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“Father?” My voice came out weaker than I hoped, not quite hiding the confusion.
“Kaylie?” The tinge of surprise didn’t go unnoticed. “Why are you calling from—”
Mr. X spoke up. “Mr. Remington. Your daughter doesn’t believe me when I tell her the truth. Can you help me with that?”
There was a long pause, then my father sighed. “Xander is telling you the truth.” He spoke without feeling. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I had no choice.”
I shook my head as if he could see it, whispering the wordno, repeatedly.
“Have a good life, Kaylie. This is the last time you’ll hear from me.” The click as the line disconnected echoed in my head. The phone slid from my grip, scattering to the floor. Tears clouded my vision, and I blinked furiously at them.
“See?” Mr. X said. “You can trust me. You’ll like it here. Most of all, you’ll be safe. We protect our property.”
“Safe?” The world slipped from my mouth, and he must have picked up on the disbelief.
“Why do you think your father had to hire a bodyguard to escort you to me? Why didn’t he drive you himself?”
I didn’t know. I knew nothing anymore. Only that the mention of Marc was one more thing I couldn’t handle.
“Your daddy is drowning in depths. And not the ones you pay off to the bank. Bringing you here settled the one he had with me. But there are others not as generous as I am. And you, sweetheart, are the most precious tool in his toolbox. You were never safe there.”
“What about Marc?” I whispered, stunning myself with my sense of priorities. My life was falling apart around me, and I worried abouthissafety?
Mr. X laughed so loud I cringed. “What about him?” He lifted a thick eyebrow in amusement. “Did he play your daddy’s game?”
What? No…
“No,” Mr. X confirmed. “He didn’t. He only did what he was told. Easy to attain, easy to dispose of.”
A gasp slipped past my lips as the meaning slowly registered in my overheated brain.
Easy to dispose of.No. No, no, no. He couldn’t have…
Mr. X shook his head at me. “Don’t tell me youlikedhim? He was just a pawn, sweetheart. A safe passage. A nobody.”
Tears fell from my eyes. “What did you do?” I whispered.
“I believe he had a little accident down the road.” He bent down, picked up the cellphone from the floor and tapped the screen a few times before turning it to me. “See for yourself.”
I stared at the play-icon, waiting to be tapped.A video?Of what? I couldn’t bring myself to lift my hand, to play the clip. When I just sat there, staring and trying to breathe, Mr. X tapped the screen, and a road came into view. Then a car. The footage was wobbly, as if filmed from a moving vehicle. It took a moment too long before I grasped the obvious. I knew that car. The big black land-cruiser that had been my home for the previous week. It was Marc’s.
“Why—” The car swirled to the side, skidded off the road and drove straight off the cliff lining the rain-coated road. I screamed. Mr. X chuckled as if he watched a comedy instead of—
My throat swelled with a rush of sudden emotion. A loud boom followed, and the screen filled with dark smoke as the car must have exploded somewhere far off that cliff. I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth to keep from crying out loud.
“Sorry you had to see that, sweetheart.” He grasped my hand, removing it from my face and held it. “Forget about him. He’s dead. Okay?”
“Why?” I choked out. “Why would you—” my voice broke, and I clamped my mouth shut to keep from sobbing out loud.
“Forget about your bodyguard, sweetheart. Forget about your lying daddy. Your life is here now. And it will be a brand new start.”
My head snapped up as the finality of his words slammed into me.
Mr. X stood, patted my shoulder, and left me staring after him as he went. “You have a wedding to prepare for. Better dry those tears,” he called out over his shoulder before disappearing from the room.
My mind reeled from the overload of information. One part of me refused to take it as truth and clung to the hope that Mr. X was lying. Anything else was too hard to face. Too painful to even begin to process.
But my father… I didn’t want to accept it. He didn’t even try to deny it. Somewhere deep inside, I felt it. The truth I couldn’t face. Everything Mr. X said was true.
