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My engagement? To Barrett?
“I—don’t understand,” was all I could say, my voice flat, ice in my stomach.
“Your engagement to Barrett King,” he repeated. “You remember—”
“I remember.”
How could I not? That haughty, lecherous boy who’d turned his nose up at me the night Dad had been arrested, just moments after having attempted to flirt and charm his way into my pants.
I remembered, very clearly.
“I just… I don’t understand.” I swallowed thickly. “I don’t know him. I haven’t even spoken to him—”
“It was something that was in the works before my untimely incarceration,” Dad explained, his voice carefully patient. “His father and I had been talking about nudging the two of you together for some time now. With my release from prison,
we just have a reason to move it up.”
“And the reason for that is?”
“The family,” he said simply. “Security. I need to move us back into a position where our name continues to hold weight. We’ve integrated well after this whole incident, but there are… conditions I still need to meet. Money that needs to flow—”
“So you’re selling me?” I burst out, realizing what all of this was really about. “That’s what you’re doing. You’re selling me—”
“I’m securing an advantageous marriage for my daughter and my family’s security, Cordelia,” he said, his tone sharpening. “And you will do this. You’ll be married after graduation. In the summer—a beautiful, warm wedding just before it gets too hot to be enjoyable.”
He stood, coming around the desk to stand in front of me, tilting my chin up to meet my gaze.
“You wouldn’t do anything to put this family in jeopardy again, would you, Cordelia?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat.
For weeks, months, I had obsessed over how to prove my dad’s innocence, how to free him from prison. I had risked my life, put the boys I loved in danger, and made bargains with ruthless criminals.
All to free my father.
And in return, he would put me in a prison of his own making.
