I grab my wrist behind my back.

I stand at the window in my father’s office on the other side of his desk with my back to the door as it opens. I watch as my cold grey eyes narrow in the reflection. The city traffic below is stirring with life, but it’s silent up here. So many fucking people surround us, but not one of them can save me. Not one of them would even give a fuck.

Julia would. My sweetheart.

“Mason,” my father calls my name and I turn to him, finally facing him and knowing I need to confront him and all this bullshit I’ve been running from. As much as I want to hold Jules close and pretend just being with her will make this right, I know it won’t.

“Father,” I greet him with a cold tone in my voice. Hating that this man is even related to me. I stare into his eyes and see my own. Everything about him reminds me of what I’m going to become. And I fucking hate it.

“We need to get over this,” my father says and gestures between the two of us.

“We do.” I clench my jaw, my heart beating faster. I stare down at my hands, ripping my gaze away from him. “I don’t think there should be any more ties.” It fucking hurts to tell him that. Even after all these years and everything he’s done, I still feel pain at the thought of severing this relationship.

“Ties to what?” he asks.

“Between the two of us.”

My father flinches as if I’ve struck him. But what did he expect?

“Watch your mouth.” I can't believe he has the nerve to admonish me. As if what I’m saying is unspeakable.

“I want to walk away. I don’t want to be tied to this anymore. I don’t want to be associated with you.” I hold my breath and wait for him to say something. I’ve played my cards.

“I’m your father, Mason. You can’t walk away.”

The fuck I can’t. I bite my tongue, gritting my teeth as he walks closer to the left side of the desk and I walk around the right, a careful dance of power that escalates the conversation.

“You need to just forgive-”

“I’ll never forgive you for what you did to Avery,” I look my father in the eyes as I cut him off. Every muscle in me is wound tight, waiting for him to make the first move so I can destroy him and let out this rage.

His eyes flash with something. Anger, or maybe betrayal, but I don’t know what.

“I did what I had to do to protect you,” he says and pushes the words out between clenched teeth.

“She didn’t deserve to be murdered,” I seethe with anger. My hands ball into fists. Avery was a mistake. A fiery redhead with long legs, and a smile that could kill.

I met her late at night at an event, and I knew she was trouble.

I knew it that night, but I was in need of a quick fuck. She tempted me, and I took the bait. But I didn’t know how it would end. I never could have imagined.

“That’s what happens when you fuck with a Thatcher.” My teeth grind as my father continues. “She decided to roll the dice. She’s the one who came to me with demands and tried to blackmail us.”

“You could have sent her to me,” I point out and my muscles twitch with the need to pound my fist into his face as I take a step forward. “I would have told her the baby couldn’t have been mine.”

“If I’d known then-”

“You didn’t have to know!” I yell at him, my throat feeling raw as the words are ripped from me, screaming up my chest and leaving me in a painful cleanse. “She wasn’t innocent,” I take a step toward my father and grab the edge of the desk to keep from gripping onto his collar, “but she didn’t deserve to die.”

“She did.” My father’s voice is hard, his back straight and his gaze full of confidence.

“She was pregnant!” I scream at him. Hating how he could so easily demean her existence. He had her murdered. He didn’t even think twice about ending her life.

“With a married man’s child!” my father screams back at me, his face turning red as he leans in closer to me, and I can’t take it any longer.

I can’t take the arrogance and justification of ending a young woman’s life so easily. I ball my hand until my knuckles turn white and punch my father in the jaw. His teeth crack and crunch under the weight of the blow. His head whips to the side as he reaches out to grip onto anything for balance, but it doesn’t help him as he falls to the floor. He's limp and shocked, completely dazed. My arm stings with the pain of impact.

But it feels so fucking good.

He lies there for a moment, his hand over his mouth as trickles of blood leak from the corners of his lips. I shake my hand out, adrenaline rushing through my blood. I just barely restrain from kicking him in the ribs, from letting all of this anger and pent-up guilt out on him.

“You fucking prick.” He spits blood out onto the floor and looks up at me with a menacing glare. “You choose some bitch over your own family.”

No, I’m choosing what’s right. I’m choosing to be better than this life I was born into. I don’t bother to tell him my thoughts. They wouldn’t do any good to him.

“Anderson didn’t want that kid. Think about what she would have done to him!”

The mention of Jace Anderson makes me break my gaze. The memories come back and make my tense muscles spasm. I can’t even hear whatever my father’s yelling at me. It’s all white noise.

I was born a Thatcher and I’ll die a Thatcher, but I refuse to be anything like my father. Not today, not ever.

“I don’t forgive you.” I force my body to relax. I’ve said what I came to say. This ends now. “I never will.” I walk out, the sound of my heart beating fast and my shoes smacking on the ground accompanying me.

Just as my hand grips the doorknob, I finally get the balls to ask him.

One last thing to say. One final question.

I turn to him, walking back to his desk with confident steps. He turns slightly from facing the window behind his desk, peering at me as if he doesn’t trust me. And he shouldn’t. Not with how I’m feeling in this moment.

I stop on the opposite side of the desk, my heart racing as I go back years and years. Back to a boy who lost his mother. Scared, confused… and angry.

“Mom didn’t die from an overdose.” The statement comes out accusatory, but it’s meant to. He wipes blood from the corner of his mouth with the bright white sleeve of his dress shirt. He doesn’t look me in the eyes, he doesn’t acknowledge me in the least.

I take one step toward him, a large step that gets his attention. His gaze whips up to me. “You killed her?” I ask him.

“How dare you,” he says and his nostrils flare as he pins me with his gaze. “How fucking dare you…” He doesn’t finish, and his shoulders hunch forward as he grips onto his desk chair for balance.

I’m struck by the powerful way he’s affected. I’ve wondered for so long, for months now. If he’d had Avery killed, maybe my own mother suffered the same fate.

I flex my hand and swallow thickly, feeling like I need to explain. It’s a gut feeling more than anything else. I don’t remember much around the time she died, but I remember how I felt, how the air between them was tense. How scared my mother was that he would find out her dirty little secret. “I know she was cheating-”

“Get out!” my father screams at me, not holding anything back as he throws his chair to the side, putting all of his weight into it. It crashes against the bookshelf, several texts falling down as he slams his fists against his desk.

I turn my back on him, my heart racing, my fist pulsing in agony from the punch and my chest hurting with a pain I can’t explain.

He pounds his fists again and again as I see myself out.

Leaving my father and promising myself never to see him again, never to speak to him, never to trust him. And never to be like him. Never again.