AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Why did you do it?" I demanded. "Why didn’t you speak to me about what was going on? We could have found some way to work it out—"
"Because I was ashamed!” he replied, cutting me off before I could go any further. "I was ashamed, alright, Mina? Because I know how much of your life you’ve given up just to take care of me. I know how far you’ve gone to look after me, and knowing that … Knowing that, I just couldn’t tell you how much farther I had let things go. How stupid I had been. How I had pulled you into another mess you didn’t want any part of."
I fell silent, shocked. That was why? That was why all of this had happened? Because … Because he had been ashamed?
"And you thought it would be better to let me get taken?" I demanded.
"I didn’t see any other way I could deal with it," he replied, a hopeless edge to his voice. "I had already agreed to it; they’d forced me to go along with it. And I … I thought someone out there would be able to give you a better life than I could."
My jaw dropped.
"You thought I would be better off being sold to some—?"
"No," he replied, cutting me off, shaking his head. "It’s not that. I thought … I just thought you would have been better off never having to deal with me again. Just leaving me behind to rot so you could go and chase your own dreams, your own life."
My heart squeezed tight in my chest as I heard those words come out of his mouth. God, no. No. No matter how much I had hated him for what he had done, I would never have been better off without him—I never would have left him to just die there.
"You think that’s what I wanted?" I asked him.
"I think that’s what you needed," he muttered. "Whether you were willing to admit it or not. You needed someone to actually give you that freedom, a chance to go out there into the world and live the life you deserve, not the one … not the one you spent running around after me, doing everything you could just to keep me alive."
I shook my head, swallowing hard.
"That’s never what I needed, Dad," I murmured to him, taking another step forward. "If that’s what I needed, I would have gone after it a long time ago, a long time ago. I would have walked out and left you there to deal with your own shit."
"So why didn’t you?" he asked me. I could hear the pain in his voice, the guilt, the shame, but somewhere at the back of it all, hope too. A twinge of hope, like he was praying, pleading with himself, that there might be a way through this for us.
"Because I needed you, Dad," I told him. "I needed you. I needed … I needed the version of you that I grew up with, the guy who was always there for me, the man who was able to care for me. No matter how bad things got, I always saw that underneath everything you were going through, and I … I stuck around because I had to believe there was some way to get him out. To set him free again."
He looked away from me, eyes downcast. He looked his age; the weight of all the years of this addiction and obsession hanging heavy over his head.
"I don’t know if I can give you that," he admitted. I narrowed my eyes at him and crossed my arms over my chest.
"You don’t have a choice," I shot back at him. He stared at me, confused.
"What do you mean?”
I nodded back up the stairs.
"I have two Bratva bosses up there who can’t wait to get their hands on you," I told him. "And I’m not much interested in making them keep their distance if you’re not going to put in the work to get better. You want to just lie back and let your addictions take you? That’s your choice, but I’m not going to hold them back from you. They can do whatever they want with you. And, trust me, they don’t take kindly to the kind of man who would sell his daughter to make a few bucks."
Fear crossed his face, the terror in his eyes obvious. But I didn’t just want to intimidate him. No, I wanted him to hear this—I needed him to understand that there was a chance here for him, a way out, if he was just willing to take it.
"But," I continued. "You agree to get sober—from all of it—you agree to put the work in, and I guess I could see my way to keeping them off your back. For now, at least."
He stared up at me, hardly able to wrap his head around what he was hearing.
"You’re saying …?"
"I’m saying you get one chance at this, Dad, one fucking chance," I told him. I normally never cursed in front of my father, but right now, it wasn’t as though I could hold it back. I needed him to know how serious I was. Needed him to know that there was no room for him to screw up.
"I don’t deserve another chance," he protested, and I shook my head.
"I get to decide what you deserve," I replied. "I’m the one you did this to. And I get to make the call about whether or not you deserve another chance, okay? And you do. One. One chance. That’s it. You going to take it?"
I stood there in front of him, breathing hard, a part of me expecting him to just fold there on the spot, admit he didn’t have it in him to fight any longer, and give up. But all at once, I saw a flash in his eyes, a flash of the man I had known before, the man I had loved so much before he had been taken by his addiction. His jaw tightened, and he rolled his shoulders back and nodded.
"I’m going to take it," he told me. His voice was a little shaky, but he still got the words out. "Starting now. I don’t want to touch that shit again, not ever again. I’m done with it. And I’m … I’m so sorry. Mina. I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner …"
