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“You’re vile.” His face is mottled red now. “How dare you talk like this to me about my daughter! Arya, get off his lap immediately.”
I run my thumb back and forth on her inner thigh. “You’re going to pack up everything you own, Arya,” I say without taking my eyes off her father. “You’re not coming back here.”
“Will I still be able to run my dog adoption website?” she whispers up at me.
“Of course you will,” I assure her. It’s remote, requiring no actual contact with real life people who could do her harm. I’ve watched her run the operation through the window of her bedroom for years, my pride in her almost melting me.
“This is outrageous!” Thomas explodes, picking up his phone. “I’m calling the police.”
With a sigh, I take an envelope out of my pocket and slide it across his desk. He eyes it warily for a moment, then picks it up. When he sees the pictures inside, the blood drains from his face. They are photos of him barbequing with the secret family he has stashed away upstate. A wife and two sons. Just another thing to distract him from protecting my future wife, like he should have been. I have no sympathy.
“Don’t try and stop me from taking her. If you do, or if you try and lay a finger on my organization, those will find their way to every news station in the city.” I stand with Arya in my arms, giving in to a little temptation by settling her butt on the edge of the desk, fisting her hair and tilting her head back. I slide my tongue into her mouth and French her perfect little unkissed mouth while letting her father know with my eyes, in no uncertain terms, who she belongs to now. Who she’ll belong to forever. “Mine,” I growl, rocking against her pussy once, before scooping her back off the desk. “After we leave, Thomas, you’ll wait five minutes, then call the police. Tell them the gunmen turned on each other. The cameras have been out for hours, so when you tell them I was never here, they’ll have no choice but to believe you. And your daughter is perfectly safe at a friend’s house. Do I need to repeat anything?”
Thomas clears his throat, still staring at the pictures. “No.”
I turn and walk out.
Holding her in my arms, knowing she’ll sleep beside me tonight, I feel whole for the first time in my life. But there’s one component to claiming Arya I didn’t anticipate.
Now that I’ve made her mine, I’m terrified out of my mind of losing her. Or her being hurt in my care. And a million other little things. It’s like my heart is suddenly walking around outside of my body and I can’t sew it back in.
No. No, she’ll never be hurt on my watch.
I won’t allow it.
But what if the universe doesn’t care about my rules?
3
Arya
Just like that, I’m out of my glass prison.
Honestly, even after having my parents basically ignore me for the last eighteen years, I feel a little guilty when Damian carries me out of the house. All my mother and father can do is stand there looking dumbfounded watching my guardian angel’s men wheel my luggage out in charged silence.
At least, they’re silent until right before we step into the penthouse’s personal elevator.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” my mother calls, her mouth in a bitter twist. “Just wait until she gets upset. She won’t seem like such a prize then!”
Shame burns my face and I bury it in Damian’s chest.
My mother is right.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve thrown terrible tantrums. Loud, whopping destructive ones that are probably the reason my parents pawned me off on paid staff. It’s why I can’t be too mad at them for leaving me alone so often. It’s hard enough to deal with the emotional outbursts—I can’t imagine what it’s like to be on the receiving end.
I’m not a spoiled brat. If someone tells me I can’t have something, I don’t get upset or demand to get my way. It’s when there’s something truly important on the line that my muscles seize up, my throat turning raw until I can’t do anything but scream in frustration.
For instance, if one of the puppies on my adoption website has a new owner all lined up, but they change their minds at the very last minute, I have been known to rip down curtains, smash picture frames and hiccup cry until I pass out. I’m not sure where the frustration comes from, but apparently there is a very deep well of it. It hasn’t run dry yet!
A man opens the back door of an SUV for Damian and he sets me carefully on the white leather seat, getting in behind me. There is a hulking driver in the driver’s seat with an earpiece and he stares straight ahead, even when I say hello.
