder, as I stare at the desk where my father manipulated deals like they were poker hands, if Mom ever knew what he was doing behind the curtain.If she knew the way he twisted things to suit his narrative.The way he stripped artists of their voices, their agency, their dignity—so softly they didn’t even realize they were bleeding until it was too late.
And maybe she did know.Maybe she chose not to look.Or maybe she believed the illusion like everyone else, because it’s easier to believe the man you love is complicated than it is to admit he’s cruel.
I close my eyes for half a second and force the memories of her back into the light—where they belong.I won’t let his rot eat her memory.
Instead, I focus on Connor.The grooming he dressed up as mentorship.The way he promised the world to people and then caged them inside it.
“We’ll figure out how to help the clients,” I finally say, every word rasping across something raw in my throat.“We might sell this to someone who gives two fucks about the artists, but I’m not staying.This place needs to burn.”
There’s no venom in my voice, no raised pitch.Just exhaustion and finality.
She nods once, her shoulders still high, as if she doesn’t know how to breathe without being told it’s okay.
And then I ask the question that’s been eating through me like acid since Barret told me the truth.
“Did you know what Connor did to Roderick and the guys from Dead Moth Parade?”
