Thirty - Nine - Kholton

“Seven years.”

 

 

Hidden Valley,

California

 

 

 

I’m on the doorsteps of my old home.

A young, petite blond in nursing scrubs opens the door this time.

“Good morning,” she greets with a bright smile. “May I help you?”

“Not really.” I brush past her into the foyer. “Just here to see the dying demon.”

“I—uh, sir—Um, do you mean Mr. Capshaw?”

I shoot her with a gun finger and a wink. “That’s the one. Where is he?”

“In the family room. But—may I ask who you are? I—”

“The black sheep,” I say as I make my way into the family room. 

“Sir, please.” She hurries ahead of me, holding her hands out to stop me. “Mr. Capshaw is not taking visitors. Let me at least ask him if—”

I ignore her and keep on walking. The house is deathly quiet. It doesn’t seem that anyone else is here.

I find the bastard in his favorite massage recliner, looking ten times worse than he did the last time I saw him.

He’s nothing but skin and bones now. Dark circles and sunken cheeks. Pale and pasty.

He looks up from his newspaper when I enter, the nurse bursting ahead of me.

“Mr. Capshaw, I’m so sorry. He just barged in and—”

“It’s fine, Jessica.” He folds the newspaper and sets it aside. “I know he looks like a hipster fruitcake, but he’s actually a brilliant mastermind wasting his life.” He lifts his hand to his throat as though it hurts to speak. “He’s my son.”

Jessica apologizes again before leaving the room.

“I see you’ve finally driven everyone away.” I move farther into the room. “A wife, three—no, five children and a mistress, yet here you are, dying, alone.”

“They’ve all taken your mother’s side.” His voice is ghostly, almost nonexistent.

“She told them?”

He nods. A jerky, unstable movement. “She wants a divorce. But I’ll die before I give her that and see her with another man.”

I move to sit in the arm chair adjacent to his. “Hence your poisoned and failing kidney.”

He laughs. It’s bitter. “Apparently, I’m not dying fast enough. She wants me to sign the papers now.”

This is awful news, raining guilt like hail stones down on my head.

The woman who gave birth to me is somewhere waiting impatiently for this cruel man to take his last breath and free her from her misery. And here I come like the messiah, about to breathe life back into him. About to give Lucifer another one thousand years to wreak havoc upon the earth.

“I was not expecting to see you again. At least, not until we meet in hell,” he says, eying me warily. “To what do I owe the honor, my son?”

I hesitate. Once again, I have to make a decision. Do I choose Serena, or do I choose my mother’s freedom?

I’ve got a million reasons why I should choose the woman who turned her back on me, the woman who never stood up for me, the woman who lived perfectly fine not knowing whether her son was dead or alive.

Funny how the man who issued the ostracism decree didn’t actually let go of me. He always knew how to find me, where I was and what I was doing. As terrible a person as he is, if I should compare his love for me against hers, his would be greater.

He doesn’t hate me, I know that. He’s just mad he’s not able to control me. Ousting me was the only thing he could’ve done to really show me who was in charge. A power play. I own this family, and I can take them all away from you with a single command.

I hate him for taking my family away from me. But he only resents me for making him have to do it in the first place.

What’s my mother’s excuse? My brother’s? My sister’s?

Why should I put their happiness above mine when they didn’t do the same for me?

“I took some tests,” I say. “I’m…a match.”

He stares at me. Impassive. Then he drops his head. “Why tell me? To torture me? We both know you’ll never do the transplant. You hate my guts.”

I’m pushing thirty, and this is the first time, in my whole life, that this man has ever spoken to me without staring me dead in the eyes.

It’s an act of surrender. For the first time, I hold the power. Literally the power of life and death for him.

“Not give it you, no,” I agree. “But I am interested in selling it.”

His head sweeps up at this. “What?”

“Seventy million.”

“What do—” A harsh cough cuts off his words, one that goes on for a couple of seconds before he’s able to speak again. “What do you need that kind of money for? Are you in trouble?”

“Don’t worry about what I need it for,” I reply. “Just know that’s what it’s gonna cost for you to live a little longer to ruin more people’s lives.”

He stares at me for an extended amount of time, before he shakes his head. “The idea of living another couple of years is indeed wonderful, son. But I see what you are doing. You are trying to get out of running the company. But giving me one of your kidneys won’t make me immortal. I will die one day. And you will inherit all your responsibilities. You can’t run from them forever.” 

Fucker. Apparently, what he said about my mother earlier stands for me, too. He’d rather die than set us free.

“Seven years,” he says.

“What?”

“We will draw up a binding agreement,” he explains. “We do the transplant and you get seven years before you assume your duties at the helm of Capshaw Holdings. Of course, if I die before those seven years are up, you will still have to assume your role. Is that reasonable enough?”

Reasonable? Reasonable is letting me live my life how I choose to live it. Not on his terms. But I know this asshole. This is the best deal I’m going to get out of him. He doesn’t even care about how much I’m asking for. That’s chump change to him.

I say, “With one stipulation.”

“Which is?”

“You give mom her divorce.”

His laugh is silent. Voice weak and hoarse, as he declines, “Deal-breaker. Big, big, deal-breaker, son. I’d rather die.”

“Why?” I ask him, shaking my head in disbelief. “Why do you want to keep hurting her?”

“That’s not what I want, son,” he tells me. “You know what I want? For her to goddamn stand up to me. To use her voice. To fight back.”

“Isn’t that what she did?”

“This?” He gestures his hand up and down his frail frame and shakes his head. “This is attempted murder. This is not fighting back. This is cowardice. She tried to kill me and I’m letting her get away with it. Why? Because I love her. I’ve loved your mother since I first laid eyes on her. But her docility, her timidity, her voicelessness…” He shrugs his bony shoulders. “It does nothing for me.”

This man is seriously screwed-up in the head. I’ll never understand him.

“What about your mistress?” I ask. “Figured you’d jump at the chance to be free of marriage. You have two children with this woman. You must really like her.”

“She’s not your mother.” He doesn’t even blink as he swears, “I’ll give up my life before I give her up. So, like I said, deal-breaker.”

Once again, I find myself deliberating. Mom or Serena?

My happiness or hers?

Driving through the gates of the Hidden Hills mansion feels a lot like driving out of hell.

I’ve officially shaken hands with the devil.