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I could hear the thumping of my blood as it pulsed through my veins. As much as I despised my family, their lack of concern just floored me. Glancing at Stryker, I could tell he knew what they were talking about. We all knew my cousin had a penchant for keeping meticulous records. And from what I could gather, my uncle didn’t want them in the wrong hands.
“Of course I fucking know what that means, Alex, I’m not a fucking moron.” Through the slit in the door, I watched as Dad launched the silver pyramid we’d brought back from Vegas across the room. It hit the last family portrait of us and stuck out of the wall. What the hell was on those files that had caused him to react like that? “In case you’ve forgotten, I told you both on numerous occasions to build that damn facility somewhere else. I warned the both of you weeks ago that those guys were on to you, and I even fucking offered to take the whore off your hands, but no, you wouldn’t listen.”
“It wasn’t my choice, Max, you know that.” My uncle tried to argue with him, but my father wasn’t having any of it.
“And now, no thanks to your fucking son, she will only be good for the damn pleasure houses. You understand what we’ve lost here, don’t you? Girls like Phoenix could have been used as a negotiation chip with the right people. A night with an unmarked girl, especially one like her, could have worked in our favour, but that was before your psychotic son touched her.”
“That’s not gonna be what costs us, Max. Losing those files will cost us so much more.” My uncle seemed more worried than angry, like he had when we’d first started listening. “We need to get those files back. I don’t give a fuck about the girl, there’s always other pussy out there to earn a dollar from, but those files, if we don’t retrieve them soon, they could ruin us.”
That was interesting. Stryker, Jonah, and Damon had spent the last few weeks running back and forth from the warehouse, but nothing had been said about files, or what was on them. I’d been assuming they had been going there because of Kyle, but judging by the look on Stryker’s face, there was more to it, and when we left there tonight he had some explaining to do.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I whispered under my breath, eyeballing him, before I kicked the door open. This time I didn’t give a fuck if I’d interrupted his damn call. I’d heard enough. Storming up to his desk, I leaned over it and ended his call. “We need to talk.”
“I thought we’d already spoken about this Logan. You can’t just storm into my office and demand my attention, no matter how important you may think it is.” To say Dad was a little more than pissed would have been an understatement. Given half the shit I’d just heard, he was lucky I hadn’t come in swinging.
“Yeah, you did, but the give-a-fuck factor is zero, old man. I’ve got some questions that you are going to answer.” Ignoring my father was never a great option, the last time I’d done that I had had bruises for weeks afterward, but unfortunately for him, I had someone watching my back this time .
“What makes you think I’d answer anything you ask after the way you stormed in here, son?” Leaning back in his chair, his hands perched together on the desk, he gave me a smirk that only served to reinforce what I had come to know. My dad was more involved than he let on. “You haven’t been home in weeks, not since you found Phoenix. You’ve been acting like a petulant child, and I’m sorry, son, but that type of behavior[3] is not rewarded.”
He had to be off his rocker if he thought I was gonna stay there. There hadn’t been one ounce of remorse after I’d found out that both he and Mom had been keeping secrets. I’d told them both that night that I’d be leaving. Rolling my eyes at him, I tried to keep my temper under wraps. I couldn’t let him think he had me where he wanted. It wasn’t his game anymore, it was mine. I was no longer his pawn .
“Why didn’t you tell me that Kyle was still alive?” I watched as my father’s body language changed when I asked the question, as realisation adorned his face as he realised just how much I knew. “You had the chance to tell me that night, so why didn’t you?”
“Logan, this isn’t the type of conversation we should be having around outsiders.” He looked over at Stryker, who had taken position by the bookshelves, absently flicking through some book he had found. “Why don’t you ask Mr. Lennox to leave, and then we can talk about your cousin.”
“Yeah, not happening, Max, but nice try,” Stryker scoffed, as he placed the book back on the shelf and casually made his way over to the desk, taking a seat and kicking up his feet, a move that irritated my father. “I think you can guess we know a little more than you give us credit for. Why don’t we start with an easier question for you—tell us about the bunker you were instrumental in designing. You know the one, it’s where your fucked up nephew kept my girl prisoner for a week?”
“I fucking told him to take her out of state,” Dad mumbled under his breath.
“What was that?” I asked. I hadn’t missed it, but I wanted him to repeat what he had said, because it was confirmation that he’d known all along.
“What? Nothing,” he replied quickly as he swallowed, before turning back to Stryker. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What bunker?”
“Don’t play us for fucking fools, Dad. The one thing Kyle did extremely well was keep meticulous records of who did what for him. You know that journal? The same one that I found out about the rape in, yeah? Well, it also told us about the bunker.” I needed to play this coolly as I could feel the anger bubbling under my skin, threatening to consume me each time my father opened his fucking mouth. “So, tell us, Dad, what was its purpose?”
“I don’t know, son. Your uncle just wanted help with designing horse stables.” The fucking lie rolled off his forked tongue like the snake he was. Horse stables was laughable, Damon said they called the girls ponies, so the euphemism wasn't lost on me. “I had no idea what he was going to use them for.”
“So, you’re telling us the call you were just on wasn’t about Phee, or Kyle going missing?” He went from cocky and confident, to angry, fast. He could have been a stunt driver on Gone in 60 Seconds. I watched as he realised we'd heard most of his conversation. “Yeah, Dad, we heard everything you said. I especially loved the part where you called my Tiny Dancer, what was the word, Stryker?”
Stryker looked from me to my father, then back down to his fingers, as if he were bored. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘whore.’”
“Yes, that’s right, I especially loved the part where you called her a whore, Dad.” I gave him a shit-eating grin before I continued. “So, again, you wanna tell me how you had no idea? Or maybe you’d like to start telling the truth now?”
“Well, what else would you call her, son?” he spat out; his whole-body language changed in an instant. He was acting like a caged animal, striking out at anyone and anything that he felt threatened by. Looking from Stryker, who was still sitting so calmly, taking it all in, to myself, as I struggled to keep my own composure. “The girl has been nothing but trouble since the day she waltzed back into our lives.”
“That whore, as you so spitefully refer to her, has been through so fucking much because of this family.” Unable to hold it in any longer, I decided it was time to point out a few home truths, because it was fast becoming abundantly clear that I truly didn’t know who the hell my father was.
The person that stood in front of me had no sense of remorse. I’d go as far as to say that he barely had a shred of human decency left inside him. “Tell me, Father, what did she ever do to deserve this? To deserve any of this? That monster you call your nephew, he raped her multiple times. The last time almost killed her.”
He just stood there mutely as I rattled off my questions. My father refused to answer every one of them. But the joke was on him, because whether he admitted to anything or not, I had already come to the conclusion that after all this ended, they would be dead to me.
“Logan, your father doesn’t fucking care. We’re wasting our time here,” Stryker stated coolly as he continued to watch my father. It confirmed he knew more than he was letting on, because there’d be no way in hell he’d let it go otherwise.
“Listen to your friend, son,” my father sniggered as he shifted his gaze back and forth between the two of us. “Logan, word of advice, don’t go chasing answers for questions you don’t want answers to. There is more at play here.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s more like you don’t want me to find out,” I countered back; he didn’t have anyone fooled. The way he’d fought to keep her away, how he had acted around her, and his reaction when he’d learned that she had been found. “So, answer me this, why’d you try to buy her from Kyle?”
“For you and your mother.” His answer came hard and fast, almost like it was rehearsed. Just like every other lie that rolled off his tongue.
