They left me here alone with Rhoen. The man that is the entire reason why Boston has been taken by some criminal. All because he wanted to fuck some woman that just had to be associated with a crime family. My inner-raging-bitch has been amplified tenfold. Considering I barely have any inner-raging-bitch in me on any given day, it feels like a ball of fire is swirling inside of me. I wish I could launch it directly at my father-in-law, the one currently soaking himself in gin and sitting across from me.

"I can feel you glaring at me." I cross my arms and continue to stare at him when he peers up at me over the rim of his glass. "You know, despite what you may think, I love my son dearly." He brings the cup down, holding it with both hands between his legs. "I have worked hard my entire life to ensure that he is taken care of. I created a business empire after he was born, willing the statistics of young parenthood to be damned. I did well for myself, for my family. I don't regret the man I am, the person I became to ensure success. I don't regret who I still need to be or the part I have to play so that I can pass something, anything, off to my sons. So that they're taken care of long after I'm gone."

"Yeah, well it seems like you recently passed Boston a heaping, steaming pile of shit." His eyes hold mine and glare just as hard as I am. "And I'm not stupid, by the way. That whole thing with the gala? That was a ploy at messing with our relationship. I don't get what your endgame in that was though."

He lets out a deep breath and looks heavenward. "The girl, Louisa, is infatuated with him and I needed to be in her father's good graces— so I obliged her the companionship of my son. Did I think either of them would take liberties?" He shrugs in non-commitment before knocking back the rest of his drink. "He's twenty-one, can do what he wants, should be able to do as he wants. He shouldn't have gotten married so soon; so foolishly." He gets up from his chair looking chagrined as he heads over to the bar. "Leave it to Luke to spare no expense." He sighed and the noise sounded thankful to my ears. Like he was glad there was some form of liquid luxury in the room. "Diana and I had Boston around your ages." His voice much more quiet, calculated. "It was a stupid, naive mistake on our parts to think we could handle something like that so young."

"Boston is not a mistake." My voice was unfamiliar, even to myself. It sounded foreign, guttural, on the brink of something dangerous. "Don't you dare say that. Ever."

He sits in front of me, completely unbothered by my tone. "I wasn't saying Boston was a mistake. I love my son very much. He pushed me to become the man I am, to be the provider I am and had to be. But I have done everything for him and he wants nothing to do with it." He sips his drink evenly. "I'd say he resents me nearly as much as Diana, maybe even hates me like she clearly seems to."

"And why, pray tell, does your ex-wife resent and hate you exactly?" I had an inkling it had something to do with fucking my brother's wife but I kept my mouth tight.

"Diana and I were failing long before our inevitable separation." He blows out a deep breath, settling deeper into his seat. I think the gin had something to do with why he was sharing the story with me because Rhoen didn't seem like the kind of man to open up to anyone, not really. "Years of a loveless marriage based around sex and raising a child so young together will do that to a relationship; smother it. Diana ended up resenting everything that I am and I became because she was left to look after Boston while I did so.

"She got the limelight. She got plastered on newspapers, tabloids, you name it, for being my wife— the mother of my child. That was her claim to fame— being married to Rhoen Rearick, to me. Where as I was on the cover of Forbes, GQ, The Times... you name it and I was on it. I've been praised for everything I'd accomplished so young, for being fit and attractive, and for being a father the entire time as well. Diana took it all as a slight eventually. Like taking care of our child so that I could do what I was doing condemned her to a simple life when she was more than capable of accomplishing even more than me. She sacrificed that— herself, to take care of Boston and for my success. And she now hates me for it.

"At the end of it, it was just the physical that kept us together. That's all we had— the sex. I feel like the only reason we even had it was because we wanted to fuck out all the disdain between us." His eyes look glassy. He's definitely had one too many drinks. "Then afterward it was just..." He looks down at the floor, as if it would offer the words, or maybe swallow him whole. "It was just quiet. We had nothing left to give to one another, wanted to give. Like just being in the room with one another was suffocating. But we had Boston. We were tethered by that one thing and nothing else at the end of it."

And now I see the true reason Boston is so hesitant about having kids, about being a father. His mother and father wanted him, had him, then resented each other for it. Having a child so young had slaughtered their relationship resulting in a loveless marriage and ultimately a divorce. They'd even had another kid to try and fix and mend things, as Boston had told me, but that hadn't worked either. It had the exact opposite effect— it tore them apart completely.

He was afraid that yes, he could pass on what he considered his genetic flaw. He was afraid that maybe he would die, leaving his child, children, fatherless. The thing he was last afraid of, fundamentally afraid of, was becoming his father— having a woman, me, resent him for giving them a child and not being ready for it. Maybe Boston didn't even realize it but the more his father spoke, the more tortured he looked with each and every word, I knew. Becoming his parents was the main reason he didn't want children. The one thing he was truly scared of.

Oh Boston. I would never resent you for that. We're more than that. I love you more than that.

I idly fidget with the wedding rings that sit in place on the appropriate finger. The weight of them was nothing, nothing at all because they belonged there. I smile as I assess the bracelet around my wrist. We would never let it get like that. Then a thought swirls inside of my mind— maybe that's what they had thought too, Diana and Rhoen. Maybe they had thought love would conquer all. And it didn't.

"He truly spared no expense." I glance up to see Rhoen looking over me, specifically at my hand where the rings sit and then my wrist, where the bracelet lay. "I never thought he'd ever settle down, especially so young. Not after everything with me and his mother."

And there it is.

He knows the impact their marriage had on his son, the influence. Something about that, that he knew, truly knew why Boston is why he is, infuriates me in a way I can't explain.

"Boston lives on a precarious whim or did you not know?" His features harden at my words. "Do you know he doesn't want to have kids because he thinks he'll die before they're in their teens? Maybe even before that?" Rhoen says nothing which lets me know the he'd suspected as much. "You know he thinks he will let me down because of everything that happened with you and his mother?" He looks at me warily now, sipping his drink. "You need to tell your son that he is not some broken thing and that he is not you. He is entirely different. He is his own person."

"Boston knows he is not some broken thing." He gives me a pointed look. "And anything I say will do more harm than good. Trust me. Anything I say will just make things worse, much worse, Monica." He lets out a hearty sigh. "If I even hinted he should be a father what do you think he would do?" The exact opposite. He didn't have to say it because I already knew. Boston would do the exact opposite of anything Rhoen said. He wanted to be nothing like his father. "I see you now understand." I cross my arms in irritation. "It's funny how much you're like your father."

I pucker my lips defensively. "What's that supposed to mean?" My father is hot-headed and has a raging temper. Hence the gym he owns where he trains people to box, to fight. I don't possess either of those traits, well, not until recently but still. But I'd gather his temperament is what he's referring to.

"You love fiercely."

Oh. Yeah, there's that too. My father loves hard, almost too hard.

"No one has ever gone for my throat in quite the manner that you did the other day." He polishes off the rest of his drink. "I know it might not seem like it but I'm glad the two of you are back together. I may have not seen him that much over the past few months but when I did he looked miserable. He wasn't his usual self. The only thing that sparked a bit of life back in him was opening up his new shop here."

"We had things we needed to sort. They're now sorted." And now all of the things we fought over, separated for, seem so trivial. Everything pales in comparison to never seeing him again.

"I'm glad to hear it. Most of the time a separation ends in divorce." He gets up from his seat and walks over to the window, looking out in contemplation.

Guilt smacks me in the middle of the face when a certain realization hits me. I wanted to separate. He offered it to me and I hadn't known the full weight behind him actually offering that. He probably felt like a failure— like his father. A sudden wave of nausea rolls through me when I think about what that must have truly done to him. The toll that must have taken and why he shut me out completely.

The thought of never seeing him again makes tears well in my eyes.

"He'll be all right." Rhoen said, still facing the window. "You have no idea what your father's cousin is capable of." I think back to Luke taking out two men as easily as sipping his morning coffee.

I have an idea of what they're all capable of and it's ruthless.

A/N:
Happy Tuesday!
How are you all feeling about that chat with Rhoen?