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No matter how healthy and nice looking he may be on the outside, all I can see is the darkness deep inside him.
“Okay, yeah, I know we do. Maybe we can—”
“Right now, Marie.” He steps out of my cube, his voice low and commanding. “My car’s waiting out front.”
I hesitate, looking around. Nobody’s staring yet but they will be soon. I can’t do this right here, not with at least six people nearby that will hear everything we have to say, but I also don’t want to go anywhere with this man.
My father is not a nice person.
That’s a mild understatement. He’s a controlling, obsessive bastard, and I’ve spent all my life trying to live up to his impossible expectations and failing again and again. I love him, but I know I’ll never make him proud, and that breaks my heart so deeply it left me scarred and broken in ways I don’t fully understand and doubt I ever will.
Still, I have no choice. When my father commands, I have to obey. I nod a little and he leads me to the elevators. I glance back at my cube and wish I could call Kari first, but I’ll get to that later, assuming I survive this conversation.
Which is not a guarantee.
I follow him to the elevators and we ride in silence. It’s a strained, painful silence, not like the strangely charged silence I shared with Ansell. My father stares straight ahead, a hint of anger in his mouth and around his eyes. Where Ansell is cold and detached, my father is filled with so much fire and brimstone it’s like he’s the devil incarnate, but he struggles to hold it back all the time. He wishes he were as detached as Ansell, but I wonder what Ansell thinks.
If maybe he’d rather have the fire and passion inside of my father. Like the passion I saw when Ansell’s hands were on my body.
But no, definitely not the time to think about that.
Father leads me outside and into a big black Cadillac SUV. We sit in the back as the driver sits against the curb, not moving, the car idling. Air conditioning blasts back from the front and a chill runs down my sweat-beaded skin. I shift in my seat, hands folded in my lap, so uncomfortable and on the verge of screaming, but my father says nothing. He stares straight ahead, jaw working, twitching slightly as he chews over what he’s about to say.
“You fucked up, Marie.” He twitches again, hands tensing into fists and relaxing again over and over like he’s grabbing an invisible ball. My father was a talented collegiate tennis player back in the day, and he still uses the balls to release some of his pent-up aggression, squeezing them so hard sometimes they break.
He believes competition is the only way to make a person strong. From a young age, he’s been throwing me into difficult, painful situations, from overly aggressive sports to unreasonable scholastic expectations.
“Dad—”
“No, don’t start making excuses.” He looks at me and fury is written all over his face. “You fucked up.”
I stare at my lap, heart racing. I knew he’d be mad but this is a level of rage I never expected. When he starts cursing, I know things are really, really bad.
“I know what I did might hurt you—”
“This is going to ruin me.” He leans closer, breath hot on my cheek. “Do you have any idea how many clients have already pulled out of the fund? I’ve lost millions this morning and I’ve only just barely been able to stem the bleeding by telling everyone you’re still going to marry William.”
I look up sharply. “Dad!”
He stares back at me, not speaking for several long moments. A minute passes in that silence as I let what he’s saying sink in. Another black car pulls up and parks behind us. I glance over my shoulder, frowning. Is that Ansell’s? But Dad leans forward to speak with the driver. “Head east and keep going,” he says softly.
We pull into traffic.
“I’m not going to do it,” I say, shaking hard. “I can’t go back to William, Dad. Not after everything, it’ll be humiliating and I’ll hate myself. I can’t do it.”
He doesn’t look at me, only stares straight ahead with a grim expression.
“I told them that white lie because you’re going to go over to the Crawford house, get down on your knees, and beg for that family’s forgiveness. You’ll grovel and cry and tell them you were on your fucking period, or you took too much medication, or you injected crack directly into your goddamn fucking eyeballs, I don’t give a shit what you say, but you will tell them you lost your mind and you want a second chance. You’ll take whatever punishment they give you, no matter how sick and twisted. You’ll let William beat you bloody for all I fucking care. You will wash Magnus’s feet and kiss his toes if that might fix things. And when it’s over, you’ll marry the boy with a smile.”
