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I bowed my head, ashamed. “I know…I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” he snapped. “I told you not to go back there, and you did it anyway.”
“I know…”
“You’re practically a billionaire, Carter. Why the fuck did you need more money?”
“Because I’m weak, alright? I’d gotten away with it for years. I thought I could do it one more time.”
He shook his head and started to pace, furious. “Then what the hell happened? Did you give her back?”
I didn’t want to give my answer. “No.”
He halted and gave me a fiery look. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Griffin helped me. I told Egor she killed herself by catching on fire. We found a corpse to replace her, made him believe it was her, and then it ended. I moved out here to have more privacy so he wouldn’t spot her somewhere.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“He believed it, Father. It’s been weeks, and I haven’t heard from him. He’s temperamental, so he would have done something by now.”
He gripped his skull again. “I should beat the shit out of you right now.”
“Yeah…you should.” I deserved a punch to the face. “But I had to do it. I’ve bought dozens of women before and got them to safety. I couldn’t just hand over this innocent woman to her tormentor, especially when she had an eight-year-old son. I couldn’t do it.”
“But you could put us at risk?”
“We aren’t a risk. I covered my tracks.”
He shook his head. “Tracks get old, but they never disappear entirely. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder.”
“He doesn’t live here. He’s Russian. I gave him the corpse so he could drop it in the ocean. He obviously did that. Otherwise, he would have a decomposing body on his hands. All the evidence to contradict my story was on the body, so he clearly didn’t notice anything. I even burned my own house to make the story more believable. It’s done—and it’s been taken care of.”
He stopped pacing and leaned against the counter again. “Thank god your mother isn’t here.”
Yes. Her disappointment would be worse.
“You’re always going to be looking over your shoulder, Carter.”
“I know…but he’ll find someone else eventually and forget about Mia.”
“Mia?” he whispered. “She’s got a name, huh?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do with her?” He turned his hard stare on me, burning me alive with his disappointment.
“I brought her here.”
“In the house?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“Yes…she lives with me.”
He turned away and gave a slight nod, like he understood something that was never said. “Now I get it…you love this woman.” He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, frustrated but no longer angry. He turned back to me, his eyes a little less hostile.
“No, I don’t love her. I just wanted to help her.”
“Then why is she living here?”
“She needed somewhere to go. She cooks, cleans, takes care of the house—”
“And fucks you at your command.” His voice rose, bouncing off the walls of the kitchen and becoming louder.
I held his gaze, unsure how to circumvent the accusation.
“Don’t lie to me again.” The muscles of his body tensed all over again. It seemed like he wanted to grab me by the neck and choke me. “Because I will beat the shit out of you if you do it again. Men don’t lie, and they definitely don’t lie to their fathers. So what kind of man do you want to be, Carter? A liar? Or a piece of shit?”
I didn’t flinch as I held his gaze, feeling the pain in my chest. A son’s worst fear was his father’s disappointment. I wasn’t a child anymore, but I lived for his approval. He told me he was proud of me for everything that I accomplished. I was a self-made man, and when he told me how happy he was, he had tears in his eyes. Now all of that was in the past. I was letting him down in the present.
“That’s why she’s here? You’re her new master?”
I held his gaze because it would be pathetic to look away. I didn’t want to admit the truth to my father. I was hoping to avoid this subject altogether since my father never mentioned my personal life. That was a boundary he respected. “Yes.”
He clenched his jaw and looked away.
“But I did want to help her as well.”
“Sure, Carter.” He dragged his hand down his face, sighing in frustration. “This is a fucking nightmare.”
“There is no nightmare,” I said. “I took care of Egor.”
“Let’s hope so. The things of the past have a way of returning…in the way you least suspect. We thought Bones was long gone, but then he had a son who infiltrated our ranks. Sure, he likes him now, but there was no way any of us could have anticipated that.”
We could argue in circles for weeks. “The decisions have already been made. She lives here now, and that’s the end of the story.”
