“No, I brought you here, but everything else was your decision. All the nonsense you’ve been up to with Vera’s stepdaughter—” He looks at my surprised face. “Did you really think I didn’t know how much time you were spending together? I’d hoped you had learned from your last indiscretion not to get in bed with people we do business with. Your mother swore to me you wouldn’t make this messy like—”

“Like what?” I shove off the wall and take a step closer.

He hesitates for a second, like he’s trying to decide how far he wants to go, but then his eyes narrow and his cheeks kinda suck into this tight smile. “Like you’re prone to do.”

I nod, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to swallow down the anxiety coiling tight in the pit of my stomach. “Maybe if I had parents who—” But I stop myself. It’s pointless. He’s going to think what he thinks, and nothing I do will change that. “I’ve seen what a family is, Dad, and I know it’s not this.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” he says. “Do you know what you’ve cost us over the years?”

“Me?”

He pushes off his desk and takes a step closer. “We may not have had much time together, and I own that, but we gave you opportunities that most kids could never even dream of.”

“I didn’t want opportunities; I wanted parents!”

“We tried that, and you jumped off the roof, remember? This roof, actually. And then your mother made me buy her a whole new house across the country so you could have a fresh start. But you screwed that up by letting that boy take pictures of you. Do you know how much I had to pay that website to make them disappear?”

I shift uncomfortably. I didn’t even know they existed until Chandler threatened to post them online, hoping it would derail his conservative father’s political career. I guess queer kids hating their shitty dads is kind of par for the course.

“Who exactly do you think has been bankrolling all of your mistakes?”

I stare down at the carpet. “I just don’t want to be a part of this anymore.”

He scoffs. “A part of what?”

“Any of this.” I gesture to the reports, to the room, to him.

He takes another step forward, and another, until my back is against the wall, and I wince from the smell of booze on his breath. Shit, it’s barely afternoon.

“What would you do without any of this? You have no skills, no money, no education. You’ve been coddled to the point of uselessness.” His voice changes, like he’s letting loose years of pent-up frustration. “You are a black hole, Ridley. You always have been, sucking us all in with you. You want out? Nobody’s stopping you. Not anymore.”