“No, I’ve just landed.”
She covered her smile with her fingers. “And you decided to visit your père first? You ’ave grown up, no? And ’ow ’andsome you ’ave grown.”
Lucian refused to let this butterball of a woman make him blush. He was Lucian Patras for Christ’s sake. He did not blush.
Claudette hung up his coat and turned to face him again. She tilted her head to the side and studied him for a moment. “Ah, but what is this, Lucian? You are déprimé.”
He frowned at her. She was the only woman who refused to speak to him as an adult. She met him when he was twelve and treated him as such ever since.
“I am not depressed, Claudette,” he assured her.
“Do not lie to me, garçon. I see it in your eyes. What has you so?” She suddenly jumped and smiled. “And you ’ave come to see your père! Per’aps whatever it is that weighs on you can act as a bridge to mend this silly rivalry the two of you share.”
They walked toward the back of the house, their steps echoing to the tops of the fifteen-foot ceilings. Christos called Lucian’s taste gauche. Lucian called his father’s taste pompous Parisian chic.
Claudette leaned close and whispered, “Is it a woman? You have the sad look of a man amoureux. Has she captured your poor tortured heart and scorned you, my sweet garçon?”
He pursed his lips. “You’ve been watching too much daytime television, Claudette. Perhaps my father needs to give you more to do.”
The swat of her hand landed on his arm where she gripped him affectionately. “Ne vous l’osez!” she hissed. “Bite your tongue.”
He chuckled.
They stopped outside of the tall French doors that marked his father and Tibet’s private living quarters. She turned to him and drew his face down to her height. “Now you listen to me, garçon,” she whispered. “Your father is not a young man anymore. I do not want any fighting, comprenez? You bicker with ’im and you answer to me.” Her pudgy fingers slapped his check twice. “Now, you go ’ave a nice visit and then come see me, and I will see about getting you some fresh croissants. Lord knows what you ’ave been eating in zee States.”
She smiled and turned away. As the echo of her soft footsteps dissipated into the depths of the house, he could make out the slight rumble of voices coming from a television. He was here. There was no turning back now. He turned the brass knob and knocked as he pressed the door open.
“Oui?” his father called from the next room, his voice as gruff as always.
Rather than answer, Lucian walked toward his father’s voice and stood in the doorway. His dad’s graying hair had begun to thin. It wasn’t a bad way to go, Lucian though, figuring in a few decades his hair would likely look the same, being that he was about as carbon copy as a son could be.
When he cleared his throat, his father continued penning the line of whatever he was writing and, without being rushed, glanced at the door. When he saw who was there he stilled.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you too, Christos.”
Lucian stepped into the room. It was furnished in a nouveau riche style that had Tibet’s mark all over it. The only thing in the room of any real value was the desk his father was writing at and now scowling from.
“Are the girls all right? Did something happen?”
“Isadora and Toni are fine. It wouldn’t hurt you to call them once in a while.”
“Has Antoinette finished her degree yet?”
Lucian settled into a dainty blue chair that was predictably uncomfortable. “No, she’s changed her major again.”
His father crossed his arms. “You and Isadora give her too much freedom. She needs direction, that one, too headstrong. Isadora was always more like your mother.”
“Yes, it’s quite unfortunate Toni takes after her father more than her mother.”
Christos’s eyes narrowed. “Well, come on then, why are you here? I know you didn’t just come to visit.”
“I had business here,” he lied.
“What business? I keep in touch with your manager at the hotel here. There are no matters pressing enough to require your presence.”
Lucian pursed his lips. “Do you think my employees would keep you informed if there were matters requiring my attention? You’re no longer the owner. You’re the man I bought out and they’re quite aware which Patras signs their checks.”
His father waved away his words. “Family squabbles do not interest the French the way they do the Americans. You’re my son. They see you as my subordinate. As your father I’m deserving of their respect and, in their eyes, I hold more authority than you, regardless of who signs their bloody checks.” He practically sneered the last part of his statement.
“Fucking Europeans,” Lucian mumbled under his breath.
“So why are you here? Is it money? Are you in trouble?”
“Wouldn’t that make you happy.”
His father surprised him by snapping, “No, it would not make me happy. Unlike you, I do not wish my family to fall upon harder times. You may have taken over my livelihood, but it takes a lot more to leave a Patras penniless. I asked, because if you needed money I would give it to you.”
Lucian rolled his eyes, not falling for the fatherly act. “I’m sure you would. At what? Fifty percent interest? Sixty-five?”
“Goddamn it, Lucian, must every word between us be in anger? Surely you didn’t come all this way just to frustrate me.”
Something in his father’s voice gave him pause. He studied him. This was the same man who walked away from every single one of his children directly after the death of their mother, leaving them with governesses and tutors to guide them into adulthood. He didn’t give a whit about their problems.
Toughen up! his father would yell, whenever they even mentioned something they found unjust. He wasn’t old enough to have a change of heart forced by mortality. Besides, one had to have a heart in order for it to change.
“I needed to get out of the city and I haven’t been here in five years. It doesn’t hurt to surprise employees every once in a while, check on how things are really going.”
As his father nodded a look of sadness flashed in his eyes. “True. Well, it was nice of you to stop by while you were passing through. Tibet will be sorry she missed you.”
“Is she not here?”
“No. She’s been dealing with some medical issues of late and today was the first day she actually felt more like herself in some time. I sent her out shopping, thinking the fresh air aught to do her good.”
“Yes, well . . . tell her I’m sorry I’ve missed her.” Truth be told, he was relieved by her absence.
His father scowled. “She’s your stepmother, you insensitive brat. Aren’t you even going to ask what’s wrong with her?”
And so it began. “That woman will never hear a title from me with the word mother in it. I had a mother and she killed her—”
“Do not go pinning that on Tibet. Your mother had cancer. Cancer, Lucian. You act as though Tibet was pricking pins in a voodoo doll for Christ’s sake!”
“She might as well have been!” he roared back. “She was letting you stick your prick in her when you should have been taking Mother to medical appointments!”
His father shook his head, and just like that all the steam seemed to leave him. “This is the way it will always be between us then?” He rubbed his brow and in a softer voice said, “I loved your mother, Lucian. I loved her and took care of her the best I knew how, but I loved Tibet too. I loved her in a different way. A way I didn’t know existed until I met her. By then it was too late. Your mother was already my fiancée.”
Lucian turned away, discarding all the same old bullshit. If not for Tibet his mother would have never suffered as she had in the end. Rather than facing her disease with the courage o
f her spouse and his strength available to her when she was at her weakest, she suffered through treatments while battling a broken heart.
He’d never forget the night his mother was up vomiting after a treatment. Lucian had sat with her, terrified as only a young boy could be seeing his mother so weak. She was on so much medication she was babbling about things he didn’t quite understand.
“She’s the cancer, Luche,” she had told him. “She is a cancer to this family, to my marriage, and to you children.”
“Try to rest, Mom.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
Her words angered him. He was only a boy. A world without his mother in it was unimaginable. The idea of being raised by his heartless father who showed up only to criticize them was unthinkable.
Then there was the infamous Tibet. His mother spoke of her often. She had been a name spoken in their house from the time he was a child, yet he had never set eyes on her.
Lucian had tried to settle his mother that night, asking her to please not get herself worked up. “You need to rest, Mom. Sleep and the pain will be gone in the morning.”
She laughed dryly. “You kids think it’s this disease that’s killing me, but it’s her, her and your father. I loved him, Lucian. Do you know how much I loved him?”
She began to cry. “Why wasn’t I enough? That’s what I want to know, Lucian! Why wasn’t I enough? I stood by for years while he carried on with his affair and pushed all of us aside to make his fortunes. When he fell on hard times, I was there. And where is he now? Huh, where is he?”
She had swung out her hand in anger and knocked the tray from the night table, the sound attracting the maid and Isadora. His sister climbed onto the bed and held their mother as she wept like a little girl. He backed out of the room as she cried, “Why wasn’t I enough? We will never be enough. He always has to have more, more, more.”
***
When he was a child, Isadora ripped the arm of his favorite bear. He beat her with a toy car and his father then beat him, instilling in him that a man never raised a hand to girl. It didn’t matter that Isa was bigger than him. Lucian had been four. It was the first time he ever felt enraged. However, that time was purely child’s play to what he felt that night his mother fell to pieces in his sister’s arms.
It was then, he vowed, to always be a man of his word—unlike his father—and he also vowed in that moment that if his mother did not live through this, he would personally go after everything his father loved. That was a promise, and he kept it.
He looked at his father now, that old rage bubbling up inside him again. “It was a mistake coming here.” He stood.
“You’re leaving?”
“What do I have to stay for? I must have been nuts when I thought being here would do me good, having some crisis of conscience, or perhaps looking for some sort of parental guidance that has never existed between us. I’ll call a cab and be out of your hair—”
“Why would you need guidance, Lucian?”
He faced his dad and noticed genuine curiosity in his expression, but he couldn’t trust it. Christos only moved in methods of advancement and malice. There were no softer sides.
Lucian sighed. “Forget it. If I don’t see you . . .” He left the comment open, knowing it would likely be another five years before he saw his father again. He turned for the door.
“Wait.”
He stilled but didn’t face him. His father waited as well, and then finally said, “I lied. Tibet’s not sick—”
Lucian spun on his heels. “Who lies about something like that?”
“I am. I’ve been sick for quite some time. Had a heart attack back in November that put me on my back for a while. They did some invasive bullshit, opened me up.” He drew a line over his shirt, showing where his incision had been. “A few weeks ago I caught a bug. I tell you, once you have a heart attack, little shit like the common cold can feel like the plague. Today’s the first day I’ve been out of bed in a month.”
His father appeared thinner, now that he was standing. Lucian believed him. There was no reason not to, even if he did just lie about Tibet being the one that was sick. Still, for all the sympathy he felt for his mother when she had come close to death, he felt drawn in the opposite direction for his father. Yet an innate part of him wanted to go to his dad and comfort him, let him know he was there and everything would be fine.
“I don’t want the girls to know,” his father said. “No sense in worrying them.” He was quiet for a few beats, then in a small voice he said, “Or worse, telling them and realizing I mean so little to them now that they don’t seem worried at all.”
Weight crushed down on his chest, only angering him more. Fuck. “Guilt? Really, Dad? Bad form.” He drew a quick comparison in his mind between Pearl and Christos.
His father let out a breath of laughter as his mouth quirked in a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry. Pathetic, I know.” He sat back in his chair, and this time Lucian took notice of how winded and lethargic he seemed. He returned to his chair as well.
Christos cleared his throat. “So many times I wanted to call you kids and just say . . . hell, I don’t know, just say something. Isadora’s a woman now. You’re busy with business. I remember what that was like. And Antoinette . . . my sweet little Annie . . .”
“She hates being called that,” Lucian informed him.
“Well, she’s my baby. I can call her whatever the hell I please.” The words should have come out with a hint of laughter, but they didn’t. Instead they were laced with what sounded like anger. “I’m too weak to even fly. I can’t even get on a plane to see my own damn children!” His hand thumped on the desk. “I know if I asked you kids to come to me you wouldn’t. I have three children and not one of them likes me.”
Lucian pressed his lips together. All of his instincts were rallying up his sympathies, but for whom? This man was the same person who made him feel worthless on so many levels, made him feel like he would never be good enough. For all Lucian knew he was destined to be something totally different, but his father’s lack of faith challenged him directly where he’d landed. He had to be a success just to stick it up his dad’s ass.
Yet here he was all boo-hoo woe is me. Well, where the hell was he when Isadora found out she had a lump in her breast? Or when Toni got in a car accident when she was seventeen? How about when he . . . he came up short when he searched for some life-threatening moment in his own existence.
The only thing Lucian had ever truly suffered was losing Evelyn. The pain of burying Monique couldn’t equate to what he felt when he thought about losing Evelyn.
He looked at his dad and found his expression anxious. What could he say? You were a shitty father and husband?
“Tell me why you’re here, Lucian,” Christos whispered. “You came all this way. Don’t expect me to believe it was for nothing. I know you didn’t come to see me, but you came here hoping to find answers. Let me help you. Let me at least be there for one of my children.”
A knot twisted inside of Lucian’s stomach. He couldn’t deal with any more guilt or stress or he was going to have an ulcer before the month was over.
The trustworthiness of his father was up for debate. He didn’t know if even a come-to-Jesus moment was enough to change a man like Christos Patras. His father feared no god. On the contrary, he thought he was God. So the entire idea of him suddenly caring about what was going on in his children’s lives was too foreign for Lucian to digest.
Lucian was trained by the best to overtake the best. He had to be the better man in order to outmaneuver his dad the way he had. He knew what being a man of business entailed. One had to know how to read people, pick up on any weaknesses and put pressure there at just the right time in order to proceed in the desired direction.
His mind drew back to another time in his childhood, before his mother
had gotten sick. He was seven, sitting out back on the veranda, hiding because he was crying. When he heard his father’s heavy footfalls he quickly dashed away his tears.
***
“Lucian! What are you doing out here? Your mother’s looking for you.”
He drew up the tail of his shirt and wiped his nose. Scrambling to his feet, he bowed his head instinctively, knowing his father would not be empathetic, and scurried by. He came up short when his father caught him by the collar.
“Are those tears? Patras men don’t cry, Lucian. You’ll never get anywhere in this world if you don’t toughen up.”
He clenched his teeth, wishing he could strike the giant that held him immobile. “Yes, sir.”
His father released his collar and narrowed his eyes, critically eyeing Lucian’s flushed face. “Is this about that dog?”
That dog! His name was Rex and he was their family pet. Rather than get into an argument, he pressed his lips together, but frustration boiled beneath his skin.
His father shook his head. “Damn dog, I told your mother that was a terrible idea. Now look at you kids, every one of you an absolute mess because some animal’s dead.”
Lucian’s heart sank. His father was nothing like the rest of them. He was cold and unfeeling. Everything he spoke of had to do with business and money. He never simply stopped to just be a father.
“I should have saved everyone the worry and shot that thing long ago, put it out of its misery,” his father said as he turned away and headed back toward the house.
A white haze of anger took hold of him. His crooked, chewed fingernails bit into his small hands as they fisted at his side. His tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth as he sucked in a deep breath through his nose like a dragon draws in smoke after breathing fire. Hate was a living, seething thing coiled inside of him, and he had to get it out.
Like a locomotive running off its track, Lucian bellowed as deep as his young lungs would allow and charged at the man. His fists crashed into his back, and for a moment he felt his father’s shock before it transitioned into anger.