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She’s through the doors when she turns to look for me. I wave to her from inside the elevator. “One of my men will pick you up out front.”
She frowns. “But where are you—”
The doors close before she can ask. Not that I would have told her the truth anyway.
I go back up and retrace our steps until I’m standing in the doorway of the hospital room again. The television is still on, flickering in the dark, but Piper’s father is asleep now. Dreaming the peaceful dreams of someone without a single regret.
I march into the room and press the button on the side of his bed.
The machine groans and clicks him slowly into a sitting position, but he jolts like he’s woken up to find himself on a rollercoaster.
“What the shit is—what’s wrong with this bed?” he hollers. “The fucking thing is taking me away! I—”
“Shut up,” I growl.
He looks up at me. If possible, he looks even more frightened.
Good.
“Wh-what are you doing back here?” he asks. His voice trembles ever so slightly.
“We never got a chance to properly meet.”
He scans me from head to toe and seems to relax slightly, though his face is still a ruddy color. “If you’re here to ask for my blessing or some shit like that, then this ain’t a good first impression.”
I actually laugh. “If you believe I give a single fuck what you think of me, then you’re even stupider than you look. Which I’m not sure is possible.”
“Then why are you here?”
“So that Piper never has to be again.”
He frowns. “You’re tryin’ to keep my Pip from me?”
I want to reach for his neck, but I manage to hold off. “Strangling you would set off all these machines you’re connected to and alert the nurses, so from this point on, refrain from ever calling heryoursagain. She does not belong to you.”
Based on the increasingly rapid beeps of his heart monitor, the nurses might be joining us in here in a few minutes regardless.
I’d better wrap things up.
“Piper deserved better than you as a child, and she sure as hell deserves better than you now,” I tell him. “If she can’t see that for herself, then I’ll make sure you’re gone for good.”
The man scrambles up the bed like he has a chance of escaping me. “Are—are you going to kill me?”
“As good as,” I confirm. “Because once I leave this room, you are never going to contact Piper again. Not for money, not for a chat. You aren’t going to so much as send her flowers on her birthday, if you even know when that is.”
“And why would I do that?”
It’s a fair question. He clearly doesn’t have much to live for. Without Piper, he doesn’t have anything at all save for a mountain of debt.
She’s not his daughter; she’s his piggy bank.
That’s a burden I’m all too happy to bear if it means she’ll never have to stand in a dark room like this one again and be berated by a man who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.
“Because I’m going to offer you a fuck ton of money to do exactly as I say.”
How much money is enough to give up Piper Quinn?I consider the question and draw a blank. No one could hand me a check big enough.
Then I look at the light in her father’s eyes, and I realize I won’t have to reach nearly as high as I might think. This man has no clue how priceless his daughter is.
