Whatever it takes.
***
Seven-thirty and my asshole father walks in fashionably late. He never did care about other people’s time. There was never an ounce of respect in his thoughts toward other people.
I watch him walk into the private dinner booth, one of the waitresses hooked in his arm, and giggling happily. He slaps her on the ass and orders a drink before he turns to look at me.
I don’t say a word. I just spent the last thirty minutes wondering if this was a setup and if someone was going to storm in here and try to take me out.
I have my gun resting on my lap beneath the table, and my eyes are burning into my father.
“You can put that away, son,” he muses.
“I’ll decide when I put it away,” I snap back at him. “You couldn’t manage to be on time for the dinner you arranged?”
He laughs as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. “You always were too rigid with things. Seven, seven-thirty. What difference does it make?”
I want to lecture him about how it makes all the difference to the person stuck waiting, wasting their time, and growing agitated. But what’s the point? My father will never change.
He sits down, dumping his jacket over the back of the chair next to him. Leaning back in the chair, he drapes his arm over the other and grins at me.
“You look the same.”
I scoff.
“What did you expect?”
His eyes graze over me. “A married man usually has a different look about him. But you look the same,” he muses.
So he knows I’m married to her.
My father’s face turns sour.
“How is your sister?” he asks coldly.
“Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me? You don’t give a shit about Leila or how she’s doing,” I snarl.
“You made a mistake when you sided with her and her fucking husbands,” he snarls. “You made a very big mistake, boy.”
“Did I,” I mutter sarcastically.
“And you made an even bigger mistake when you stole my business from me.”
My father’s eyes are dark with rage. A primal, raw expression clouds his face as he leans forward and rests his hands on the table. “You made a mistake that you will pay for,” he says slowly.
“I think I’m done here,” I mutter, standing up. “If you only invited me to waste my time with this bullshit tantrum, I wouldn’t have come.”
“I want territory. And business assets.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“I demand it, Joseph. I want a portion of what you stole from me. I need to start building again, and there is no reason for me to start from scratch when I already had it all,” he snarls.
“You never had anything. You never ran any of the companies. You have no idea how to handle them, and you’ll burn them to the ground,” I huff at him.
“You will give it to me, Joseph,” he whispers softly.
“No, I won’t,” I sigh, pushing my hand through my hair. I turn toward the door to leave, and my blood instantly turns cold.
