Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

He nods casually. “If you asked my mother, she’d say he loves her. She lives in denial—not
willfully, it’s just the way he has conditioned her all these years. He’s more intelligent than she is and
she trusts him, so it’s not that difficult for him to trick her into believing things. If you asked him, he
would insist he loves her, too. See, there’s a reason he’s such an asshole. When he was a kid, his
mother was a difficult, often cruel woman. It seems she was senselessly capricious. Maybe it was
mental illness, maybe she was just mean, no one I've spoken to knows, but what is known is how
cruel she was to him. There was no physical abuse, but she picked on him so mercilessly that he
would stutter anytime she was in the room. It was only when she was around. After he moved out, he
never stuttered again until he saw her at his wedding.”
He doesn’t seem terribly fond of his father, but I can’t help feeling sympathetic toward the little
boy who must have felt so unloved by his mother. Before I can think what to say, he goes on.
“As a result of living with his mother, my father learned to hate women. He doesn’t know he
hates women. If you asked him, I’m certain he would insist he doesn’t, but he does. He loathes them,
wants to punish them and make them suffer just for being what he hates. He ‘loves’ my mother for
being low-maintenance and gullible. He can do horrible things to vent this hatred he won’t
acknowledge, cheat on her with her own friends—and he gets away with it. There’s no price to pay
for his behavior. She’s not angry or even hurt because she wholeheartedly believes him when he tells
her that they’re just being jealous bitches if they say something to cause trouble, trying to get between
them because they’d like him to be available so they could pounce on him themselves. And for all that
my father claims to love my mother, for all the years they’ve spent together, if she ever stopped being
his doormat and stood up for herself, he would abandon her in a hot fucking second and have her
replaced within days. Women are completely disposable, replaceable things to him, even ones he
claims to love.”
I feel my face twisted in lines of disgust. I felt sympathy for the damaged boy his father was, but
it sounds like he grew up to be a rather repugnant man.
Giving up his relaxed position, Calvin leans forward and meets my gaze. “I despise my father the
same way he despised his mother. He has spent a lifetime mistreating the kindest woman he ever met,
and she has always deserved better. She’ll never get it, though. Not while he’s alive. Even once he’s
dead, she won’t know how to let someone actually love her because she’s used to him. She’s his
prisoner—has been for most of her adult life, and she doesn’t even know it.” Irritation flickers in his
gaze. He grabs his wine glass and takes a sip. By the time he puts it back down, he is composed
again. “So, when I turned 18 and had the easy path already paved and waiting for me to coast down it,
do you know what I did?”
I shake my head no.
“I rejected it. Didn’t take the money for college because fuck my father. Took a sales job, got a
roommate, paid my own way through school. At the end of the day, I didn’t want my father to be able
to take any credit for where I ended up. I should also mention I’m their only child.” He points at me.
“That’s relevant.”
“Got it.”