Page 81 of Bared

“Who?” Jayd pounced on the interjection a second before Brick could. “Who said this to you, Father? And why can you not have your doctor presc—”

“Fuck my doctor!” The man dropped his hands and recoiled. “He knows nothing about what I am going through. Nothing! All he says is that I’ll get addicted and eventually die. He has no idea. If I have to live like this, then I do wish to be dead instead.”

“Stop!” Jayd stalked at him like a Super Hornet off a carrier catapult. “Wh-What are you saying? Do you hear what you’re saying?”

But the man hardly heard what she was saying. The whole time she spoke, LaBarre was a puddle of kowtowing smiles and forlorn whimpers. “Please, my princess. Please. I need you. I need you!”

As every second passed, it was clear what the man had really come here for. A sole purpose. To hit up his own daughter for only one thing. And as that minute developed into another, with Jayd battling her father’s desperation with her own, a tidy pile of deductions started stacking up for Brick.

Too tidy.

He was silent and steady about inserting himself between Jayd and LaBarre. He was steadier—and unrelenting—about studying the man, if only to satisfy his own harrowing hunch about what had even gotten LaBarre through the door tonight.

He started with three simple words.

“What is it?”

LaBarre jutted his chin. Good boy. He was coherent enough to hear the difference in Brick’s query as opposed to Jayd’s. But he still stammered back, “Wh-What is wh-what?”

“Cut it,” Brick snapped. “I’ve had some peeks into the hole, buddy. I know what it looks like.” He rocked back on a heel, taking care that his size didn’t intimidate the man into full silence. But he didn’t hold back on folding his arms and tightening his scowl. “Tell me, damn it. What is it, LaBarre? Oxy? Hydro? Tramadol? Morphine? All of the above?”

He added the last of it when his list seemed to affect the guy like a kid listening to Willie Wonka’s newest candy creations. But to his credit, LaBarre fought the allure with a coiled cringe—for the better part of ten seconds.

“I’m getting better!” the man finally protested. “I am.” He scrabbled a shaky hand through his rat’s nest hair. “I just need a little help right now.” He lowered that hand by reaching out to Jayd with it. “Just a little help…to make it through…”

“Until what?” Brick spat. “Your next payoff from the Arcadians?”

He could’ve sliced out his tongue for the slip, which had no validation other than his baldest instincts. If LaBarre really had been shuttled out of the kingdom so as to stay quiet about Jayd’s heritage, it made sense that the guy would’ve demanded healthy compensation for it.

“Excuse me?” Jayd’s words were the stuff of etiquette, but her jolting glare wasn’t. “What? A…payoff?”

“Ha!” LaBarre barked. “You mean the silence pittance? The scraps they have not changed for over a year now? When I have rent to pay, and supplies to procure, and—”

“Opioids to score?” Sometimes, Brick hated being right. And other times, like this one, he hated being so right that he got skewered with a beautiful woman’s glower for it. But most of all, he hated having to watch as she started connecting all the details for herself.

“It is a misunderstanding,” Jayd spurted. “That is all. That is what it has to be…”

But her voice faded as her father reapproached. And she really saw him now. All of it. The haggard hitch in his posture. The constant disconnects of his attention. The desperation in his red-rimmed gaze.

“Why?” she whispered, stepping away with her arms clutched to her middle. Her sadness was a scythe across Brick’s guts too. “Why…why?”

“I’m sick,” LaBarre blurted. “I’m sick, daughter, and I’m in pain. So much pain. But you can help me. I just need some cash. Surely you can share with your dear old paipanne? Just so I can feel a little better?”

Brick huffed. He’d had enough of this bullshit. “She didn’t raid the castle coffers before hauling herself all the way here, LaBarre. She had to sneak out with a few hours’ notice, using mostly her wits and brains, just to make it here. And you know why? Because all she wanted was to meet you. For exactly this. Don’t you want any of that too? Don’t you want to sit and talk to your own fucking daughter?”

LaBarre attempted to cringe again. His gaze wandered around the room, as if he’d find his missing feelings stashed somewhere nearby. When he came up empty, he simply swayed where he stood before slowly shaking his head. “I just…don’t understand. You’re a princess.”

Brick winced. “Let’s cut the repeat button on that part, okay?”

“You’re a princess,” the dumbshit spewed anyway. “And you’re supposed to help me. They said you had money. They said if I cooperated and came, you would help me!”

Jayd jerked in place once more. Brick was damn sure he joined her. No time to enjoy the jinx-worthy moment, though—not when it was clear they’d been dunked into the same shocking ice water at the same awful second.

“Cock de Creacu.”

Not the foremost expression on Brick’s brain, but Jayd’s profanity captured the moment well enough. Yeah, down to the dawn of his nausea—and the new rise of his paranoia.

“They?” He spat the emphasis while wheeling back at LaBarre. “They…who?”