The cold, flat statement sucked all of the air out of the room. He looked at me, his eyes cold and hard. "Your mother is my greatest mistake, my greatest regret," he said. "Butyou? You are my greatest failure."
I felt frozen, completely paralyzed by this version of my father I'd never met before. His mouth twisted as if the sight of me disgusted him.
"I wanted to be a father. I wanted to do better than my parents. They were distant, they didn't love me, they didn't even care about me, only what I could do for their image. I became the perfect son for them. And it meant nothing. When they died, I swore I would be the best father I could be. I would do better for my kids, I would give them what I didn't have..."
A haze dropped over his expression as if he had disappeared into a dream, his eyes glassy and his face soft.
"But I understood long ago that I wanted to be a father, but only ifClairewas their mother. She was...everything.”
Weak. So weak.
"I love her still. More thananyoneon this earth... and I betrayed her, and forwhat?" He spat and gave me a joylesssmile. "Your mother and you. What an investment. Look at how wealthy I am."
I couldn't speak, I couldn’t breathe. My father's words rained on me like lashings, stripping me raw. Rage and pain welled up inside me, but I was frozen, stuck between wanting to scream and being too shocked to make a sound.
"I will not lose anything more because of you," he continued, now with steely determination. "You will finance the cleanup this time."
And just like that—goodbye to my trust fund.
The cost of buying silence was horrifying.
Sierra's family was paid off under an airtight NDA. If any of them tried to speak, they would besilenced. The police department was greased with a generous "donation" made to a community initiative. Officers who saw my face that night were rewarded with unexpected bonuses.
The story itself was rewritten into a random hit-and-run with an anonymous suspect in custody. The man I was with kept his mouth shut, too, considering the ounce of coke in his pocket would've buried him right alongside me.
The security footage from multiple street cameras was wiped clean. Mybaby—my ruined Porsche—was removed and destroyed, no questions asked.
And all of that, every favor, every bribe, every greased handshake, was for nothing.
CABOT COLLAPSE: Inside the Family Built on Lies, Power, and Cruelty
That was the title of the expose inThe Globe.
Someone talked. Not completely surprising to me. When you start piling up secrets, they're hard to keep track of, and some things are bound to fall through the cracks.
So someone squealed to a hungry journalist.
It was impossible to keep track of who at this point, and myfather never could track down the anonymous source. They were close to us. They knew it all. Speculation included an au pair of the past, a dismissed maid, one of my mother and father's numerous fired assistants, and a disgruntled political staffer. It was like trying to catch smoke. Whoever did it cashed in and fucked off.
Thankfully, the Sierra incident remained buried, her family was terrified of legal repercussions from the NDA. But that wasn't needed to paint a picture. The truth of the torrid affair between Ellis and Bella, the devastating betrayal of philanthropist sweetheart Claire Salvatore (formerly Cabot), my mother's cruel treatment of the help over the years, my DUIs as a teenager, and my own bratty behavior.
We were no longer the picture of the perfectAmerican Dreamfamily. We were pure scandal.
Ellis Cabot's political prospects, his mayoral run, and his congressional ambitions died with a whimper.
My own career collapsed overnight. Andrew Abbot called me into his office, spoke about optics, reputation, and public opinion. I was dismissed indefinitely, humiliated as I walked out of the building with eyes and whispers following me the entire way.
My bank account? Practically empty. I wasn't the most frugal person to begin with. Dinners, bottle service, and last-minute getaways with my friends, all paid for by me and my credit cards. Without the comforting pulse of my trust fund refilling every month, I was effectively broke.
My luxury apartment, sold and gone. The money from it barely covered the payments on my credit cards and the recurring charges—my gym, my spa, my nail appointments, tanning, facials, and hair salon. The maintenance of perfectionthat I had been accustomed to since I was a child suddenly became a luxury I could no longer afford.
My friends? I was poison. Toxic. It was social suicide to even interact with me. None of them returned any of my calls. Funny enough, I didn't blame them completely. I would have done the same if they were in my shoes. That was just the way it went.
And my family? The illusion shattered. With nothing more to lose, my father realized it was time to stop pretending. Financial consequences of a second divorce be damned. He was already forced to resign from the Treasurer's office, might as well detonate his entire personal life while he was at it.
My mother didn't even seem to care. Not about the divorce, not about the campaign ruin, not about me, not about anything. The beautiful, powerful, and poised Bella Cabot just looked haggard and ugly. Her clothes hung from her body, her skin was sallow and sagging, and her once-polished hair was limp and dull.
Her drinking had ramped up, and when I had shot the snarky comment of, "Guess who I learned that from," in regard to my drinking, my DUIs, she barely even reacted. At one time, she would verbally spar with me, but now she just sipped from her martini glass and stared into space. She had nothing anymore. My mother was wasting away in front of me, and one day she would be gone.
