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My phone vibrates in my hand. The feeling is so startling I jerk to a stop, my heartbeat slamming into my chest.
I answer the call even though every fiber of my being is filled with dread.
“Hello.” The word sounds stiff but it’s better than it sounding fearful. My father gets high off of others’ fear.
Just like I do.
“Knox.”
I wait in silence, letting him lead the conversation. There isn’t anything on my business agenda for my father.
“How is our new guest?” he continues.
“Great.” It’s a vague response as I glance at the bedroom door knowing Violet is just on the other side. My heart begins hammering harder inside my chest. Lying to my father is a dangerous game but I’ll do it if it keeps her safe. I wish I was conniving enough to have some sort of plan in place other than pushing her as far away from here as possible before my father returns. But I’m all violence and rash decisions.
And so far, they’re working.
Landon is better at planning. Maybe if I let him in on the gory details that is my life he could come up with something more sophisticated.
But fuck if I’ll let him crawl deeper into the dangerous mess that is my father’s lair. I’d be on the goddamn debate team and captain–leader–king of the fucking chess club.
“Is she acting…” he pauses, “anything like her mother?”
“Like her mother?” I repeat.
He clears his throat. My father isn’t one to lose his words or not know what to say.
“For lack of better terms, does she act like trash?”
I lower my voice so that I know no one else can hear my cutting words.
“Actually, she acts a lot like you.”
I wish I hadn’t seen those telling traits in Violet Demure. I wish I didn’t have that gut feeling that sent me into my adoptive father's office, digging through drawers and opening books at random.
Yet, I did. I dug through his office searching for answers. Something was off from the get go. My father doesn’t do things out of the kindness of his heart. There is no kindness there. So when he sends his driver to pick up a random girl who he welcomes to stay in our home, I know something’s fucked up.
And her haunting emerald eyes, they’re his eyes.
Reyes eyes.
The answer was there all along under stacks of paperwork tucked away in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the back of the room. All the papers were no longer neatly in folders, instead my father had them haphazardly thrown in a heap inside that drawer. It was as if he had just dug through it all himself before he left.
It shouldn’t have come as a shock to me but I still glared at the documents in awe, anger, and confusion. Old school pictures of Violet, her doctor’s records, dental records, school report cards, even a statement with every library fee she had accrued in her life. Then at the bottom of it all, a DNA test confirming Violet Demure was in fact the direct heir of Ronan Reyes.
What’s strangest of all, a woman like Violet’s mother didn’t file for child support from one of the most wealthy men in Kentucky.
Either she didn’t know it–which is laughable–or she was too afraid to tell my father that he had a child at all. Maybe that woman did do one good thing for her daughter in all her life.
It’s too bad, Ronan Reyes knows everything.
And what he doesn't know, he finds out with time.
Even if it takes eighteen years.
I try to push away the bitterness in my voice. Whatever my father wants to do with her, with his daughter, it’s no good. He will turn her into a fucked up monster.
Just like he did me.
