Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83602 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
In the meantime, Randy moved permanently into Patrick’s house to be closer to her and pretended to have girlfriends to throw his father off. Randy and Pilar were always extremely careful until the one time they weren’t and miscalculated Patrick’s return date from a business trip to Costa Rica.
That was the day Patrick walked in on his young wife fucking his son in their bed. That was also the moment that set off the chain of events that led to my existence.
An enraged Patrick locked Pilar in a closet while he beat the shit out of Randy before kicking him out of the house. Patrick then allegedly raped my mother in the same bed he’d found her in with his son. By the time Randy broke through the window, it was too late.
Exactly what happened next is not completely clear because the details given to me have always been sketchy. The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that Patrick never left that bedroom alive.
Mami says he fell and accidentally hit the back of his head in the middle of a struggle with Randy. I suspect that Randy might have killed him, but she would never admit to that if it were true. I knew she’d protect Randy until the day she died despite his betrayal of their marriage.
The police never suspected anything and bought the story about Patrick falling and hitting his head.
Because he’d lived lavishly and had been putting Randy and Pilar through school, Patrick had no money to leave them. Randy had to drop out of college and ditch his dreams to take odd jobs.
It was a really bad time for Pilar to find out she was pregnant. She knew it couldn’t have been Randy’s since they’d always been extremely careful with protection.
The baby was Patrick’s.
Randy loved her and blamed himself for the situation they were in.
He begged her to get an abortion, but she refused.
He knew he could never grow to love the product of the night his father raped Pilar.
He was right. He couldn’t, but he would raise me as his own anyway and would spend the rest of his life taking everything out on me.
That was how Randy became my father, and how I became my brother’s bastard child.
***
That was only the prologue, and already it felt like an earthquake had barreled through my head. I couldn’t believe what I just read.
My mind and body were now in the midst of a war because while my heart needed a long rest before continuing on, my brain had an urgent need to turn the page. Once I’d started reading, the pages wouldn’t stop turning all night long.
I’d made it through the first half of the book by dawn. Reading about the verbal abuse Elec suffered at the hands of Randy was extremely painful. As a boy, Elec would hide in his room and get lost in books to escape reality. Randy would sometimes punish him for no reason and take the books away. One of those times, Elec started jotting a story down on paper and discovered that writing was an even more satisfying escape. He could control the destinies of his characters, whereas he had no control over the life he was forced to live in Randy’s home.
As a child, he never knew the real reason behind Randy’s hatred. Pilar’s protection of Randy was unacceptable, and I wanted to strangle her through the pages. The only good thing she ever did was go against Randy’s wishes in buying Elec a dog. Lucky became Elec’s solace and best friend.
Elec also recounted the time when he found out about Randy’s infidelity. He hacked into his father’s computer and discovered the online affair with my mother. Elec felt guilty because he was the one who broke the news to Pilar. Randy moved out soon after.
Pilar’s subsequent breakdown opened up a whole new set of challenges. She became dependent on Elec in the same way she’d always relied on Randy. That, coupled with Elec discovering the truth about Patrick, and then the death of Lucky caused a downward spiral.
He started to smoke and drink to cope with the stress, developed an addiction to tattoos as a form of self-expression and became sexually promiscuous. He’d lost his virginity at 15 to a female tattoo artist after he’d convinced her he was 18.
It was really hard for me to get through certain parts of the book, but his brutal honesty was admirable.
I read straight through until arriving at the one point where I absolutely had to stop before continuing.
It was the chapter about me.
***
Chapter 15: Greta
Vengeance.
That was the only thing that was going to get me through having to spend the better part of the next year living with Randy and his new family while Mami “went away.”
The only consolation was going to be the satisfaction that would come from making their lives miserable.