AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And oh the things I’ve imagined doing to you. The stupid little bitch who took the only thing I ever wanted.”
“Save the cryptic bullshit for your court appointed shrink, Dom. You met me when I was a fucking kid, I didn’t take anything from you.” Tears were leaking from my eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it was pain that caused them, fear at the situation I was in, or anger that this motherfucker had been behind everything.
“You took my mother from me!” He roared into my face, causing me to shrink further into the mesh cutting into my back. His face calmed into that smug smile as he brushed a lock of hair from my face. “You took her from me, so I took her from both of you.”
“What the fuck?” It was Robert speaking now and Dominic turned slightly to throw him a smile over his shoulder.
“Caroline Williams wasmine.” His eyes shot back to mine and I couldn’t get away from the eyes that I’d known so well since my mother died, always full of disdain for me. But looking into them now, full of triumph, I could seehereyes.
“Oh my God,” I whispered as his smile grew into an evil grin before he turned his attention back to Robert.
“For 13 years I’ve waited. I watched as you two destroyed your own lives with such an easy ‘accident’. You were the reason she wouldn’t talk to me or see me.” He used the knife to point toward my father and I tried to struggle against the chains.Accident. The crashhadbeen an accident. Robert had said so. He wouldn’t have lied about that. If he’d known that is. But the way Dom had thrown up air quotes made me realize without a doubt that it had been no accident.
“She couldn’t ruin the perfect fucking life she’d made as a Harrington.” He scoffed. “She acted like she was in some political thriller. Like your chances were affected by her ‘mistake’,” he threw in some air quotes. “She even threatened to destroy me if I didn’t leave you all alone.” He laughed at his memory before glaring down at Robert. “So I made it a point to destroy every single part of her perfect life, starting with her.”
He tossed the knife from hand to hand. “As much as I hate you, Robert. As much as I have loathed kissing your ass every day just to stay close enough to watch you and Lake fall apart.” He plunged the knife into Robert’s cut causing the older man to cry out. I started to scream, but the pain radiating from my jaw had the silent tears flowing now.
Dominic turned his head toward me, before twisting the knife in my father’s gut, making the man scream yet again. “Don’t cry for him, Lake. He’s a weak man so easily swayed by gentle manipulation. It was easy to plant seeds of disappointment in his mind. He obviously wanted to stay away from you or it wouldn’t have been so easy to convince him time and time again how much you needed to hit rock bottom. So simple to make that disdain fester into resentment.” He pulled the knife out and within seconds, Robert’s white shirt was stained with his blood pouring freely from his gut wound.
“You helped of course, flashing your shit around in every club you could find. Acting like the whore your mother was, just for a bit of attention. Man, Lake you took daddy issues to a whole new level! It was soeasy!” He repeated with a laugh.
My entire world since the age of 13 had been manipulated into a personal hell by… Oh Lord, I couldn’t even think of it without wanting to vomit. The idea that I shared blood with Dominic Parker was enough to send me over the edge. But knowing that he worked to keep my relationship with my dad so strained for nothing more than pleasure. I was hollow, feeling myself start to slip from my body to seek comfort in the numbness.
A slap cracking across my face had me crying out from the agony of moving my jaw more than the sting of the slap. “Oh no, I’m not letting you go all empty eye’d on me, bitch. You don’t get to escape this.” He gripped my chin hard causing another wave of pain as he yanked my face back to his, glaring with such malice that I hoped the pain of my face in his grip would let me black out. But I was still in the here and now and as he let go to return to my father I watched as Robert was gasping and trying to keep himself conscious. The blood was dripping from the edge of the chair into a pool on the cement floor beneath him.
I kept my eyes trained on the drops of blood, watching each fall as Dominic paced behind Robert. I stared blankly as my mind was trying to imagine what Decker would do in this situation. Tears streamed back toward my hairline as I thought about him and wondered if a month of knowing someone was too soon to fall in love. It really didn’t matter since I was sure I would love that man for the rest of my life. An easy declaration when I was certain the rest of my life wouldn’t be much longer.
Flashes of the minutes before I’d been taken seemed to filter in through my current nightmare. Jack getting shot, Evan slamming into the side table with the sound of an ominous crack. They were both probably dead now. My mother, the Pasternaks, Daniels and Lambert, the women from the clubs, Bailey, Jack and Evan and soon… Robert Harrington and his daughter. So many lives ended because of one man’s abandonment trauma. Anger churned in my gut as my wide stare at the blood became a narrowed gaze on Dominic.
“You’re fucking pathetic,” I ground through the same clenched teeth.
“Me?” He laughed, incredulous. “Me?” he asked again, stepping closer. “I’m not the one who has to self medicate with drinks, drugs and dick just to get past the fact that no one can stand to be in the same room as me.”
The completely inaccurate assessment of my life was enough to make me attempt a laugh. There was comfort in knowing that after all these years, Dominic, in his mission to destroy me, had no idea who I really was. He may have done something to interfere with my relationship with my father, but he assumed that he’d turned me into the woman the public saw. I was more proud in that moment of my real life than I’d ever been before.
“So what’s your damage, Dom? What made yousointent on destroying us? You beat us, give us the backstory now.” He tapped the flat of his knife on my bare thigh as he thought about my question.
“It really is cliche to do the whole origin story thing, Lake. Usually it’s just some ploy to buy time. But there is no buying time. Even if your lap dogs at Remington could find you, they aren’t even in the country. I really wanted to kill Mullins for being such an alpha prick, but,” he turned the blade and dragged it down the top of my thigh, splitting the skin down to the top of my knee. I tried and failed to hold the cry of pain in, but it spilled free. “I’m smart enough to know how to remove obstacles if I can’t take them,” he finished in a pleasant tone. Darkness swam in my vision and I welcomed the emptiness of passing out, only able to hear Dominic’s irritated curse as I let the nothingness take over.
CHAPTER 32
DECKER
Ihadn’t stopped moving since the call from Avery. Every second in which Lake was missing was like its own eternity. Cabot and I had arrived back in New Jersey and immediately drove to the hospital, anxiety radiating from the car as we’d sped the entire way. Jack had survived the emergency surgery to repair the damage to his collapsed lung and Evan had been sedated after he’d woken up in the hospital and tried to leave his bed, destroying most of the room in an attempt to get to Lake.
I was still fighting the constant battle of breaking apart as we’d pulled up to the hospital to find Fitz had converted a private waiting room into a command center, attempting to figure out where Dominic Parker had taken the Harringtons. Now I paced the waiting room, looking over the various computers being worked on by Jack’s team as they worked to uncover all the information they could about the man who’d fooled us all.
Scout was in the room too, working on her own computer and it said something about her relationship with Lake that she made sure Ryan was okay and resting before she’d left him on the floor below to come up to our command and demand a seat at the table. Since she was on par with Jack’s level of computer talent, Fitz had put her to work immediately trying to dig up information while grilling her for her personal knowledge.
“I don’t know the man beyond passing greetings. He was always at Robert’s side and since he and Lake didn’t get along, I spent my time with her and we avoided those men all together,” she said, voice strained as she stared at her screen. I could tell it killed her to have no personal information to give, but her work had been solid when she and Fitz stopped my pacing to fill me in.
“Dominic Parker has no mother listed on his birth certificate, but his father is listed as Andrew Parker. A defense attorney from Connecticut. It shows he was adopted by Nina Parker, Andrew’s wife, then he was back in the system after Andrew was gunned down in his office by a former client. From the age of five until eighteen, Dominic was in the foster system.”
“Sounds like an affair,” Scout said as she continued tapping on her keys. Her auburn hair was in a messy knot on top of her head, and dark circles sat heavy under her eyes, showing the lack of rest the rest of us felt.
“How so?” Cabot asked, leaning over her shoulder as she typed. At the question, Scout completely halted her fingers over the keyboard and looked at each of us like we were slow.
“I forget that you guys don’t know much about the politics of, well, politics.” She leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh, tucking a wild strand of fallen hair behind her ear. “Andrew Parker was married with two kids. Dominic was born ten years into his marriage where he’s listed as father.”
