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My heart pangs in my chest as I watch her face fall.
“Well …” I take her face in my hands and softly kiss her forehead. “You don’t have to feel like that any longer. You have me.”
Just as she’s about to respond, there’s a loud knock at her apartment door.
Kat’s brow furrows.
“Were you expecting someone?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. Maybe … Maybe it’s a neighbor or something?”
The next knock is even louder. “Katherine Annabelle Greene, open this door this instant!” shouts an angry voice.
Kat’s face pales until she’s white as a sheet. “Oh god.”
“Who is it?” I hiss, pulling her close. My protective instincts jump into overdrive instantly.
She darts from my embrace and makes her way out of the bedroom. “My dad,” she calls over her shoulder.
It’s my turn to let my brows furrow. I get that she just said they’re not close, but this reaction seems more scared than familial. I stalk behind her, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling settling in my stomach.
The angry banging continues until she manages to get to the door and throw the deadbolt to open it. Behind it stands a man in a suit, red in the face with fury as he stares down Kat. Over his shoulder, I can see a well-dressed older woman who has hair the same shade of brown as my girl. Her expression is dour, but much more reserved than the man Kat referred to as her father. I bet she’s her mother. Great. Both parents. And neither of them look happy to see their daughter, so I’m sure seeing me is going to make them very pleasant to deal with.
Before she has the chance to greet them, Kat’s parents are storming into her apartment.
“When were you going to tell us that you’re failing your microeconomics class?” her father shouts. Kat steps back and immediately shrinks into herself. Her eyes are glassy as she looks at her feet. As he begins to berate her, I see her mother glance my way and look me up and down with a stern expression.
It’s all I can do to stand in front of Kat and make her father step back—the way he’s speaking to her is fucking unacceptable. But I didn’t make it this far in my line of work with all my teeth still in my head for nothing. I know how to pick my battles and how to wait until the right time to pick them. I plant myself behind her instead and place a hand on her shoulder. When she wants me to take these people she calls parents on, I’ll do it. Until then, I don’t want to make a scene if she doesn’t want me to.
I trust her to lean on me when she needs to.
“I’m o-only halfway through the s-semester,” Kat stammers. “There’s s-still time for me to raise it.”
“From a failing grade to a C, maybe,” her mother scoffs. “How many times do we have to tell you that it’s important you succeed?”
“I know it’s important!”
“Do you?” her father bellows. “Because I don’t think you do! You think I don’t know you’ve been working at one of our corporate locations?”
Kat stills, tears beginning to gather on her lashes. She shakes like a leaf underneath my hands. I don’t have time to process what the man means when he says she’s working at one of their “corporate locations” because he continues.
“You’ve been flaunting our authority for years, but this is a new low. How dare you go behind my back and do something I have explicitly forbid!”
“D-Dad—”
“No, Katherine,” her mother stops her. “Listen to your father for once.”
I can’t take it anymore. “How about you listen to your daughter instead?” I growl.
The room abruptly falls silent. Kat’s father looks up at me, surprised, as if I haven’t been here the whole time. Her mother’s look is appraising in the same way my own dad’s looks used to be. She’s trying to decide if I’m a threat or if I’ll be silenced easily.
Hatred courses through my bloodstream.
“Who the hell are you?” Kat’s father barks.
“The man who saved your daughter in that altercation at that corporate location of yours,” I spit at him. My hand flexes into a fist as my body pulls tight, ready to pounce. This asshole is her father? The man crushing my girl’s dreams?
The man’s face practically glows with rage. “It was you? You’re the prick who stopped the kidnapping?”
