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“Because she’s here with me. And so is your granddaughter.”
The sounds of his breathing stopped. “Granddaughter?”
“Remember, the one you didn’t want because it would look bad on you?”
“I never said that—”
“Bullshit! I might be a liar, but Kara isn’t. She said you told her not to come back while she was pregnant. To get rid of it. Yeah, well, she didn’t do that,Dad.”
“Could you…could I talk to her?”
I bit down on my tongue. “She’s busy taking care of her child. You know, what parents do?”
Irritation spiked in his voice. “It’s not that simple for me, Rebel. You don’t understand our core values and beliefs. We believe a baby born out of wedlock is from the Devil.”
My mouth dropped open. “I was a baby born out of wedlock! So what am I? Satan’s spawn? Please explain to me how that makes sense? I wasn’t the one who asked to be born. If you weren’t so busy sticking your dick into women—and I use that term lightly, considering my mother was all of thirteen when you knocked her up—you wouldn’t have had an illegitimate child. Why am I punished for your sins?”
He sighed impatiently, like the answer was one-hundred-percent obvious. “That’s why I asked you to come out here. You’re right! You’re right about everything. Your birth was caused by my sins. But you can be baptized. You can choose to walk in the light like I did. Josiah is willing to perform the ritual—”
“Josiah—what?” I remembered the man. Creepy, middle-aged dude who’d hung around when we’d been out at the homestead. I hadn’t liked the way he’d looked at my younger sister, but he hadn’t said anything as crazy as the rubbish spewing from my father’s mouth right now. “I’m not coming out there to be baptized into your damn cult, Torrence!”
“I’m your father, Rebel.”
“Yeah, that only works in the movies. Not on thirty-year-old women who have been on their own for more than half their life because their father was a dead-shit who ran off to join the fucking circus.”
Torrence’s words were tight and clipped. “The homestead is not a circus. It’s a community of like-minded people. Your mind has been polluted by everything. TV. Radio. The news. Social media. All of it is the Devil’s work.”
Wow. It was like he was reading out of the cult life manual. “You’ve been brainwashed. I know you weren’t like this when I was a kid.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t. I lived in the dark. I didn’t know the light until I came here. And there’s room for you here too. Always. If you ever change your mind, we’ll hold your baptism in the creek, with the running water washing away your sins.”
The door behind me opened a crack.
I spun around.
“Is that my father?” Kara asked softly, Hayley Jade asleep in her arms.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Though he doesn’t deserve the respectful title.”
“Let me talk to him.”
I hesitated, not wanting him to hurt her with his cruel words when he’d already hurt her so much she’d gone running to Caleb for money.
In a way, I blamed him for everything that came after it.
But she held her hand out, more insistent this time. “Please.”
Reluctantly, I handed it over.
I could already see her decision in her eyes, and it broke my heart.
She was going to go back to them.
19
REBEL
Iwalked from one end of the bar to the other, pausing in front of each man and waiting for them to flash me their phone screens. “Fang? Tell me you got through?”
