Page 141 of Midnight Curfew

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.