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“But then again, I guess there’s no harm in making a commitment so young, as long as you know you can always sample other flavors later,” I said with a lazy shrug of my shoulders.
Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, a hand clamped around my arm.
“Excuse us, please.”
Dad flashed a tight smile at the rest of the table as everyone’s gazes flicked from him to me. Without bothering to give any further explanation or excuse, he escorted me away, keeping his grip firm on my upper arm. He pulled me toward a small nook off to one side of the restaurant, and as soon as we were out of view of everyone, he released me, straightening to his full height and glaring down at me.
“What the fuck are you doing, Cordelia?”
His harsh curse brought to mind the conversation where he’d promised he would no longer treat me like a child, but like an adult in all of this. That he would no longer coddle me or play nice because I was too young to understand.
He’d obviously meant it. Anger filled every line of his body, and he dipped his head, bringing it closer to my eye level.
“You don’t think I know what you’re trying to do? That you’re trying to humiliate me in front of a man who’s about to become my business partner? That you’re trying to devalue the name Van Rensselaer? That’s enough, Cora. I’ve allowed you some freedom, some leeway, hoping that if I let you have that space, you would eventually come around to accept this marriage arrangement. Instead, for every inch I’ve given you, you’ve taken a mile and thrown it back in my face.”
He stepped closer to me, his lips pressing together as anger vibrated from him.
“That ends now. You are going to marry Barrett King, and until you learn to accept that and be pleasant about it, to respect your mother and me, the privileges that you’ve grown so used to are revoked.” His gaze darkened, flicking toward the table before landing on me again. “This is too important to risk, Cordelia. You will obey me.”
Ten
My father hadn’t been kidding.
He hadn’t been bluffing.
After our little conversation in the alcove at the restaurant, he had re-affixed the charming smile to his face and brought me back to the table. He and Sebastian King had come to an agreement that the wedding would take place in July, and the entire evening had continued with an air of forced joviality as I had sat silent and wooden in my chair.
And as soon as we had returned home, Dad had taken the keys to the Aston Martin.
My heart had nearly dropped into my stomach at the sight of him pocketing the keys. That car had felt like my one piece of freedom, and losing it felt like watching the walls of my prison tighten around me.
I had expected him to declare that a driver would take me to school every day, but apparently, I’d pissed him off with my backtalk more than I had realized. Because my father went one step further and pulled me from classes at Highland Park.
He called on Monday to make arrangements with the school, blaming stress and bad health, and a private tutor was hired to come teach me at home.
If he thought he was punishing me by refusing to let me attend the private academy full of the children of the elite, he was dead fucking wrong about that. I had never re-adjusted to that place, and I really didn’t have any friends left inside those walls.
But what did hurt—what shredded my soul—was that I could no longer sneak out to see the Lost Boys. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house for any reason, so I couldn’t even take a bus across town.
I texted them as soon as I found out what my father had planned, and then deleted our entire text thread. He hadn’t confiscated my phone yet, but if he did, I didn’t want to give him access to everything my boys and I had sent each other.
My finger shook as I tapped the delete button, and my heart ached. They were just texts, hundreds of little messages sent back and forth, but they felt like keepsakes somehow. Like little pieces of the Lost Boys I had managed to carry with me all this time.
I still had their numbers
, but I deleted every new text I received after reading it, keeping my phone clean of evidence in case my father decided to take my grounding one step further and confiscate my cell phone too.
The first few days of my forced isolation felt like hell. The woman Dad had hired to tutor me arrived every morning at nine o’clock sharp, and I went through several mind-numbing hours of studying with her. But that wasn’t the worst part. At least during the days, I had something to keep me busy.
At night though, an acute sense of loneliness and isolation crept in.
The Lost Boys did what they could to keep my spirits up, but even through text, I could read the worry hidden behind their words. This wasn’t good, and we all knew it.
By the fourth day of my father’s punishment, I woke up feeling almost numb. As I stared at myself in the foggy bathroom mirror after stepping out of the shower, I realized I had to do something while I was locked up like this, or I really would go mad. I’d lose hope entirely, and I couldn’t afford to do that.
So that evening, I went to my father’s office after dinner.
He was behind his desk as usual, talking on the phone in an urgent voice. He looked up as I entered and held up a finger, and I waited until he’d wrapped up his phone call to step forward.
