The bar door creaks open, and the thick wall of stale beer and cigarette smoke wraps around me like an old friend. That's when I see him—Scott Sullivan himself, hunched over the bar like some regular working man drowning his sorrows. A woman leans close, her laughter carrying across the room, her manicured hand resting on his arm like she can't feel the poison beneath his skin. Something primordial awakens in my chest. This bastard, playing an eligible bachelor while systematically destroying everyone who shares his blood. Mom, me, and now Jake—we're all just collateral damage in his grand performance of life.

I move toward them, each step weighted with two decades of fury.

"You look like a smart girl," I say, my voice slicing through the ambient noise. The woman startles; Scott doesn't even flinch. Just sits there, tumbler in hand, waiting for the show. "The guy you're thinking about fucking is a piece of shit with a wife and two sons he pretends don't exist. Isn't that right, Dad?"

She gathers her dignity along with her purse and disappears into the crowd. Scott's pathetic, "Kelly, wait!" follows her retreat.

"Are you fucking serious?" The rage burns familiar paths through my veins. "You've got some serious nerve sitting here while your real life's a fucking train wreck."

"Lower your voice," he slurs, bloodshot eyes struggling to focus. "I don't need a scene."

Of course. Drunk and high in his thousand-dollar suit, straight from his moment of triumph at Eden's gala to this dive bar. And I'm supposedly the family disappointment.

"A scene?" I lean close enough to taste the whiskey on his breath. "You haven't seen one yet. You've already destroyed Mom's life. Mine. And now Jake? Was that part of the master plan? I told you to walk away and never come near us again. But you just couldn't help yourself, could you?"

His jaw tightens, eyes going glacial. "And what are you going to do, son?" The last word drips with contempt.

"You only have one son, remember? And it sure as hell isn't me. You're a fucking disgrace," I spit, hating how my voice betrays me, hating how after all these years, he can still reduce me to that terrified nine-year-old boy.

"And you're my biggest disappointment." The words slide off his tongue like a practiced script.

"Your insults don't cut like they used to." But even as I say it, an old wound throbs—that desperate need for approval I've never managed to excise. "Nothing you say hurts me anymore."

His smirk is surgical in its cruelty. "You know what your problem is, Nate? You think I'm the villain while your mother's some kind of saint." He leans closer, words burning like acid. "You might want to fact-check that story."

Confusion slices through my anger. "Don't talk about her to me. You lost that right years ago."