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I keep my head down against the chill as I scurry toward class, ready to get it over with.
"Karina," my father's familiar voice cuts through the cold. I'm practically on top of him before I see him standing in front of the doors, his jaw set in a way that tells me he isn't here to apologize.
My father is here. Lovely.
I haven't heard from him since I ran out of his house three weeks ago. Not a single word. I know that he knows about the accident. The officer who responded probably called him before I was even loaded into the ambulance.
He didn't show up. He hasn't called.
That's how little he cares.
It stings even though it shouldn't.
It takes everything in me not to turn on my heel and walk away when he steps forward to meet me.
"What are you doing here?" I ask, my voice steady despite the emotions coursing through me. He looks different than he did three weeks ago. His nose is crooked, and there are fading bruises all around it. It's been broken since I saw him last. I'm not surprised. If I ask, he'll say it happened at work. In reality, he probably fell in a drunken stupor. It wouldn't be the first time. He doesn't always drink, but he always gets hammered when he does.
He steps closer, and I resist the instinctive urge to step back. This has always been my world, the one place in the city where I didn't feel like I was suffocating under the weight of his rule. I'll be damned if I let him encroach on it without a fight.
"I needed to see you," he says smoothly.
"You should have called. I have class." The words are ice cold, but I don't care. That's all he gets from me.
"Let's talk." He says it as if it's a suggestion, but we both know it's not. It's a command artfully spoken by someone who has spent his life manipulating situations to his advantage.
"About?" I ask, wishing I knew how to decode the secrets swirling in his steely eyes. Secrets that might hold the key to understanding what Coda has been up to recently.
"About your future." The unspoken subtext hangs heavy between us. He doesn't want to talk about my future. He wants to talk about how he can regain control of it. With him, it's always about control.
"Thanks, but no thanks," I retort, desperate to protect the fragile peace I've carved out for myself away from the poison of his ambition. For the first time I can remember, I'm happy. It's not an act. I don't have to pretend. Even with everything going on, I'm genuinely happy. He doesn't get to wriggle back in and snatch even a fraction of that away.
"You know I only want what's best for you," he says, his tone so earnest I almost believe him. Almost. But I've lived under his thumb. His insults still ring in my ears.
To him, I'm a whore. A slut. In his eyes, I'm no better than the woman he's spent half of my life hating simply because she left him.
"You can take your 'best' and go to hell," I snap, feeling the cracks in my resolve. I need to get away, to breathe, to be anywhere but here.
I spin on my heel, the wind sending my hair whipping around my face. Leaves crunch underfoot as I stride away, no longer caring about class. I just want to leave.
"Karina," he growls. "We're not done."
I spin to face him, anger boiling over. He doesn't even call to check on me, but suddenly I'm supposed to drop everything because he wants to talk? "You made your feelings about me abundantly clear three weeks ago when you called me a whore, and then again when you didn't even bother to make sure I survived the accident. If you have something else to say, too bad. I'm done listening."
For a moment, I think I see a flash of regret in his eyes. Or maybe that's just what I want to see. Maybe, even now, I want him to love me the way a father should. But whatever it was vanishes as quickly as it appeared, killing that hope. He never loved me. He never will.
His jaw tics. "Coda Passero," he says.
My heart clenches with a mix of fear and defiance. He knows who Coda is. How?
"Leave him out of this," I warn, my voice steady despite the tremors threatening to unravel me. "Your issues are with me, not him."
"He doesn't need your protection, Karina. He's with Rafe Valentino's family, one of his main men. He's mafia."
He means to shock me with the truth, to shake the trust I have in Coda, but he fails. Did I know? Not in so many words. But I'm not surprised, either. I know who and what Coda is. Maybe I didn't have a title to attach to him until just now, but he's never lied to me about the kind of man he is.
"Your point?" I snap, not wavering.
His expression hardens. It's clear he expected his revelation to sway me, to break the bond that ties me to Coda. He's not happy that it didn't work.
