Chapter 3

His nails raked across my face and opened a bloody line.

The slap caught me completely off guard.

I turned my head back to him slowly, regretting my stupidity all those years ago for the third time.

Seven years ago, I was the one who took the two of them in.

Vincent's father had married into his wife's family, and then her mother had thrown him out.

With nowhere to go, he ended up drifting on the streets, until I found him and brought him home.

My father had meant to hand them some money and send the pair on their way, but the man dropped to his knees and begged to be taken in, swearing he'd work like an ox, like a dog, whatever it took.

I couldn't bear it, so I asked my father to keep them.

Later, that man crawled into my mother's bed. My father caught them in the act, they argued, and he fell down the stairs to his death.

After that, my mother took the man in as her second husband, married into our family.

Once he became my stepfather, his true nature started to show.

"Neal, you'd better remember this."

"Say what you want, my father is still your father. You don't have to acknowledge him, but you don't get to humiliate him."

I shot my hand up and caught his wrist as he drew back to hit me again.

"Father? Is that supposed to be a joke?"

"A man who threw away every shred of decency to climb into his benefactor's wife's bed doesn't get to call himself my father."

"If you won't acknowledge him, then we're done as mother and son."

My mother came over, the aggrieved stepfather at her side.

"Neal, how could you call the police on your own father?"

"You've gone too far."

Everyone else raised their hands and pointed at me too, ranting about how arrogant and out of line I was.

The cut on my face and Althea's cold indifference left me looking utterly pathetic.

I forced the bitterness down. I would not show weakness in front of them.

"Why shouldn't I call the police on them? My door was locked, and they got someone to pry it open and take my things. Taking what isn't yours without asking is theft."

"I didn't. We really didn't take anything of yours."

"I only went in to tidy the room out of kindness. You said you didn't want that junk, and it seemed a waste to throw it out, so I picked it up and wore it."

When the stepfather finished, a shocked murmur ran through the crowd.

"No way! He's the young master of the Henson family!"

"And he's so low he wears the junk other people throw away."

Hearing it, the fury on my mother's face only grew.

"Freeze this animal's cards for me—"

"Mother, don't upset yourself."

"I froze his cards a long time ago."

"If we don't teach him a lesson, he'll never learn how to respect people."

The stepfather and Vincent stole a glance at each other, sly grins tugging at their mouths.

But to protect the good-man image he'd built up, the stepfather turned to my mother with a guilty tone and pleaded on my behalf.

"Darling, don't be like this, both of you."

"Can't we just go home and raise the boy properly? Why criticize him in front of all these outsiders?"

"I may be his stepfather, but I've long thought of him as my own son."

Hearing that, my mother gripped his hand, pleased and aching for him at once.

Vincent shouted at me: "Neal, aren't you going to come over and apologize to Father?"

Althea pressed me with the same attitude, as though she'd send me to prison if I didn't apologize.

Thinking back, she hadn't seemed to like the pair of them before.

Every time my mother scolded me over those two, she'd been the one to take my side and get me even.

Seeing how good she was to me was why I'd begged my grandfather to give the Harding family serious help behind the scenes.

That was what launched the Hardings overnight and made them the richest family in New York.

Because my grandfather believed the only way to protect his grandson was to make the Hardings strong.

So when Althea said my life and death depended on nothing but her Harding family, I felt nothing but contempt.

Facing the scorn coming at me from every side, I decided I was done with Althea.

"Neal, are you deaf?"

"Get over here and apologize to your father, now."