Unhinged (6 page)

Sebastian

Dinner was a nightmare,
just as I expected.

I should’ve gone out,
or possibly nuked a frozen dinner at my house. If I had, I wouldn’t have had to
endure Conrad’s wrath in front of my sister and my stepmother. Not that they
weren’t already familiar with our unique blend of dinner conversation.

Conrad was still
harping on the fact that I’d sent Payton on her way without helping her to
retrieve his cell phone. I found it amusing: both sending her on her way
and
listening to my father bitch about it.

Mighty fucking funny.

But, the fact that I
wasn’t taking him seriously had led to a conversation involving plenty of other
transgressions that he wanted to call out until I could no longer taste the
food I was eating.

Same story, different
day.

I was a glutton for punishment
.
That was the only logical reason for why I
put up with his shit. Sometimes I just didn’t get it.

Ever since my mother
died, I’d been going through the motions. Eleven years was a long damn time to
muddle your way through life without having any particular reason for doing
what you do. But that’s where I was at in my head
—
lost.
Completely and totally at the mercy of all the people around me.

Not that I wanted
anyone to feel sorry for me. I’d made my own bed so to speak. By the time I was
thirteen, I’d done time in juvie, and since then I’d talked my way out of a
shitload of trouble, as well. My motto was that rules were meant to be broken,
and I had always aimed to be the best I could be, so that’s what I’d done. Ignoring
the rules had become my benchmark for success. The more rules I could bend or
break, the more successful I was.

Growing up, I didn’t
have much. My mother and I lived in a one bedroom apartment, which was sparsely
furnished with mostly hand me downs from her older sister. My mother busted her
ass to take care of me, even though she was incredibly young
—
only seventeen
when she had me
—
and barely able to take care of herself. Her parents kicked her out when she
told them she was pregnant, and they didn’t offer to help even when we needed
it most. We lived paycheck to paycheck and the worst part about it all, I had
never been old enough to get a job and help out before she died. I’d tried
though, working in a couple of mechanic shops for cash, but I never brought
home enough money to make a difference.

Child support was
nonexistent. In order to get child support, your mother had to do something to
make that happen. Rachelle didn’t want to have anything to do with Conrad
Trovato. The most she’d taken from him was his last name when she put it on my
birth certificate. And she’d regretted that every day after.

And as a way of saying
thank you for not fucking up his entire life, Conrad pretended I didn’t exist.
He pretended my mother didn’t exist.

Good ol’ Conrad
Trovato. My mother had been head over heels for him, and the bastard had turned
his back on her. Then again, he’d been married to his first wife, Judy
something or other, at that time and he was already making a name for himself.
It wouldn’t have gone over well if he admitted to having an illegitimate child
with an underage girl.

Yep. Conrad had been
twenty-six and married when he impregnated my seventeen-year-old mother.
Needless to say, the two of them hadn’t been all that concerned with morals and
values when they decided to get together. Or protection, obviously.

Not only had Conrad
built a company that afforded him the luxuries he had today, but he also came
from old money. Money on top of money. I would never understand it.

But when Conrad attempted
to pay my mother for her silence, Rachelle told him to go to hell and kept his
secret for free.

That’s where she and I
differed. I would have taken the asshole’s money and exploited him. Break the
rules; that was the name of the game.

Every damn time I
looked at him, I wanted to break his nose.

Tonight, after putting
up with his tirade for a couple of minutes, I had hurried through the meal,
excusing myself without his permission and hiding out in the garage attached to
the guesthouse. This one was mine, the one place I spent hours and hours alone.
It gave me time to think, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing sometimes.

As though they knew I
didn’t need to be left to my own devices, ten minutes after I’d started
tinkering with my Camaro, Leif and Toby showed up. My two closest friends tried
to convince me to go out to the sports bar that we generally went to on
Thursday nights, but I declined. I had too much shit to do
—
which translated
to:
I didn’t want to be around people
.

They were my closest friends
and it was true, when I wasn’t working, I was usually hanging with them. That’s
what friends did.

After I had refused to
go out, Leif and Toby decided to stick around, snatching two beers from the
refrigerator and planting their asses on the tailgate of my truck. We were
talking about the new big block engine I was working on when my father made an
appearance.

Standing to my full
height, I put my hand on the edge of the Camaro’s open hood and stared at him.

“I wanted to make sure
you were planning to be at the party tomorrow night,” Conrad stated in that
authoritative tone that he generally used on his employees.

He almost made it sound
as though I had a choice. I knew better.

“Busy. But y’all should
have a grand ol’ time,” I replied sarcastically, glancing back at the engine.

“You will be there.”

That’s more like it. I
knew it hadn’t been a request.

“Why? Why the hell
would you even want me there?” I turned my full attention on him then, noticing
out of the corner of my eye that Leif and Toby were watching us intently.

“I want to unveil the
new concept car.”

“It’s not ready,” I
informed him, as though he didn’t already know that.

“But it will be.”

“Not by tomorrow it
won’t,” I argued.

“Maybe not. But it will
be soon. I want to announce it, see if we have any potential buyers.”

I should have been used
to this shit. It wasn’t the first time Conrad pushed a deadline on me. In
return, he should have realized by now that the harder he pushed, the harder I
pushed back.

“I’m busy.”

“You’ll be there,” he repeated
more sternly.

I could see the
discomfort on Leif’s and Toby’s faces and I knew that I needed to chill. My
father and I were notorious for going to blows whenever we engaged in
conversation and more than once, my friends had been caught in the crossfire. I
knew how uncomfortable it was. Hell, I lived this life. No one knew it better
than me.

“Fine,” I snapped,
dropping the hood on the Camaro as a punctuation mark on my temper.

“Black tie. Seven
o’clock.”

I nodded, keeping my
mouth shut for fear of what I might say. I didn’t want to go to one of his
stupid fucking parties. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the assholes that he
called friends. A few people knew who I was, but the rest of them had no clue.
How Conrad had managed to do that all these years, I still didn’t know. I
didn’t want to know.

If I had to guess, he
had paid them off the same way he paid me off. At fourteen, when they were
laying your mother in the ground and throwing dirt over her casket, you did
what you had to do to survive. You see, my mother died in a car accident. She
was T-boned by a drunk driver, or so the story went. Since the driver had fled
the scene, no one really knew that to be true. She died on impact, and after
losing her, I hadn’t been right in the head.

Still wasn’t.

I survived the
overwhelming grief of losing the only person who loved me by blackmailing
Conrad Trovato.

A paternity test proved
that he was my father, although part of me had always hoped my mother had been
wrong. Considering he was the only man she’d been with before I was born, it
was a little difficult for her to make that shit up.

I’d been backed into a
corner with only two options. The state would take me, or my father would. I
chose option B, which at the time seemed like the lesser of two evils. I still
questioned my decision sometimes.

Conrad hadn’t been
happy with the threat, but he eventually saw the light. That didn’t mean that
he didn’t hate me. I was pretty sure he did.

I didn’t fucking care.

“Awesome. You get to
put on the penguin suit.” Toby’s roaring laughter yanked me away from my
negative thoughts.

I darted my eyes toward
the door, but my father was gone.

“Fuck off. Shut your
face or I’ll make you come with me.”

“Bullshit.” Toby recoiled
as though I’d hit him with a cattle prod. “You ain’t gonna get me anywhere near
those people. What if that shit’s contagious?”

“What shit?” Leif
asked, sipping his beer and peering over at Toby.

“That hoity-toity shit.
Man, I don’t wanna walk around like I’ve got somethin’ stuck up my ass, thank
you very much.”

“Too late for that,”
Leif offered, amused.

I laughed. I couldn’t
help myself.

Toby was a country boy
to the core. He didn’t have an issue speaking his mind. He was polite as hell
around most people, but when it was just the three of us, he didn’t hold back.

“Will his assistant be
there?”

I snapped my head over
to look at Leif. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw her on
television, man. She’s pretty fucking hot if you ask me,” Leif replied.

“No one asked you,” I
snarled, remembering that my father had mentioned a spur of the moment press
conference he’d held earlier that afternoon. That had to be what Leif was
referring to.

“Defensive much?” Toby
asked with a bellowing laugh.

“Fuck off.”

“Man, you need to get
laid. You keep making offers, but ain’t no one here taking you up on them.”

I flipped Leif off as I
headed to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. Dropping onto the couch in the
corner, I crossed my legs at the ankle and reclined against the armrest.

As I closed my eyes, my
mind drifted back to Payton, thanks to Leif’s comment. I wondered whether she
would be at the party. That snotty bitch Jasmine had always been invited to the
parties my father threw. Didn’t mean Payton would be there, but hell, it gave
me something to look forward to.

“Why’s your old man
releasing the car now?” Leif asked, his voice coming closer to where I was
sitting. I forced my eyes open, watching as he made his way to the sofa across
from me. Toby wasn’t far behind.

“Shit if I know,” I
answered. “He’s been harping on me for a while now. I think he’s hoping for
seven figures on this one.”

“Holy fuck,” Toby
exhaled sharply. “Seriously, man?”

“Yep. The last one went
for just shy of a mil.” Personally, I thought it could have gone for more, but
my father caved at the last minute, accepting the highest of three offers.

I had to admit, the guy
was pretty damn smart when it came to business, but his bargaining abilities
needed some work.

“Did he let you take
the car out?” Leif questioned, resting his big, beefy arm along the top of the
other couch after planting his ass down on the leather.

“Nope.” I had been
willing to show them just what that car could do, but Conrad had refused, just
as he always did.

No one knew that I took
the car out anyway. Topped that motherfucker off at two-oh-nine on the track.
Too bad no one had been there to see it. Not even Toby or Leif. As much as I
wanted to brag about it, I never did. That was my thing, and if someone found
out that I raced every car I worked on, I was pretty damn sure Conrad would put
a tracking device on me just to keep tabs.

So I kept my mouth
shut.

“Speakin’ of racin’,”
Toby said in his good ol’ boy drawl, leaning forward and resting his elbows on
his knees as he pinned me with bright blue eyes.

“No one said anything
about racing,” I mumbled, smirking around my beer bottle.

“We’re always talkin’
about racin’, man. Get with the program,” Toby retorted. “There’s a race. Two
weeks from Saturday. Two large to get in, winner takes all.”

“How many?” I inquired.

“Three so far. They’re
waitin’ to see if you’re game.”

“You in?” Leif asked,
as though he didn’t already know the answer.

“I’m in,” I assured
him.

“Hot damn!” Toby
yelled, grabbing his cell phone from his back pocket and shooting off a text.

It had been almost two
months since the last race I was in. So far, over the course of the last two
years, I’d gone unbeaten. To be fair to the other drivers, I used the Camaro
mostly although I had a couple of other options. I’d dropped a fucking fortune
in that car as it was and so far she hadn’t let me down.