What doesthatmean?
“I won’t.” I swallowed again, feeling more of a fire inside me to stand up—for once. For the first time in my life. “I won’t accept fault in this. I was just doing my job?—”
He chuckled, a mean, low sound that grated on my nerves. I was used to being dismissed and laughed at. Used to him treating me like I was stupid. But now? I couldn’t stomach it. He didn’t only think I was dismissible but also replaceable.
“Do you think that’s all this is? A job?” He snorted again. “You think you were doing legitimate accounting?”
I’d always known the “clients” he gave me weren’t typical businesses. But I never questioned it. I never told him no.
I had to now. There was just no way I could go along withthis.
“No. I refuse to comply with this.” I hugged myself, sick to my stomach as I spoke up.
“You have no choice,” he growled.
“I—”
“You have no choice.” He paired it with a slam of his fist on his desk, cementing it as fact. “You will leave with them after they come to speak with me.”
No.
No!
You can’t do this to me!
Instead of screaming those words to him, I spun and raced out the door. I couldn’t slow down and go through my usual careful escape. I wasn’t worrying about hunching over, avoiding eye contact, or scurrying through the office like the meek mouse I wanted to be so I wouldn’t be the center of attention. Those things could penetrate my mind.
Panicking and trying not to pass out from the sensation of fight or flight, I fought the urge to throw up as I rushed to the bathroom.
Linda-Lisa gave me a scowl as I burst into the room.
“Jeez! Be more careful!”
Another woman walked out too, looking at me like I was losing my mind.
Once I got into a stall, locked the door, and sat on the closed toilet to hug myself tighter, I realized I was. Or my father had. Shivering and trembling at the panic attack, I strained to inhale more than rapid pants of air.
He’d lost his mind.
He’d seriously lost his mind if he thought he could do this!
Handing me over as collateral for an accounting mistake I had no part in?
This was crazy talk. Fiction. It had to be.
Fathers didn’t just tell their daughters to go off with Mafia men!
Struggling to wrap my head about how he actually thought he could order me to go with someone from the Volkov family, I focused on steadying my breaths.
I wouldn’t make this easy for them. If I passed out or fainted, they’d just carry me away while my father shrugged.
He waslettingthis happen.
No. He waschoosingto forfeit me.
Hatred took root to deeper recesses of my soul, but in light of how I was expected to obey and go with criminals, I couldn’t find the energy to think about how to hate and scorn and abhor my father.
What I considered normalcy would no longer apply.
