Jocelyn swings left, pushing open the door to my mother’s art studio, and I trail her inside.
“PC2. My handsome boy,” Mom says, setting her paintbrush down and beaming at me. She wipes paint-smudged fingers down the front of her shirt before walking toward me. Her thick dark hair is tied in a messy bun with strands wisping around her unlined face.
While Dad appears to age every year, Mom almost seems to get younger. It’s not thanks to a surgeon’s knife either. Mom is considered something of a hippy in our social circles. She does yoga, paints, and loves gardening and cooking family meals from scratch instead of relying on the hired help. She has taken a ton of online courses in nutrition, alternative therapies, photography, calligraphy, and a bunch of others I can’t remember. She is heavily involved in charity work, and she’s happiest dressed down, surrounded by her family, drinking wine, and dancing like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
Keeping busy and denying reality seem to be her two main coping mechanisms.
I have no complaints. She’s an awesome mom. While my relationship with my father is fractured in the extreme, I’m super close to my mother.
“You get even more handsome every time I see you,” she adds, clutching my cheeks in her small hands.
“You’re my mom. You’re biased.” I lean down and kiss her cheek when her hands fall away from my face.
“Pfft. There is nothing wrong with my eyesight. No bias involved.”
Jocelyn snorts out a laugh. “Don’t start acting all humble now, Jase. It really doesn’t suit you.”
I toss a smirk over my shoulder at my sister. “Can’t help how I look, pipsqueak. It’s all in the genes.”
“We have hardly seen you this summer.” Mom cocks her head to one side. “You must come for dinner on Sunday.”
“I’ll try,” I promise. “My schedule is pretty packed between football and classes and the demands Dad is making on me.”
Her face softens as she grips my hand briefly. “I take it you’re here to meet with your father?” she says as she moves over to her painting.
I nod before standing behind her, admiring the vibrant burst of color on the canvas. I don’t want to talk about Dad. I know what Mom will say, and it will only end up in an argument. “That’s stunning, Mom,” I admit, glancing out the window. “It’s like looking at a photo of our garden.”
“This is my fourth attempt,” she explains. “I think it’s finally coming together.” Mom is way too self-critical, and she always downplays her talent. If she hadn’t been forced to marry Dad after she graduated LU with a fine arts degree, I think she would have made a career out of it. Now, it’s just a hobby. An outlet when Father and the restrictions of our world get too much for her.
“It’s good, Mom.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “I better go. Can’t keep His Highness waiting.”
Jocelyn snorts out a laugh, and Mom frowns. “Things are a bit intense right now. You should tread carefully with him.”
A muscle clenches in my jaw. “You know what he’s forcing on me.”
Sympathy splays across her face. “I know this is hard for you, but he’s given you as much leeway as he can. Despite what you think of your father, he has tried his best to soften the blow. He only has your best interests at heart, Jase. You’d do well to remember that.”
* * *
“Sit down,” my father demands in that unemotional tone he is famous for.
“Thanks, but I’ll stand.” Folding my arms across my chest, I level him with a dark look.
“It wasn’t a request.” He gestures at the empty chair in front of his desk before he walks to his liquor cabinet. He glances over his shoulder at me. “If you expect me to treat you with respect, you’ll show the same to me in my own home.” He points at the chair. “Sit, or this meeting is over before it’s begun.”
Begrudgingly, I sit my ass down. I know to pick my battles carefully with my father, but I’m struggling to find my voice of reason today. Thanks to his bombshell call last night, I’m all riled up and ready to hit something.
Preferably his annoyingly calm face.
He hands me a glass of expensive bourbon from a twenty-year-old rare bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle—nothing but the best for the Lust & Envy Luminary. “It’s only eleven a.m.,” I remind him, swirling the amber-colored liquid in my glass. “That’s early, even for you.”
“Don’t try my patience, boy. You looked like you needed it. It would serve you well to get control over your emotions. You give too much away, and I didn’t raise you to be this kind of man. I’m humoring you by granting this meeting. Remember that.”
He reclaims his seat behind the ornate mahogany desk with the dark-green leather trim. It’s been in the Stewart family for years, passed down between each successive heir. “I can just as easily have your brother haul your disobedient ass to HQ to beat some manners into you.”
The HQ he’s referring to isn’t the impressive Stewart Freight head office in downtown Lowell. He means Luminary HQ. A secret facility, hidden deep in a valley in the middle of the remotest part of California, surrounded by dense forest, and protected by impenetrable security, where all manner of illegal operations go down.
I’d like to say I’m not familiar with the underground levels—where informers, rulebreakers, criminals who operate outside our laws and traditions, and wayward siblings of luminaries and masters are taken to be taught a lesson—but that would be a lie. I think I came out of my mother’s womb rebelling against the world I was born into. Not that it’s done me any good. The only way I’m getting out is in a body bag, and I value breathing more than rebellion.
