Merrick rolled his eyes. Ah, the shareholders. How could he forget about them? As the founder of one of the most successful tech companies on the West Coast, his father should have felt accomplished. He was right up there with Apple and Google, for goodness’ sake. Merrick thought his father would retire when he reached the top. Go fishing or something. Join a fantasy football club.
Yeah, right. Nothing was ever good enough for this man. More was his favorite word. Anything less was settling. And the man didn’t settle. The idea wasn’t in his vocabulary.
“I don’t give a rip about your business deals.” Merrick scooted to the left, just enough so the mirror no longer reflected his scowl. “Get one of your interns to take her out. I’m done playing your corporate mind games.” He would pay for that one. His father might cut off his allowance for a week. So what? He had seventeen years of the man’s garbage. Merrick had no problem paying a fine if it meant putting the dictator in his place.
His father’s jaw worked, the muscle in his right cheek twitching. But he remained calm, which made it worse. Nothing seemed to faze him during their arguments. No matter how hard Merrick tried to solicit a reaction, to get him to care, the man remained placid as ever. Maybe if he could provoke him to get physical, just once, he’d—
“Need I remind you that you should be one of my interns? I offered an apprenticeship the day you graduated, but you refused and spent the entire summer partying. You don’t deserve to set foot in this house after you squandered your graduation gift.”
“Give me what’s mine and I’ll leave.” The challenge was one Merrick had offered a thousand times over.
“The money I’ve saved for you is meant to be invested. In school. In your future.” His father’s single arched brow was a challenge all its own. “After your recent behavior I cannot, in good conscience, give you a dime until you start acting more responsibly.”
He was stuck. A rat in his trap. His father wanted control. Power. Why would Merrick enroll in school and waste money on courses that might not apply five or ten years down the road? He was doing his father a favor by taking time to figure things out.
“Nikki fancies you.” The man’s change to the original subject interrupted Merrick’s thought train. “She is her father’s weak spot. And you are hers.” He glanced at his watch. “A car will be here in . . . twenty-nine minutes to retrieve you. I suggest you be ready on time.” With a firm glare, he resumed his paper perusal. “Put on an ironed shirt. Maybe a clean pair of slacks? I’m sure that’s a lot to ask, considering, but I have faith you can accomplish as much.”
Merrick had half a mind to stand there. To wait and see what might happen if he was not, in fact, on time. If he didn’t bother to change at all. But then his mother entered the room.
And everything altered.
“You boys getting along, Hiro?” She called his father by the shortened version of his first name—Hiroshi—taking her place behind him. She rubbed his shoulders.
The sight made Merrick physically ill.
His father was a villain. To call him “hero” sounded wrong.
Hiroshi patted her freckled hand and the stoicism melted away. Merrick’s mother was the only one who inspired the man to feel something other than disdain.
Merrick shoved his hands into the pockets of his two-day-old jeans and clenched his fingers.
“Yes, of course, Lyn.” His father cleared his throat. His tone softened. “We were discussing a certain date with a certain daughter of Marcus Owens.”
The setting sunlight shone through the western window of their house. Merrick’s mom blushed at the exact moment the rays hit her cheeks. Her strawberry freckles, the same shade of her hair and eyelashes, seemed to catch fire. “Nikole?” The way his mom said Nikki’s name made her sound not so bad. “She’s lovely. Where are y’all going?” His mother’s southern accent slipped through her syllables as it so often did.
His father eyed him and Merrick cleared his throat. “Gary Danko.”
She arched a brow. “Do you have a reservation?”
Merrick wasn’t much of a planner, and Mom probably suspected he’d dropped the ball on this one.
She knew him too well.
“I took care of it.” His overly organized father patted her hand again. A seemingly kind gesture, but one that would lead to manipulation.
If tonight went poorly, his father would find a way to blame her. She was too soft on Merrick, Hiroshi would say. He would beat her down with his words until she eventually became little more than a puddle of tears in the bathroom. Never screaming. But quiet condescension was worse.
Merrick clenched his fists again, this time so hard he could feel the white reach his knuckles.
He hated that sound. The sound of the heartbroken sobs she tried to hide beneath the noise of a running shower. It had been months since he’d heard it, but he would do anything to avoid it, even if it meant bending to his father’s will. Again.
The man checked his custom-made Rolex for the second time. “Twenty-two minutes now, Son. Gary Danko will wait for no man. You’d better get changed.”
Merrick did as he asked, though his teeth grated and his stomach turned.
Because Mom was right there. Her presence blurred his vision, made him lower his guard. One minute he was drowning, sinking into the whirlpool his shark of a father created every time they spoke.
Then his mother was there, drawing him back out again.
Of the four of them, she was the smartest, the most clever.
She was the one who taught him that if he wanted to avoid the sharks, his only salvation, his only escape, was to swim. Not away but with. Side by side until, eventually, they considered you an equal.
If he wanted to defeat a shark, Merrick would first have to be one.
He swallowed his protests as he trudged upstairs to his room. He found his clean slacks but refused to iron them. Rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt to his elbows, if only because his father thought the look was lazy. Merrick threw his blazer over one shoulder and checked himself in the mirror.
“We’ll see who gets bitten first.”
Four
Coral
The night’s quiet stung, waking her. Sometimes silence was the loudest sound of all.
Coral sat up in bed and tucked her mess of hair behind her ears, only to have it float stubbornly back in her face. She spied Jordan through the darkness. Her sisters must have heard the music at the surface too. Had it moved them the way it had Coral?
She wanted to ask.
She didn’t dare.
Her birthday fast approached. She needed to decide what she would perform. Coral would be safe with Father’s favorite, of course. A haunting melody that drew the sailors in. But every time she opened her lips to begin the first note, it stuck in her throat.
Coral peered at Jordan again. Sound asleep. What could it hurt?
The tune from the surface found its way deep into the place where her soul would be if she possessed one. It rose up and out, caressing Coral’s tongue. Vibrating across the plane of her lips as a gentle hum. The song soothed her fears for the crown princess in a way nothing else had. It made her feel . . .
Warm. Real. Human.
She let the song die as quickly as it had begun. Treachery. What would her father think? Coral’s insides mixed with guilt as her gaze found Jordan again.