He responds by downing his drink, wielding silence like another weapon. The fury builds in my chest, drowning out everything good, everything I've fought to become. All of it eclipsed by his toxic shadow.

"You hate me," my voice cracks, and I despise myself for letting him hear it. "You've always hated me. What the fuck did I do to you that was so bad?"

His only answer is another swallow of whiskey, and somehow that cuts deeper than any insult. Because even now, some broken part of me still wants answers. Still needs to understand why I wasn't enough.

The silence stretches dangerous and thin, until something ancient and dark breaks loose inside me.

"I wish it had been you instead of David. At least he knew how to be an actual father." The words tear free like barbed wire, carrying years of accumulated poison.

Scott's face twists into something inhuman. "Then maybe your mother should've fucked him instead." His laugh scrapes against my nerves. "Who knows, she probably already did."

The words detonate in my chest, and suddenly my hands are moving on pure instinct, fingers curling into his expensive collar. I slam him against the bar with a sound that echoes through my bones.

"Every ounce of hate you have for me? It's doubled when I think about how much I despise you," I roar, voice shattering. Each word is a bullet I've been saving, each syllable weighted with memories of broken furniture and my mother's tears. "Every time you hurt her, every time you tore us apart, did it feel good? Was the control worth your one-way ticket to hell?"

Scott laughs, and I see myself through the years—at eight, hiding in closets; at twelve, standing between him and mom; at sixteen, nursing split knuckles and a broken heart. Every version of myself that he created pulses beneath my skin.

"I should have never let her keep you." He spits the words like venom, and for a moment, I'm that little boy again, desperate for love that would never come.

I raise my fist, years of rage compressed into five knuckles, but suddenly there are hands pulling me back.

"Nate!" Jay's voice cuts through the red haze. He drags me away with surprising strength, and I let him because some small part of me knows—this isn't who I am. This isn't who I fought to become. "You don't need to go to jail right now, man. Walk it off."

Scott stumbles up, adjusting his suit like armor, his sneer a perfect mirror of my childhood nightmares.

The bartender's voice cuts through. "Get out, Sullivan, before I call the cops."

I watch him leave, chest heaving, body vibrating with aftershocks of rage and something deeper—grief for the father I never had. Jay's hand on my shoulder pulls me back to reality.

"How'd you find me?" The words scrape past my lips.