"Father, what—" he said, bursting through David's office door but stopped mid-sentence when he saw Doctor Stephen and a strange woman sitting comfortably, dressed in an expensive pantsuit. At a quick glance, Stephen resembled the woman, so Des assumed they were related.
"Desmond, what are you doing here?" David asked, getting up from his desk and meeting him partway.
"I came to see Mother," he lied, not taking his eyes off Stephen and the woman. "She's been calling me to talk about—" Des stopped speaking again and walked over to Stephen. "What are you doing here?"
Stephen glanced behind Des as if looking for permission to answer him.
"I came to see Doctor Ellington," Stephen responded.
"Really?" Des said, dragging out the word, then turned to David. "Father, you didn't answer my question. Where is Mother?"
"She's not here," he said, looking away sheepishly. "She walked out on me this morning."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, David, tell him the truth. He is an adult. He should be able to handle it," the lady said, standing up and standing next to Des’s father, holding one of his arms.
"Mom," Stephen said just as David said, "Dawn, no."
"Your father and I are getting married after he divorcesher," Dawn said gleefully.
"Her?" Des said, utterly disgusted with the way she referred to his mother. But Des ignored her and looked at his father. "After all my mother has done for you, this is how you treat your wife. The woman who has stood beside you and listened to every fucking thing you say. But in one split second, you turn your back on her and take up with some trollop."
"Watch your mouth, boy," David growled.
"The fuck I will," Des snapped. "You fucking disgust me."
"Des, don't talk to Dad like that," Stephen said.
"Dad—Dad—" he scoffed. "I remembered when I was five, I called you Dad. You shouted at me never to call you that, but this bastard gets the privilege of doing so."
He had already clocked that Stephen was David's son, but hearing the man call him Dad cut Des deeper than it should have. "All my life, I tried my best to get you to notice me. To see my worth, yet you already had the son you wanted."
He turned to Stephen. "Let me guess, you're following in the footsteps he laid out for you while I am a disappointment to him. The night at the hospital, you knew who I was. I kept thinking there was something off about you, but I never guessed we were related."
"It's not like that," Stephen said, looking at Des with pitiful eyes.
"The fuck it isn't," Des yelled.
"I want to get to know you," Stephen said. "I've heard so much about you from Dad and the people at the hospital?—"
"Fuck you," Des growled at him. "I want nothing to fucking do with you."
"You do not get to talk to my son like that," Dawn shouted.
"I will talk to him however the fuck I want," Des argued back. He looked at his father. "Enjoy what little free time you have because I'm going to make sure you lose every fucking thing you worked hard to attain. You've hurt me all my life, and yeah, I cried over it, but I can tell my mother must have suffered just as much."
With that, he left, ignoring his father calling his name. Des didn't know why he had stood up for his mother like that when he knew she’d gone along with everything his father wanted. But thinking of Ava's face when she told him about their divorce made him feel that his mother was never strong enough to go against his father like he thought she was.
Des got in his car and pulled out his cellphone to call Othello, but paused his actions. He didn't need or want Othello to help him with this. Thanks to Erin, who had collected the information when she looked into his case, he had enough incriminatingshit on his father to lock him up for a long time. But it made him wonder how they missed the fact that he’d had a fucking mistress for over twenty years.
"This better be good for you to call me on my day off," Erin said on the other end.
"How the fuck did you guys miss the mistress?" he asked Erin.
"What are you talking about? Who has a mistress?"
"My father. He's been seeing some woman for over twenty years and they even have a kid who works at the hospital."
"What? Wait, what's her name?"
