“You’re joking,” he sneers. “Did someone put you up to this?”

“Are you insinuating this is a prank?”

He crosses his arms, and nods, taking a few steps away from the fence bars, and sizing me up.

“I’m afraid not.”

He squints. “Please leave.”

“Jeff, let’s make a deal. Give me one hour. Hell, I’ll cut it down to thirty minutes. Tell me the truth. And I’ll never come back again.”

He narrows his eyes at me. Hair pokes out of the top of his Hawaiian shirt.

“How do I know you’re not fucking with me?”

“Dalila Flynn. Vegas. One night fling. Probably would have been around twenty-eight years ago. Ring any bells?”

He turns his head to the side. “It’s too early for this kind of talk.”

“A half hour.”

He rolls his eyes. “Half a fucking hour.”

Heading to the middle of the fence, he opens the gate.

As I enter, we shoot each other the same strange look, like seeing the ghosts of each other. There’s a clear resemblance between us in facial structure.

“Nice place,” I say as we walk the half a football field length of his sizeable front yard.

“It’s the winter place,” he grumbles. “Costa Rica is one of the ‘blue zones.’ You know about those?”

I nod. “Where people live to be one hundred on average.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Something in the water. We can sit in the back.”

He leads me around to the back of the house, where there is a tiki bar, stocked with alcohol. Reaching behind the bar, he pulls out a bottle of Makers Mark whisky.

“Drink?”

I wave him off. “A little early, don’t you think?”

He waves me off. “You said you want the truth out of me during this half hour. The truth goes better with a glass of whisky.”

“I’ll pass,” I say again, and we sit in two straw chairs.

“Alright. You got me,” he says, swallowing a full shot or two of whisky, and refilling his glass. “What do you want to know?”

My chest tightens and my palms sweat.

The meeting with the man behind Oz has begun.

It’s surreal to be face to face with him.

The man I refuse to call my father, as he taints the word.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what, exactly?”

“Have a one-night stand,” I growl, and as soon as the words are out, they sound clumsy.

He just smirks. “Oh, come now. Like you’ve never had a fling. Or are you Mr. Angelic Basketball MVP?”

“You know who I am?”

“Of course. What am I, living under a rock? I watch the NBA. And you’re gonna tell me you’ve never had a one-nighter?”

My stomach curdles, and I think about my twenties. Anger swirls in my blood as I realize--he's right. I had a twenty-four hour rule, for God’s sake.

“Maybe, but at least I know how to wrap it up.”

He slugs his whisky down, and fills it again. He looks at me, and even the whites of his eyes seem intense. “Guess you’re right. I should have wrapped it up…but then you wouldn’t be here.”

I grind my teeth.

He goes on. “Mindfuck, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t fucking married when I had my one night stands,” I growl.

He clenches and unclenches his fists.

“Is this what you’re here to do? Make me feel bad?”

“I have a hard time thinking you feel much at all,” I grit out.

He shrugs. “Every man thinks about living like I did. I just had the balls to do it.”

“Seventeen siblings,” I croak out. “There’s seventeen of us out there.”

He shrugs. “And you seem to be doing pretty damn well for yourself. You’re in the NBA. You’re making millions. Well, all’s well except for that last injury you had. How’d you fuck up your hand, exactly?”

“You...follow me?”

“It’s always interesting to see how my progeny are doing.”

My blood boils. “That’s what we are? Progeny?”

He shrugs. “Well, I certainly didn’t help raise you.”

My heart hammers with anger. I stand up.

“Look, you said you wanted the truth. I’m giving it to you. Real firecracker, your mom. Seems like she did a really great job raising you, too. Hell, I told her she should get rid of the pregnancy. She told me off, she did, and then told me I was dead to her. What was her name...Paula?”

“Her name was not fucking Paula.”

He shrugs. “Well, at least you got to know your birth mother. There’s no sugarcoating in real life. I was in foster care, myself. Never met my parents. My childhood was spent bouncing around home to home.”

I can’t believe I’m actually feeling a smidge of sympathy for this man. Well, it’s not quite sympathy. But clearly, he wasn’t loved enough as a child.

I rub the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.

“Are you married?” I ask, forcing myself to learn more about the man.

“A few times, actually.” He winks, and shows me his left hand. “Third time’s the charm, hopefully.”

I feel my whole body heating up. Maybe in part because it’s approaching noon, and the temperature is rising.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m trying really hard to hate this man--and I do--but there’s still a little part of me that wants to forgive him.

“You said you keep tabs on some of your relatives. Is Chandler Spiros your kid?”

He squints. “The guy who plays on the team with you?”

I nod.

He shrugs, swirling his whisky around. “I guess it’s possible. Might have lost track of that one. Where’s he from again?”

“Indiana.”

He nods. “Might have done a stint there, once. But who knows.”

My blood boils at the smug, casual way he talks about all of this.

“Unfuckingbelieveable. These are people’s goddamn lives we’re talking about here. And you don’t even fucking remember.”

“That was a long time ago,” he waves me off. “And like I said, you all seem to be doing just fine.”

I grind my teeth. I want to fight this man like a Johnny Cash song about a boy name Sue. But what would that solve?

“So you don’t care?” I say. “You don’t care about the lives you’ve affected? The scorched earth you left behind in all of these people’s lives doesn’t bother you?”

He shrugs. “Maybe it should bother me. But it doesn’t.”

My hands on my hips, I step into the sun, facing away from him for a moment, and take a deep breath.

Spinning back to meet his gaze, I notice he’s refilling his whisky glass again.

“Here’s what I want to know the answer to. You never felt bad for the wreckage you left behind? You started so many different lives it’s pathological. I’m surprised you don’t have a multiple personalities disorder.” I pause. “Do you have a multiple personalities disorder?”

I swear I see his face twitch just a little when I say that, but he shakes his head, and stands up.

“Listen here, boy. My daddy was a conqueror. I’m a conqueror. You’re a conqueror. It’s in our blood. I went and found my twin brother once when I was younger. He did the same thing. Little piece of shit lived down in Southern Illinois, made it through just as many women as I have, too. Boy, if you think you’re better than your biology, well, let me put it this way: biology always wins.”

Holding his eyes, I process what he’s telling me.

“What’d you come all the way down to Costa Rica for, anyway? You think meeting with me is going to give you some sort of reassurance about your life? About how you can be different than me? I hate to break it to you. We’re a breed that loves power. And you don’t get to be the MVP like you did without a lust for power, and a lust for winning. A lust for life. Deep down, you know what I mean. You and I aren’t so different, really. And that’s what scares you.”

I swallow, biting down hard.

He takes another step toward me, and I hate this man.

I hate him because of what he did. Because of how my mom had to lie to cover up for him. And how Lacy got involved in that lie.

Still, above all, I hate him because he’s right. I’ve felt that lust for power. I know what he’s talking about.

It’s that power energy I summon on the court when I need to dig deep and destroy the opposition team.

It’s the feeling that surges through me when I dominate Lacy. When she gives into me, and I feel her lustful moans at my whim.

Also, it was the same feeling when I couldn’t just tell Lacy I loved her last summer, or even have a conversation with her about the future.

I was holding out for more, more, more.

But more what?

My father lets out a maniacal, slow, chuckle.

“Something on your mind, boy?”

His voice sounds different now.

It’s as if this is one of his personalities coming out to play. The evil one.

“I’m not like you,” I grit out.

“You didn’t come here to find out anything from me. You came because you know you do have that evil spark within you, too. You’ve got the monster inside. The more you try to contain it, the bigger it gets. All you can do is let it out to play, Carter. You might have some girl you love—or you think you love. Is that it?”

“That’s enough,” I say.

“Oh, I’ve really hit a nerve there. So that’s it. Trust me, I don’t know her, but you’ll fuck her over some day and then—"

“We’re done here,” I boom, feeling my voice reverberate with power.

“And then you’ll realize—"

“I said, we’re fucking done.”

Jeff clenches his jaw, and stands up. “You don’t say when we’re done. I do.”

I stand as well, and we stare each other down.

Jeff continues. “You fly all the way down to Costa Rica to talk with me about your daddy issues, then tell me we’re done talking just as quickly as you arrived? Don’t we all have those issues. But you need to get something straight. If you try to come after me, I’ll deny any of this conversation ever happened.”

I clench my fists. “Oh? Really? What will you do when the people find out the truth?”

He smiles evilly. “That’ll never happen. I’ll take care of you and that little sidepiece—what’s her name, Lacy?—before you can do a thing to hurt my reputation.”

Adrenaline spikes through me. “How do you know about her?”

A sinister look comes across his face that sends chills through me. “I know everything. I know Lacy. I even met her mom once when I was passing through Blackwell to see if you were still alive.”

“Fuck you,” I growl, turning and heading out, chills running down my spine.

I came for the truth, and I got a threat.

How the hell did he know about Lacy...and even Lacy’s mom?

As I gaze out at the vast expanse of ocean, my mind drifts to the conquistadors who arrived here hundreds of years ago and declared they had ‘discovered’ the Pacific Ocean.

They raped and pillaged along the way as they pleased. They were conquerors of people and slaughterers of men, and for many of them, evil burned deep in their hearts.

Like my father, these men unleashed their evil, and once it was out, they couldn’t get it back in the cage.

Why did they do it? Biological propensity for evil? Lack of morals?

A giant wave crashes onto my feet, bigger than all the others, then rolls back into the ocean, and the answer hits me.

They did those things because they knew—or thought they knew—they would never be found out.

Like my father. He grew up before the digital age. Probably thought he could fuck all these women, leave them high and dry, and never pay the consequences. In their time, the conquistadors didn’t. History doesn’t look back fondly on them, though.

Stopping for a moment, I fold my arms and look west, reaching for the farthest point I can on the ocean. Further out, the water looks a deep, dark blue color.

Big waves punctuated by smaller ones on the rocky sea. They all touch, although no two are alike.

A smile comes over my face. I’ll never be like my father. I have the choice of what to become, and he’s the perfect role model for how not to live your life.

I stand like that for who knows how long.

To my left, I see a heart drawn in the sand with a couple of initials, M + M.

Cute. But don’t these lovers know it’s low tide and their heart is going to wash out?

“Carter,” someone says, but it sounds like a dream. The wind whizzes past my ears and drowns everything out.

“Carter.”

I feel a hand on my shoulder. I whip around and see Lacy.

“How did it go?” she asks.

“Fine. No surprises. He’s an asshole. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say about it?”

I nod, deciding to leave out the part where he mentioned Lacy by name.

“Well, you want to eat some lunch? I found this place on the beach with delicious fish tacos. ”

Lacy smiles through her sunglasses, and I welcome the distraction from my thoughts, which race over the possibility that I might now be on a drug dealer’s hit list.