I opened the car door robotically, feeling like I’d just been thrown out of an airplane without so much as a pair of safety glasses.
“This isn’t fair,” I whispered.
It wasn’t fair. My father wasn’t some evil mastermind—the Moriarty to my Sherlock. He wasn’t a misunderstood but monstrous person, a Hannibal Lecter type character. He was just some man-child with low impulse control and delusions of grandeur.
What was worse was my very existence was a point of pride to him. He saw my accomplishments as his own. This whole time I thought I was giving him the middle finger, that I was proving that I wasn’t a worthless, weak child, that I was a force to be reckoned with, that through sheer force of will I was going to undo all the damage he had caused, or at the very least make restitution for it.
But the entire time he had been cheering me on from a twenty-by-twenty-foot concrete cell, totally oblivious to the irony of the situation.
And I had played right into his hand. Stuart was going to hold onto my visit for years, secure in the knowledge that he had a successful son and therefore he was a successful man by proxy.
“I never should have come here,” I said in gasping breaths.
Control your breathing.
“I never should have come.”
I wished I had let Marius drive with me. I felt so horribly alone.
I stuffed my hand in my pocket, looking for my phone, maybe to call him, maybe for an email to distract me. Instead my fingernail caught on a corner of card stock.
I pulled it out.
My hands were shaking.
I steadied them.
Be the reason someone smiles.
The sparkly pink letters wavered as I stared at them.
Yeah, I had sure been the reason someone fucking smiled today.
This fucking—God.
I balled up the note, suddenly furious.
“I can’t believe I let her talk me into this. I can’t fucking believe her! This is all her fault.”
61
LEXI
Ichecked my watch and stifled a groan. Anthym had been keeping me busy with meaningless tasks all day, peppered with demands for a plan of how I was going to find out who the mystery woman Grayson was seeing was. Now city hall had already closed.
I would go tomorrow, I decided, or maybe the next day. Grayson was going to need me.
“I bet he’s with her right now,” Anthym said, glaring at his empty office. “Grayson never takes PTO. Never. He usually works on the weekends, too, and I haven’t been getting emails from him on Sunday lately. This woman is ruining him. McKenna!” she barked at my friend.
McKenna’s eyes bugged out.
“You need to be on the lookout too.”
“I don’t go to the same places Grayson does,” she said nervously. “I don’t know how I can help.”
“We should start following him,” Anthym insisted. “We might even have to hire a private investigator. It’s our duty as his secretary and assistants. Did he say anything to you about another date tonight, Lexi?” Anthym demanded.
“Not that I recall.”
