Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
I need the Bay. With that much power, I can get rid of them all. My father, his friends, Dallas…
I can’t talk to him about this! He’ll use it as leverage.
He steps toward me. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”
I shoot my eyes up. “But you’d take her from me.”
He’ll do whatever he has to, especially if part of him thinks he’s protecting her in the process.
My chest starts to shake. He doesn’t know what it’s like. What did he do the one time someone cried for him? He ignored her.
“I told her,” I murmur. “I tried to tell her.”
I remember catching them in his office. She was in his lap, his hand under her skirt, and she wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t looking away from him, either. It was like she idolized him.
I shake my head. “She thought he loved her. She thought his attention meant the world.” I look away, remember that feeling myself as I whisper, “Everyone just wants to be wanted.”
“How many times did he take her in?”
I blink for a long moment, dipping my head again. “Just once,” I tell him, my throat swelling again. “But it was bad.”
Sophia went in that night and never came out. She could never tell us what happened, but we found out. Talk on the golf course would spill over to a beer cart girl, who would tell her sister, who was someone else’s maid or cook, and she’d tell the lady of the house, who would tell her friends.
Or it went something like that.
Within days, we all knew, and my stepmother, who had failed to get Sophia away from my father when we all started seeing what was happening in our own house, almost took her kid and ran.
Almost.
She quickly realized Sophia would have zero chance without proper care to overcome her trauma.
Dallas approaches, stopping two feet in front of me. “Did he ever force you…to do anything?”
With Sophia?
Or…
I close my mouth, hesitating. No one’s ever asked me that.
Someone should’ve. It makes sense that sons could be used as easily as daughters, but Sophia wasn’t my father’s blood. Less valuable to him.
I shake my head. “No.”
“But as a man of St. Carmen, you need to pay to play, right?”
I just stare at him. I won’t have to play in the Wolfe Room for long. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t need his help. “There are seven names on my list,” I inform him. “And they will take some time, but Milo will be next. Right after my father.”
“And me.”
A gleam hits his eyes; he knows he’s on my shit list, too.
“Very good,” I coo.
He may not have used me—I enjoyed it, too, and I wanted it—but he abused me. They all need to be purged, and then I can live.
Closing the distance between us, he keeps his hands in his pockets, every curve of his chest pressing against his T-shirt.
“Maybe I should keep her for a while,” he taunts. “Make sure she’s safe.”
I lift my eyebrows, playing along. “A hostage.”
“She’ll sleep tight.”
“With five motherfuckers who never sleep alone,” I grit out.
“I slept alone last night.”
So?
“And the night before,” he says.
And my stomach dips at that. He hasn’t been with anyone since me last Friday?
“Did you?” he asks. “Sleep alone?”
Oh, I see.
I tilt my head, remembering the call with Micah earlier while Dallas was watching.
“He’s not right for you,” he explains.
Says the man who really knows how to treat people. Please.
I pull out my phone. “He said things to me today you never will.”
And I don’t even look at him for his reaction. I dial Vincent.
“How’s it going?” he asks.
I can hear the rain hitting Milo’s car roof. They must be outside.
“I’m going to stay and get some work done,” I explain. “Sophia’s sleeping on a couch in the teachers’ lounge.”
Finally, I lift my eyes.
“Dallas is somewhere in here,” I say to Vincent, looking at the former. “You know what to do if he comes out.”
Dallas cocks an eyebrow, a smile tilting up the corner of his mouth.
He loves a challenge.
Vincent sighs. “Glad I brought a bottle.”
Hanging up, I slide my hands into my pockets, still holding my phone.
I don’t need them knowing Sophia’s not here. I wouldn’t put it past anyone to not be reporting back to my father, and it needs to look like I’m handling everything.
And they can’t drag Dallas out. He’s not breaking curfew if he’s indoors.
Walking around me, he exits his classroom slowly, and I trail behind.
“I’ll give you a head start,” I announce. “Come on. I’d love to go home and get some sleep.”
If he leaves, they’ll give chase, and I can get out of here sans Sophia, no mishaps being reported back to Garrett Ames.
Dallas keeps walking, down the stairs. “Nothing’s stopping you from going.”
“If I walk out of here without Sophia—”