Cole (The Leaves) Read Online Free Page B

apart.
    “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I tried to soothe her, but my voice and resolve were breaking.
    “Isn’t that sweet.” Joe said. “That’s enough now. You know I had her first. My little Annie. I need to finish what I started in the alley. I want her going to your bed knowing my cock was inside your newest acquisition, Mr. Carlyle. ”
    Click.
    I’m not sure what took me over then, maybe the devil, maybe all the years of pent up anger and hostility I’d had stored away against my father, but as soon as I stepped away from the phone, I started wailing on him. Gus and Olaf each had an arm, my body bucking to get back to him and beat the living shit out of him. “You did this!!” I spat. “You fucking did this!”
    Two things happened next that I will never forget.
    First, my mom came out of nowhere and stood in front of my father and slapped him across the face. “You better fucking fix this Richard, or so help me God, I will ruin you. That poor girl is the best thing to ever happen to this family. If your greed causes any harm to come to her or our son, any
more
harm, I’ll kill you myself and I don’t care how many people in this room just heard me threaten you. I’ll gladly go to the chair.”
    Then the second thing I’ll never forget, happened. “Patricia?” He spoke in a voice I only recalled hearing as a kid. A softness I didn’t even know still existed in the man. “I know you’ll never forgive me for what I did. I know I pushed you and Cole away, but I will fix this and when I do, I want you to forgive me. It’s been thirty years, Patricia. My father tried to force me to give you up. I loved you. I didn’t care that you were poor, that we’d be poor, none of that mattered. I wanted you and I wanted our child.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then dear old dad stopped speaking to you, wrote you out of the will and you turned around and did the
exact
same thing to your son. You resented us both and in the end you inherited anyway. Fuck you and your sob story.”
    Holy fuck.
    “I love you Patricia. I will make this right.”
    “I promised ‘til death do us part’, Richard. Fix it and maybe I can stick to that part of our vows. If not, well, you made your bed. And you stopped talking to me. For five years you didn’t speak to me at all. I never stopped loving you. I supported you; I’ve stood by you watching you try to be what your dead father wanted you to be. I’ve waited for thirty years for you to say the words and not once, even when you called to tell me about Cole, not once did you say them. And while we’re at it, maybe you can tell me what happened that day, too?”
    Jesus. I couldn’t think anymore. Every synapse in my brain seemed to be firing at the same time. I shrugged off Olaf and Gus and walked back to the kitchen. I handed shots first to Olaf, then Gus, followed by Daniel and Thug and lastly, I handed one to my father as he approached and held my glass to toast him. “Here’s to getting my girl back.” He clinked my glass and threw the shot back.
    Olaf pulled me outside so everyone could take a deep breath. “Cole, my friend… what can I do? Anything.”
    “Please go and find out exactly what the fucking story is. If I go back inside, I think I’m going to lose it completely.”
    “Hang tight, I’ll try to be quick.”
    I’d since been nursing a beer. I didn’t want to get drunk, knowing the phone might ring again, hoping it would, I needed to keep my wits about me. I needed to keep it together for Anika. I knew my mom was next to me, just from her perfume. It’d never changed. My whole life, she’d been a Chanel woman. Apparently, it was the first gift my father had given her. That should’ve clued me in to the fact she still loved him. But, I had to know for sure. “You love him.” Not a question, a statement.
    “Always,” She replied.
    “How could you love him?” There was no hiding the disgust in my voice.
    “He was my first everything,