The car glides away, following my late mother’s husband’s ride, while I begin to plot out my revenge.
Like mother, like daughter.
It takes us a full hour to navigate the wet streets of Queens, littered with glistening rusty leaves past their prime that now look like acrylic paintings, and join the detestable traffic to Long Island.
The closer we get to my family home–an ostentatious historic mansion and a perennial reflection of our social status–the fewer cars cross paths with us.
As soon as we roll past the gates, we’re nothing more than what’s left of a funeral convoy, only this time my hopes get buried in the freshly dug grave of my bludgeoned innocence.
The cars slide to a stop in the round driveway, the doors pull open, and sleek shoes meet the wet gravel as more rain touches and ruins the smooth fabric of our clothes.
I set foot down, and without looking at anyone, I head for the main door.
No one pays attention to me.
This is my home.
My empire.
My playground.
I was born here.
I played in the backyard under the old white oaks as a kid and skinny dipped in the ocean as a teen.
I know every secret of this house, every whisper hidden in the corners, and some of the most unexpected turns of events that have killed people and twisted lives like they were pretzels.
But I don’t know much about him, and there’s a reason for that.My beloved mother had never trusted me with anything that had to do with her life.
Always jealous of me, she tried to keep––sometimes unsuccessfully––her men away from me.
In retrospect, I wish she hadn’t failed at that.My life would’ve been different.
With him, though, things escalated fast.
She was more protective, more secretive, and more vicious than ever. But it wasn’t her who put a wall between us, a guardrail, a golden cage around me.
It was him.
He kept me at arm’s length and didn’t want to be anywhere near me, and I thought that once she was gone, he’d be different.
Man, was I wrong, or what?
Yes, I was. So damn wrong.
My heels click across the slabs of striated black marble as I head straight to his home office, a vast reading room no one had used before he moved into the house and became her husband.
He rarely used the space himself, despite its nostalgic beauty stemming from a refurbished eighteenth-century walnut, hand-carved desk and upholstered chairs, rare paintings, and long drapes that reach the floor.
Carelessly, I push the door open, and it hits the wall with a bang.
I don’t even flinch.
What will he do to me?Come here and chide me?Give me a good spanking?
I wish.
The truth is, I can do whatever the hell I want and no one can stop me.
