AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re not fucking running. You’re coming with me.” I brush the hair away from her face, stroking it down her back and giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You played your part perfectly. You were…” I pause on a sniff, considering what to say, then it flows from my lips like warm honey into tea. “Youarethe perfect daughter. My perfect daughter. I’ll pay off your father’s debts, and make sure you have whatever you need. Forever.”
“You mean that?” Her eyes are glassy as she stares up at me, the driver stepping out of the car and waiting patiently.
As he should, I’ve paid him enough.
“I play a lot of games with people, baby, but I promise I never will with you.”
It’s the truth. I’ve never considered much what would happen to my money after I died. But that’s changed. If something happens to me, somehow I have to make sure every last copper penny goes to my daughter.
Is that how I really think of her now?
I shake my head. It’s wrong but I don’t care. She’s my daughter and my fuck toy.
My muse and my baby mama.
If I live long enough, she’ll be my bride.
It’s very backwoods, thinking of her the way I do, but what the fuck. I’ve had half a century and I’ve just now found my reason for living. Playing out the incest fantasies she’s inspired isn’t hurting anyone.
“You’re coming with me,” I reiterate, not one to let gray areas linger. “Sometimes you won’t have a choice, baby. Daddy knows best.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “I mean, yes. I want to go with you, I don’t want to go home.”
The driver loads our bags into the car, then climbs in, and I tell him the destination.
Hannah doesn’t want to go home, and right now that house is her home. I don’t have anywhere better to give her, and if I did, that could tie us together, so her going back to her shitty hovel for now fits best into her being safe.
Why didn’t I ever put down roots? Why did I always have to play the next hand, run the next con, make enemies bigger than any one man can handle?
Why, just when I get something I care about in my life, mine is more than likely coming to an end?
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asks, and I realize I’m rubbing my temples, mumbling to myself.
I shake my head. “It’s nothing. Just details. Work stuff.”
Putting my arm around her, I pull her in close. She snuggles down as we drive, and before long I hear her start to sigh in her sleep, content and without a care in the world.
I take the opportunity to pull out my phone and send off a quick text to my lawyer, telling him to be here tomorrow morning, and giving him the basic details. I also have funds I can’t touch for the time being, somewhere far from here, but he knows about them and I make him promise Hannah will get the lot if I can’t change my will before the Albanians take me out.
He won’t double cross me, because I’ve faked my death once before and he knows it. There will always be an element of doubt about whether I might return, furious, should he fail to pass on the money to Hannah.
I then book a single plane ticket to the Caymans, leaving tomorrow night. Open ended. It’s where my house is that will be our home. No private jets this time, no first class. She might need to quietly get out of town for a while to keep her safe, and I want to make sure I’ve thought of everything and made plans.
“We’re here,” I whisper in her ear as we pull into the hotel parking lot, and she stirs, looking beautiful as she comes out of sleep.
I don’t take my jacket from her as I guide her in through the lobby, to the bank of elevators and then up to my room. It’s orderly, clean, and elegant, but there’s only so many hotel rooms you can see before they all blend into a single bland, unremarkable image in your head. What I want, is to make a life with her, but I don’t see how I can possibly have that.
Spending one last night together is the next best thing.
chapterthirteen
Dietrich
Something pullsme out of sleep with a jolt, and for a moment I lie, listening and staring, wondering if this is it and hoping it isn’t.
No sound of breathing, no sound of a gun being drawn back, no voice telling me to get the fuck out of bed. Just silence.
Deciding I must have imagined it, I reach out to the other side of the bed for her, and hit nothing but air.
