Sweet Rome (Sweet Home, #1.5)(70)

Pacing before her, I yelled, “I could’ve stopped it—should have! I knew what they were capable of and still I trusted that you could handle it. But I saw your face in there, Mol—you f*ckin’ checked out on me!” She had. They’d attacked and she had cowered.

Red burst across her cheeks, and she stepped forward, eyes blazing, meeting my shit head on. “I don’t care about what they said to me, but I care about what they are doing to you! Why do they hate you so much, Romeo? There has to be a reason. That was beyond brutal. What kind of parent hates their child for no reason?” Tears welled in her eyes and she croaked, “Your mother, the way she hit you, how could she treat her only son that way?” She was struggling to keep her composure.

Why did she hit me? Why does she hate me? Fuck! There was a reason all right! I’d kept the damn secret for so long that I felt I was buried under its massive weight.

Staring at Molly and pulling desperately on my hair, the words not coming easily, I decided to just spit it out quickly, get it done. I’d lost her anyway; may as well tell her why my life was so f*cked up.

Blood roared in my ears, and reaching forward, I let go and heard myself shout, “Because I’m not hers!” I sucked in a sharp breath when the sentence had finally been said.

I’d told someone. For the first time in twenty-one years, I’d told someone what my folks had fought so hard to protect, and my hands began to shake with the enormity of what I’d just done.

“W-what?” Molly whispered, her eyes huge with surprise, pulling me back to the here and now.

Skirting a finger down her cheek, needing the support, I repeated, “Because. I’m. Not. Hers. You wanted to know so badly why they hate me. Well, that’s why.”

“No…” I could see the disbelief. No one knew. No one had ever f*cking known. It was a secret I was meant to take to the grave.

Molly’s eyes darted around the room and her hands cupped her mouth, tears dripping down onto her cheeks. The slow burn of antagonism built as I thought of my folks, but my girl needed to understand.

Stepping back out of her embrace, I confessed. “Momma was barren. The f*ckin’ bitch was barren. The one thing she needed to be able to do as the perfect wife was breed, and she couldn’t deliver, couldn’t give the great Prince Oil tycoon of Alabama an heir.”

“Ohmigod, Rome—” she cried, her head shaking back and forth. But I was on a roll, my untold story unstoppable, now set free.

“They couldn’t adopt because that would be an embarrassment, right? They couldn’t get a surrogate and risk all of Tuscaloosa knowing she was unable to have kids. But, hey, fate decided to intervene just in time.”

I laughed, but there was no amusement in my mind, no humor to find in this damned messed-up story. “One of my daddy’s many paid whores turned up on their doorstep, pregnant with a child she sure didn’t want but was willing to hand over at its birth to his biological father… for a good price.”

Molly stumbled, her eyes fixed on mine as she put two and two together.

“Yeah, Mol. It was me. My father got a private paternity test and I was his, the f*ckin’ heir to his fortune. The whore had one stipulation, though. They had to keep the name she’d given me. She wanted control, to play some sick, twisted game with her most frequent customer, probably pissed she would never be more than a f*ck to him. My name was a lifelong reminder of where I came from, and my mother despised it, despised me on sight.”

“Romeo,” she whispered, sympathy saddening her face.

“Romeo.” I still hated that f*cking name—no Bama in that name.

My legs felt weak. All the fight I’d had for so long drained out like a flood. I couldn’t deal with my parents controlling shit anymore, and I was pretty convinced this would be where Mol checked out too. Hell, who wouldn’t?

Dropping my head, completely done, I hushed out, “So there you have it. I’m the illegitimate child of my father’s slut on the side, but they had to have me, didn’t they? The fact of the matter was my father wanted to keep his assets in the family. He was expected to have children, an heir. My arrival ensured that could still happen. They paid for the whore to have me in secret. Then my folks disappeared for a year, you know, off on some bullshit cruise, and they returned with a new baby—and of course, the great billionaire’s lies were believed.”

Moving to the couch, I used it to support my weight—I hadn’t dared look Mol in the eyes during all of this shit, didn’t want to see my future slipping away. “My momma f*ckin’ hates me. I’m a living, breathing reminder that my father was a cheat. But that’s not the only reason they’re like this. They expected a docile, obedient child, who, when they said jump, would ask how high. But not their letdown of a son, right? I ended up being freakishly good at sports and I had my own mind and own dreams—unacceptable for a Prince!”

The more I talked, the more the agony built back up.

“How dare I? How dare I want something for myself after they’d so selflessly taken me in? Taken me in and reminded me every minute of every f*ckin’ day that I was the product of a paid f*ck. Beat me until I couldn’t even hold a football, let alone throw one—if you’re injured, you can’t play, right? So my daddy made it a frequent thing, a father-son weekly tradition.”