Chapter 24: Empire of Desire: Chapter 23

I never thought much about the meeting the parents part, because Nate and I aren’t like that.

This whole thing is for convenience. There shouldn’t be feelings he has to be aware of and I’m only using him for sex.

The asshole.

The fucking asshole.

I hate him so much sometimes, and okay, calling him Uncle Nate was probably not the best way to get revenge, but he hurt me. He cut me in half after giving me the best night and morning of my life. He turned me into a woman, took care of me, and slept beside me. And he didn’t leave like he usually does.

He stayed.

Not to mention, he was nice and playful and took me to heights I didn’t realize were possible. Then he crashed it all to the ground.

And I had to hurt him back. That’s what Dad told me; if someone punches, you don’t stand there and take it. You punch back, the hardest you can, with all your might and with twice the aggression.

So I did that and said I used him, and then I called him Uncle Nate because I know he hates it. He might’ve wanted me to call him that before, but that’s not the case lately. There’s been an unspoken rule about how he’ll never refer to me as kiddo and I’ll never call him Uncle.

But I said it to hurt him, not that it worked. He doesn’t feel the same things we mortals do, because he’s a god whose heart is made of stone. I can touch it, but I can never breathe life into it.

And now, there’s another person with us, and I can’t even touch his stone of a heart, because suddenly, there seems to be walls surrounding him. No, they’re not mere walls.

They’re forts.

Tall, solid ones that not even armies can bust through.

The reason is the person. The intruder. Debra Weaver. I know her, I’ve seen her countless times at the events I attended with Dad. Not to mention on TV. She’s the second half of the Weaver power couple, Senator Brian Weaver’s wife and a kickass woman.

At least, that’s what I used to think.

Before I felt how Nate surrounded himself with a rigid exterior in her presence. As if she’s the army closing in on his forts.

She doesn’t look like an army. If anything, she appears classy and elegant in her tailored beige dress and her black high heels. Her golden hair is gathered in a neat twist and her light eyes have a serene look. She also looks way younger than she’s said to be. I mean, Nate’s older brother who died a long time ago was way older than him, ten years or more—if I remember correctly. So that makes Debra approximately in her late sixties, but she looks to be in her early fifties.

Anyway, she doesn’t seem amused right now as she flicks her gaze between us like she’s a merciless teacher and we’re the two insolent kids in her class.

“I’m sorry,” Martha tells Nate, but she peeks at me. “I couldn’t stop her.”

Why is Martha looking at me as if she pities me? I’m fine. I no longer feel like going to visit Dad and crying beside his bed because those feelings of abandonment are hitting me out of nowhere.

I don’t hear the clinking emptiness in my half-full brain or feel the need to jot a million other words on my list.

I don’t.

“Stop me?” Debra clicks her tongue. “This is my son’s house and I get to come whenever I want.”

“It’s okay, Martha,” Nate tells her in his usual calm tone, and she scurries away, bowing her head.

“It’s not your son’s house, it’s my dad’s,” I correct her. Because it is, and I won’t allow anyone to take anything of Dad’s. Even with words.

Debra narrows her eyes on me, and holy shit, since when did they become so judgmental? They look so calming on TV and at events. “What did you just say to me, little girl?”

“I’m not a little girl. I’m twenty. And I said this is Dad’s place.”

“Go to the firm, Gwyneth,” Nate coldly lashes out his order, and I internally flinch at the apathy in his tone. Is that how he’s going to treat me now? As if I’m someone he can order around?

In that case, he has another thing coming.

“No, we have a visitor, so I’d like to stay.” I flop onto a chair by the counter, where my cupcakes, my vanilla milkshake, and my boiled eggs are laid out because Nate remembers these things. He knows what I like to eat and drink and even look at. He just doesn’t know how to be a fucking human being and has no trouble cutting me open. “You can join us for breakfast if you want.”

I don’t mean that as I stuff my face with a cupcake, but Debra approaches us, or more likely she’s heading toward Nate, who’s still standing where I left him, behind me.

“I can’t believe this. This must be a distasteful joke.” Debra sounds horrified.

“What are you doing here, Mom?” Nate is still in his usual unaffected mode, but there’s tension at the end of his words.

“You weren’t answering or returning my calls, so I had to come and see for myself.”

Nate doesn’t pick up his mom’s calls? Now that I think about it, he rarely appears in public with his parents anymore, even though he’s their only child now.

“When Susan told me you got married, I thought it was to that other one. What was her name again? Right, Aspen. Even though she has no origins, she at least has made a name for herself and I could work on her. I could make an image for her. But you married this…this…little girl? Kingsley’s daughter? What were you thinking?”

I nearly swallow down all my milkshake and I don’t bother with a straw either, but it doesn’t quench the fire spreading in my throat. All her words make me burn. The fact that she was fine with him marrying Aspen. That Aspen is the right choice for him. That I’m a little girl.

God, I hate that and my age, and I think I hate Debra, too.

And—oh, Susan. I fucking despise her. Of course, she’d go tattle to Debra because she didn’t get what she wanted.

“It’s to protect the firm and King’s assets,” Nate says in that disturbed calm, the one that seems to be at the edge.

“It’s still registered, Nathaniel. People will find out and I’ll have to take care of the rumors and speculations. Do you know what they’ll say about you? They’ll say you wanted a kid, that you were attracted to her when she was underage and growing up before your eyes. They’ll call you a deviant, a pedophile, and a damn predator!”

I flinch with each of her words. I flinch so violently that I spill some of my milkshake onto the counter and I’m clinking my nails. Hard. Fast.

Oh my God. She’s right. That’s what the press will say. They’ll tear either me or Nate apart. They’ll say I seduced him or he preyed on me.

And they’ll definitely go for the latter because he’s Nathaniel Weaver. The prince of the Weaver empire and a senator’s son. So they’ll want to bring him down and will try every trick under the sun to do it.

Every ugly trick.

The press loves his family. They stalk them. They write articles about them all the time.

Sebastian brought his girlfriend of Japanese descent to an event one time and they went nuts about the couple. They even wrote disgusting articles alleging that he’s with her for publicity because having an Asian girlfriend makes him look good.

But anyone who’s seen them in private knows how much Sebastian worships that woman. He loves her with a passion that could be sensed in the air and tasted with the subtle yet possessive ways he touches her.

They’re one of the most badass couples on earth and no one would convince me otherwise. Definitely not the rotten media who spew lies for their own benefits.

Anyway, the Weavers are in the limelight all the time. And the press wouldn’t hesitate to bring Nate and his family down. His parents will have to disown him to keep their image intact and—

“She’s twenty years old and not an underage kid. Stop looking at her or treating her as a clueless child, and you know what? Fuck the press.”

A breath I didn’t know I was holding whooshes out of me. It’s so long that I feel the burn in my lungs and the ashes of the fire settling at the base of my throat.

I stare back at Nate because I’m thankful. He didn’t need to say those words, but he did, and now, I can finally breathe.

“Nathaniel!” Debra clutches her pearls. “This is serious. I will not allow you to endanger how far your father and I have come.”

“I’m also serious, Mom. If you see it as a problem, prevent it beforehand or afterward with your media play. Otherwise, I don’t give a fuck. Gwyneth is old enough to make her own decisions and neither you nor anyone else has a say in it.”

Debra twists her lips.

Me, however? I want to hug him, but I can’t, because he’s an asshole and I can’t have feelings for him.

Because even though he’s standing up for me, he’s doing it in a way a guardian would. In a way where I’m just under his care.

Where I depend on him.

“I don’t approve of this, and neither does Brian,” Debra announces. “You need to divorce her.”

“With all due respect, I couldn’t give a fuck about what either of you think.”

“Nathaniel! How dare you speak to me in that tone?”

I sense it then, the hardening of his walls. They’re turning into pure metal with each second and I want to stand and check on him, make sure he’s okay, but his demeanor stops me. This Nate is kind of scary, and it’s not the type of fear I’d jump straight toward. This type is darker and causes my spine to jerk into a line.

“Leave, Mom,” he grinds out through his teeth. “And don’t come back here again.”

“I’m not moving until you promise to do the right thing.”

“The right thing? What’s that, Mom? Is it throwing me at the staff to raise me? Or maybe it’s trying every trick under the sun to get rid of me when you were pregnant with me. You even took the very drugs you look down your nose on, right? But I was stubborn and insolent enough to come to life. So you decided neglect was the next thing you’d use to kill me. Nick was already there, so my presence wasn’t needed, but I lived and he fucking died and that’s not the right thing. It should’ve been the other way around. I should’ve been in that crash. Isn’t that what you told Dad back then? Why did Nicholas die? Why not Nathaniel? Why did it have to be Nicholas?”

Slap.

The sound reverberates in the kitchen after Debra slaps Nate on the cheek.

I lose it then. Because the fire is burning me now. The thought that his parents treated him this way makes me stabby on his behalf and I want Debra gone. I want her to stop hardening his walls and turning him into a stone.

Even though his words were calm, I can sense the frosty coldness behind them. I can taste it on my tongue, and it stings.

So I practically jump from my seat and step in front of him, facing her. “Get out of our house. Now.”

“You, shut up.”

“No, you shut up. And get out before I call the police to arrest you for trespassing. I don’t remember inviting you in. And believe me, a trespassing charge won’t look good in the press.”

She purses her thin lips together into a line, then releases them. I don’t stop glaring at her the entire time, my arms crossed and my sneakers tapping on the floor.

“This isn’t over,” she announces before she spins around and leaves, the sound of her heels echoing down the hall.

I breathe out a puff of air and release my arms as I slowly turn to face Nate. I didn’t expect him to be proud of me, but I didn’t think he’d have a frown etched deep in his forehead either.

“Don’t ever, and I mean ever, talk to her again.”

“Yes, I will. I won’t allow anyone to hurt you.”

“That’s not your fucking place, Gwyneth. My relationship with my mother or anyone else is none of your business.”

“You’re such a jerk.”

“Now that you know that, stop meddling and go to work.”

“If you keep pushing me away like this, you’ll have no one left.”

“I’m fine with that.”

“I really hate you right now.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Now get your ass in the car and go to the firm.”

He’s breathing harshly, I realize, his chest muscles stretching his shirt and the apron with every move. And it’s like he’s on the verge of something—what, I don’t know. I shouldn’t care either, because his words have dug a deep, black hole in my chest.

Is it too late to add his name to the negative words list?

Because I desperately need to be desensitized to him. I need to stop hurting because he got hurt by his parents. I need to stop being in pain because he’s cold and frigid and his tall forts are closing in on me, crushing me in the middle.

So I grab my bag and storm out of the house, and I drive so recklessly, it scares me. Maybe this is how Dad was that day. He knew something was wrong and got into an accident.

That ominous thought makes me gulp and I slow down, way down, and put on a mash-up playlist of Twenty One Pilots and NF because they calm me. They’re special, like I am.

Special people are misunderstood and that’s okay. Special people get hurt and that’s also okay. Because we’re special that way. No forts would destroy us or keep us out.

After a while of soaking in the music, I’m ready to get engrossed in something different than the clusterfuck of this entire morning. But I don’t go to the firm straight away, I head to the car company, where I have to sign some paperwork and show ID to prove I’m Dad’s next of kin so that I can get the dashcam’s files.

Then I drive to the firm and snuggle up beside Jane in IT to enjoy the peace away from Nate’s watchful eyes. He has a meeting with the other partners anyway, so I’m safe for a little while.

Jane offers to help me sort through the files’ different dates.

We both sit with headphones on, listening to the recordings and watching the feeds. I choke on my own tears the whole time. Seeing Dad talking, driving, and alive forms a ball in my chest. It expands with each second and I don’t think it’ll ever deflate. Or maybe I’ll have some sort of a heart attack. Panic attack. Or any attack.

I pause when I see the last person I expect get into Dad’s car. Aspen. She yanks the door open and flops into the passenger seat.

“Get the fuck out,” Dad barks at her, and even I wince at it.

I often forget that he’s not the same person around other people as he is around me.

He might have been a doting father to you, but he was a ruthless devil to everyone else. Her words come back to me as a reality.

“You need to stop being difficult for no reason, Kingsley,” she tells him, her tone as hard as his.

“I have my conditions and they’re final.”

“Nonsensical conditions. You can’t possibly expect them to accept those conditions.”

“They will do it peacefully and settle or we’ll go to court and make them. Either way, I will win.”

“You don’t even want it done the peaceful way, do you?”

“Peaceful ways are boring. Now, get out. I’ve spoken to you enough for this decade.”

She flips him the finger as she steps out of the car.

“Fucking witch,” Dad mutters under his breath and drives away.

I’m left skeptical about the entire exchange, but I push on and listen to his phone calls, which are mostly with his assistant about work and court. Many are with me, asking what I want for dinner.

Moisture gathers in my eyes when I watch the easing of his expression whenever he talks to me. I took everything for granted. His love, his attention, his presence. And now, I have none of those.

Jane taps my shoulder and I stare at her, removing my headphones. She gives me hers and points at the laptop. “I think you should listen to this.”

I plug in the headphones and hit Play. The image on the screen is of Dad driving. He’s wearing the suit from the day of the accident, and he has those dark circles under his eyes.

An unknown number flashes on the dash and Dad answers with, “Tell me you found her.”

I lean closer in my seat, but I can’t hear what the other person is saying, because Dad is listening through an earpiece. However, I see the change in his face, the way it turns to granite, and his knuckles tighten on the steering wheel.

“That can’t be…” His voice is low, almost a murmur. “She can’t be Gwen’s mother. Look again.”

He ends the call, throws the earpiece down, then hits the steering wheel a few times in a row. I can almost feel the rattling of the dashboard in front of him, because it’s inside me, too.

I didn’t hear it wrong, did I? He said Gwen’s mother, right? Does that mean Dad was looking for her?

According to what I just heard, he found her. He did, and then the accident happened.

The whole thing can’t be a coincidence, can it?