“If you don’t start talking, I’ll go cause some mischief.” Neo sniffs. “Not the fun kind, either. The type that doesn’t end in orgasms for either of us.”
Suddenly, it occurs to me that I can kill two birds with one stone. I can tell Neo exactly why I feel my father’s ghost hanging over me and, in doing so, prove how much I trust him. Give him a piece of knowledge that’ll prove I’ll never walk away from him.
Ignoring the iron fist of fear around my heart, I keep my gaze steady as I reveal the secret I’d planned to take to my grave. “I killed my father.”
20
NEO
For a moment, I’m sure I heard Wylder wrong. “What?”
“I killed him.” His face is impassive as he repeats himself. But his eyes…his eyes give him away. It’s costing him a lot to reveal this.
My throat bobs. “How?”
“Poison,” he says bluntly. “Just enough slipped into his food so that, over time, his heart gave out.”
I exhale, trying to wrap my head around what he’s telling me. For weeks, I’ve been fighting to peer over the walls of the fortress he surrounds himself with. Now, he’s voluntarily opening the gates and welcoming me inside. “Why?”
His brow furrows. “Because he was a terrible human being who was getting more awful with every passing year. The abuse we all suffered…what he put me through. And worse than that, he was starting to honor requests to The Firm based on how he could benefit, not on whether or not they should be granted.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say dismissively. “You should’ve killed him. He was a cunt who abused his children.” The little glimpses of his childhood that Wylder has given me made me aware of what he’d been subjected to. His dad might’ve called it “training,” but I’ve always been one to call a spade a spade.
It was abuse. Simple as that.
“Then what did you mean?”
“Why are you telling me this?” I stare at him, confused as to why he’s suddenly opening up. “Why now?”
“Because you asked,” he says simply. “That’s the real reason why I can’t change things. Why I feel like he’s haunting me. He knew I was the one responsible.”
He swallows and then meets my stare.
“I told him.” Vengeance flashes across his face. Vengeance and satisfaction. “That final night, as he lay on the floor choking on his own saliva and clutching his chest, I made sure he knew exactly who killed him and why.”
“Good.” I debate taking his hands back in mine before deciding that’s not enough. Getting to my feet, I straddle his thighs and plant myself in his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. “Good. I’m glad he knew. Fucker.”
“I thought killing him would give me peace, but it hasn’t,” Wylder confesses, his face buried against my neck. “It hasn’t. I feel like he’s always over my shoulder, judging what I’m doing, whispering how he’d do it differently. How I’m failing The Firm. My brothers.”
I snort. “Babe, he was the one failing them, not you. You’re the one who holds them together. Without you, everything would fall apart.”
“Doesn’t feel that way.”
“That’s because you take on too much. They’d help, if you let them in.”
“Maybe.”
Just then, a horrifying thought occurs to me. “Wait, do they know?”
Wylder lifts his head wearily. “My brothers?”
“Yes. Do they know that…”
He gives me a tiny smile as my voice trails off. “That I committed patricide? No. Until right now, there were only two people who knew the truth of how my father died. Him and me.”
Until right now.
Until me.
