Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Jack

T he apartment looked like a tornado had hit it, and not a small one. There were shards of the disco ball glittering like cheap jewelry all over the floor, furniture upturned, drawers dumped, cushions everywhere. I couldn’t look at it without feeling my blood pressure climb. Every mess, every broken piece of our place felt like another slap in the face. Liam and I spent the entire morning trying to get things back in some sort of order, but it was hard to know where to begin.

And the worst part? The cops hadn’t stopped with Bradley’s room. No, they’d turned my room and Liam’s room upside down, too. We’d been treated like suspects in our own home, left with this wreckage as if we were guilty for Bradley’s mess. For the hundredth time, Liam muttered something about how lucky we were not to get tangled up in Bradley’s arrest.

“Yeah,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. “Lucky’s one word for it.”

Liam stopped what he was doing, dust rag in hand. “Jack, I mean it. This could’ve easily been us, in jail. The cops found nothing in our rooms, so we’re clear. But man, we dodged a bullet.”

He was right. But it didn’t make it any easier to accept that someone we’d known for years, someone we’d trusted, had a secret life right under our noses. God, we were such idiots.

I pulled the stepladder out of the pantry and dragged it into the living room, eyeing the disco ball that had seemed like such a fun addition yesterday and now felt like a symbol of how completely duped we’d been. I climbed up, unscrewing the mount. Finally, it came loose, and the thing slipped out of my hands, hitting the floor with a crash and splintering everywhere.

“Goddammit!” I shouted, kicking a piece across the room. Liam rushed over and, without a word, pulled me into a hug. I didn’t want to give in at first, but eventually I let myself lean into him, breathing out the frustration that was choking me.

We stayed like that for a minute, and then there was a knock at the door.

“Sit down, Jack. I’ll get it,” Liam said, gently pushing me down onto the couch. He walked over, opening the door. Standing there was Nessa, and beside her, a middle-aged couple who looked like they’d seen better days. The man’s coat was frayed at the edges, and the woman’s face was lined with worry. They held each other’s hands, gripping tightly as if they were holding each other up.

Nessa cleared her throat, her voice gentle, almost apologetic. “Jack, Liam, these are Bradley’s parents.”

My stomach dropped, and without thinking, I let out a bitter, “Well, they’re definitely not the wealthy Wellingtons he claimed they were.” The woman flinched, and tears filled her eyes. Her husband wrapped an arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

The man’s voice was quiet but steady. “We got a call from Bradley last night, telling us to come to this address and... collect his things.” His tone was exhausted, like he’d been bracing himself for this, or worse, for a long time.

I barked out a laugh that was more bitter than anything else. “Well, good luck with that.” Then I turned to Liam. “I doubt he’s gonna be sending over any rent money.”

Then I looked at the couple—really looked at them, at their tired, sad faces. The mother’s eyes were red and raw. These weren’t rich folks with a mansion and a yacht. And suddenly, it clicked: everything he’d told us, all the stories about his life, his money, his family—it was all lies.

“Your son conned us,” I said, keeping my voice low but firm. “He told us he was a Wellington. A guy so rich he blew his nose with hundred-dollar bills. I get why he never introduced you to us now.”

Mrs. Mitchell choked on a sob, and her husband rubbed her back.

Nessa, seeing the tension, stepped in as a peacemaker. “Why don’t you two sit down,” she said, gesturing to the couch. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

The Mitchells sat, taking the spot across from me and Liam, and an uncomfortable silence settled over us, thick enough to taste. After a minute, I broke it, my voice raw. “So…what was real, and what was fake about your son?”

Mrs. Mitchell shook her head, her voice barely above a whisper. “He was always…ashamed of us. Nothing we did was ever good enough. We tried our best, but he wanted more than we could give him.”

Mr. Mitchell ran a hand over his face and sighed. “We had a good life once, you know? I had a good job, invested in real estate. Then the housing market crashed back in ’08. Everything we had—poof. Gone. We went from comfortable to barely scraping by.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “I don’t think Bradley ever forgave me for it.”

Mrs. Mitchell scoffed, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “That doesn’t mean anything. Even if we’d stayed well off, he’d still have found some reason to be embarrassed of us.”

Right then, Nessa returned, holding two cans of soda. “Couldn’t find any coffee in this mess,” she said, handing them to the Mitchells with an apologetic smile. Then she slid onto the couch between me and Liam, draping her arms over our shoulders in a familiar, comforting way.

Mr. Mitchell let out another sigh, eyes distant as he continued. “Bradley started getting in trouble as a teenager. Shoplifting, mostly. It was always designer stuff we couldn’t afford. We grounded him, punished him, tried everything. But nothing stuck. Then he got into university, and we thought…well, maybe he’d turned a corner. We assumed he’d earned a scholarship. But now, knowing what I do, I can’t shake the feeling that he funded it with…other means.”

He looked away, swallowing hard, his face lined with a shame that felt like it was bleeding through the room.

Nessa squeezed my shoulder and leaned forward, her voice firm but gentle. “Listen, Mr. Mitchell. It’s not your fault. You raised him the best way you knew how.”

Mr. Mitchell rose slowly to his feet, placing the can of soda, still unopened, on the coffee table. His hand brushed a chunk of broken disco ball, sending it skittering to the edge of the table. “Come on,” he breathed, looking back at his wife. “Let’s get Bradley’s things and let these boys get back to what they were doing.”

Mrs. Mitchell nodded, standing up with a resigned sort of heaviness that made her look years older. She glanced around our mess of a living room, and I saw the regret in her eyes.

Liam stood and led the Mitchells down the short hall to Bradley’s room, his steps slow, like he was hesitant to even open that door for them. I heard Mrs. Mitchell’s voice trailing behind him, a soft, broken murmur of words I couldn’t make out. Nessa let out a deep sigh beside me, shaking her head.

“You never really know someone, do you?” she murmured.

“Bradley was a lying douchebag,” I grumbled, staring down at the mess on the floor. But I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable twist in my gut. For all his lies, his secrecy, and the wreckage he’d left us to clean up, he’d dragged down more people than just us.

Liam returned a moment later and sank down onto the couch beside me. “They’re a mess,” he whispered, and I could just barely hear the muffled sound of Mrs. Mitchell crying from Bradley’s room. I looked over at Liam, and for a second, all my anger faded. For the first time, a spark of sympathy crept in—not for Bradley, but for the two people who’d somehow loved him despite everything.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling the frustration and exhaustion roll off me in waves. “And what about the rent?” I muttered. “How the hell are we supposed to cover it now that we’re down a roommate?”

Nessa pressed her lips together, regretful but resolute. “I wish I could help, really, but I’m just the property manager. Stuff like that’s above my pay grade.”

She stood up, smoothing out her skirt, then paused by the door. “But you two are smart boys,” she grinned. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to scrape the money together.” Then, with a quick wink, she blew us a kiss, turned on her heel, and swept out of the apartment.

I glanced at Liam and saw all the color drain from his face as the door clicked shut. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” his voice cracking. “It was already a stretch for me to make rent. With Bradley gone…I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

“It’s gonna be alright,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ll think of something. We always do.”

Right then, the Mitchells reappeared, Mr. Mitchell hefting a duffel bag stuffed with what I assumed were Bradley’s last few belongings. We all stared at each other, caught in an awkward silence until Mr. Mitchell cleared his throat and handed me a small business card. “If you ever need to reach us, you can call this number.”

I glanced down at the card, my eyes catching on the title printed beneath his name: Maintenance Supervisor. “So…he’s a janitor,” I muttered under my breath. These poor people had been duped, just like we had, and now all they had left of their son was a duffel bag filled with whatever he hadn’t thought to pawn off or hide.

Liam escorted them to the door, and once they were gone, he returned with a weary expression. “We’d better get back to work,” he said, surveying the surrounding wreckage. I nodded, already feeling the ache in my arms from everything we’d cleaned so far.

But as we sorted through the mess, a question kept tugging at the back of my mind, stubbornly refusing to go away:

Just how far were we willing to go to keep this place?