Page 97 of Craving Sin

My father drugged me. There is no other possibility. He drugged me, and now I’m lying here, on the same couch I used to sit on with my mother as a kid, while he’s doing what exactly?

“How am I supposed to cover… I’ve done everything you asked, and I don’t appreciate…hello? Goddamn it!” He punches the wall.

My father rarely loses his temper. Even when he’s angry, he’s good at hiding it, at pretending to be cool, calm, and collected—like he’s always in control, so seeing him like this is fucking with my already confused brain.

When my father turns in my direction, I tell myself to close my eyes again, but the message isn’t sent and received fast enough.

He looks more frazzled than I have ever seen him, hair messy, clothes slightly disheveled as he notices my fluttering lids.

“You’ve ruined everything,” he tells me, hand fisted in his gray-ish hair, pulling.

“You drugged me.” The words are slightly slurred. At least I think they are. I don’t know if that’s in my head or not. Did I really even say them?

I must have because he says, “You gave me no choice!”

I try to sit up, dizziness sweeping me up into a cyclone, but I fight through it, not resting until I’m leaning against the back of the couch. “You never…take responsibility…” It’s never his fault. Nothing bad ever has been. It was always my mom’s fault…or mine. People who work for him, voters, his opponents, and citizens. Never his.

“You’re just like her,” he spits.

“Like who?” I answer, my new position somehow helping my brain begin to clear more by the second.

“You always thought you were better than me,” he says instead of answering. “She did too.”

She… “Mom? Are you talking about Mom? Fuck you. She was better than you!” I seethe. I don’t understand what’s happening, what she has to do with anything, but I sure as shit won’t accept him putting her down. “She hated you…just like I do, but you don’t care about that, do you? You care about young women. Is that what this is about?”

“You’re not in a position to be looking down on me. That man you’re with—do you understand who he is? What he does?”

“Rian is a better man than you’ll ever be.”

“He’s a murderer. A thug.”

“So, what does that say about you?”

“Shut up!” he growls, then, with a visibly shaky hand, he reaches into his jacket and pulls a gun out.

My stomach drops, breath catching, fear waking me up completely from the drugged state I’d been in just moments ago.

I’ve never seen a gun in my father’s hand, but now there’s one not just there, but pointed at me.

“What are you doing?” This can’t be happening. My father is a lot of things, but pulling a gun on me? Then again, he did drug me. My gaze darts around the room, as I try to figure out what to do, and I notice another man inside with us. He’s behind me and holding a gun as well.

“I can get away with this,” he says, more to himself than me. “Rian O’Shea put ideas in your head. He used you. He wants me dead. I called you here to talk some sense into you about being with a man like that. You tried to kill me for him, and I had no other choice.”

“Dad?” I ask, voice softer than it’s ever been when talking to him, maybe since I was a kid.

“How long have you been plotting with him? Is that why you brought up conversations you have no business talking about?”

“Conversations…what?” I try to ask, but my brain is spinning, pounding even harder than it had been before—possibly in fear.

“How did he know?”

“Who? How did he know what?”

“Rian!” my father shouts, before raising the gun higher from where his arm had begun lowering. “How did he know they were coming after you?”

They were…how did he know they were coming after me? Realization hits me with the same strength as if he’d pulled the trigger. My world explodes. My heart shatters.

He tried to kill me. It was my father who put a hit out on me.