Played: Manhattan Ruthless - 48

Chapter

Forty-Seven

I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and try to swallow past the lump in my throat, but it feels like it’s swollen shut. This is the last time I will ever come to this house. And if I can help it, the last time I will ever speak to either of my parents again. I’ve seen my future, and they’re not in it, and I couldn’t be happier about that fact.

I press the doorbell and wait, my heart hammering against my ribcage. I’m determined to keep a lid on my rage, say my piece, and leave. That goes straight to hell the moment I see his face.

All I see is what he did to Mason. To the boy I loved. The boy I gave up for his approval. I see seventeen-year-old Mason—who was nothing but goodness, light, and kindness—being violated by this piece of shit.

I push him full force in the chest, and he staggers back. “You disgusting piece of shit!” I roar, over twenty years of rage and hatred pouring out of me at once. I advance on him, and he retreats down the hallway.

Did Mason cower like that?

“Why?” I shove him again. “I can almost understand why you hated what I was. Your own father fucked you up, and you married a sociopath incapable of feeling, so I can wrap my head around that even if I don’t agree with it. But how could you …” I punch him in the jaw, and he falls to the floor.

“Kyngston Worthington!” My mother’s shrill voice echoes down the hallway. A hallway I now notice is empty of the antique furniture that usually resides here. “How dare you.”

I spin to face her. “How dare I?” I roar. “Do you know what he did? To a seventeen-year-old boy? He fucking raped him. Did you know that?”

“It was a very long time ago,” she says, deadpan.

“So fucking what. He raped the man I love.”

She blanches. “How dare you,” she says again.

“That’s what gets the reaction from you? That I told you I loved a man—not that your husband raped a seventeen-year-old boy?”

Her lip curls, but she doesn’t respond.

“Kyngston, son?” My father pleads, his voice soft and calm. “Think about what you’re saying.”

I turn my anger on him again. “I know exactly what I’m saying. I. Am. Gay. Despite the torture and your efforts to cleanse me, I love dick. Specifically, I love Mason James’s dick. I love him. And you …” I point a finger in my father’s direction and then have to take a breath to calm my temper before I beat him to a pulp with my bare hands.

I change the subject. “What did you do to Cassidy Jones? Where is she?”

His lip wobbles, but it’s my mother who answers. “That silly little whore.”

I gape at her. “You know about her too?”

She waves a hand in front of her face. “I know about all of them, darling. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“So what happened to Cassidy?” I ask.

She shrugs. “How should I know?”

“I already told you I had nothing to do with her leaving,” my father adds.

“Good riddance. Silly girl.” Mother snorts. “She probably felt deeply embarrassed thinking your father would ride off into the sunset with her. Getting that trashy little tattoo.”

Something clicks into place. “You saw her tattoo?”

“Emmeline,” my father growls.

Her eyes dart away from my face. “Y-your father told me about it.”

“You saw it, didn’t you? She came here before she disappeared.”

My mother stares at me, unspeaking, refusing to dignify my question with an answer. She truly is a sociopath.

I try my father again. “If she saw that tattoo, then Cassidy must have come here before she disappeared. What the hell did you do to her?”

His right eye twitches.

“Is she still here?” My eyes dart around the hallway. “No.” I shake my head. “You killed her, didn’t you?” I can barely believe the accusation leaves my mouth, but they’re hiding something from me.

“Don’t be preposterous, Kyngston,” my mother says, but there’s a tremor in her voice.

My father drops his head into his hands. “Son, it was an accident. Please. You have to believe me.”

“What kind of accident?” I ask, horrified.

He looks up, his eyes wide. “There was a struggle. She hit her head. Nobody intended for her to be hurt.”

“So … What? You just let her die?”

A sharp, brain-splitting pain lances through my head and down my spine.

Then nothing.

My head is throbbing. It’s dark, but maybe that’s because I can’t open my eyes. The smell is familiar and terror-inducing. My parents’ basement. I drift back into unconsciousness.

“You expect me to murder our own son, Emmeline?”

I desperately want to hear the rest of this conversation, but I black out a second time.

“… powers of persuasion.” My mother’s voice comes once more, followed by the sound of chains hitting concrete.

My father speaks now. “If he would just give us the money …”

“It’s your fault we’re about to lose the house, Kyngston. You were always useless with your own money.”

“If they repossess this house …”

I’m frantically clinging to consciousness when I fade out again.

Ice water drenches me, and it’s like a defibrillator to my brain. I suck in deep breaths as my body goes into shock.

“See, I told you he was fine,” my mother says cruelly.

I try to move, but I’m chained to the floor. “W-what the fuck?”

“It’s for your own good, son,” my father says, his voice taking on an annoyingly saccharine tone like he actually believes that bullshit.

“I’m not a kid anymore! This shit won’t work.” I pull on the chains again, my anger giving me a burst of adrenaline. Pity there’s not a lot I can do about it. I spent a decent part of my teenage years chained in this cold, dark basement. A few days every few months, to stop me from being tempted into sin. It was where they kept me for four whole days after he caught me and Mason. I left as soon as he let me out, but I still remained their good little boy, didn’t I?

“Take a few days,” my mother says. “I’m sure you’ll come around to our way of thinking.”

“What? Give you Grampa’s money so you don’t lose this house and nobody ever finds Cassidy’s body, is that it?”

“It was an accident,” my father repeats. As if that somehow makes what they’ve done okay. Given what I’ve learned about him in the last twenty-four hours, I’m not sure I believe it was an accident.

“Then you should have called for a fucking ambulance. Or the police!”

“He won’t see sense yet, Kyngston, but he will. He always did in the end.” She must be referring to how, after a few ice baths and a couple days without food, I would usually tell them with my whole chest that I wasn’t gay and that boys who liked other boys disgusted me. Fuck, does she not understand I would have told them the earth was flat if it could have gotten me out of here?

But if she thinks there’s a chance I’ll cave, I might just be able to get out of here after all.