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“You have to, Miss Lucia! He’ll die otherwise!”
My bottom lip trembled as a sob choked my throat. I’d allowed myself to forget about Dad’s miserable, bed-ridden life. He couldn’t even talk to the doctors to tell them where he was hurting.
“Mr. Baldwin is away,” Laura continued. “There’s no one else who can help.”
“I can’t come,” I said as tears burned my eyes. “I want to but I can’t. There’s no way to get out of here. Besides that, I can’t let Callum’s men catch me. You know what it has been like for me all these years. I can’t go back to being controlled by him.”
“There’s no one guarding the house,” said Laura, sounding hopeful. “Mr. Baldwin doesn’t keep anyone in the house anymore. He gets a cleaning company to come in once a week to take care of the house and that’s it. Your father has no one, Miss Lucia. He needs you.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said through a choked throat.
“Miss Lucia! I’m ashamed of you!” Laura’s voice thundered in my ear. She was usually a quiet woman and rarely shouted. Dad had to be in a terrible state for her to behave this way. “You have to come right away or stop calling yourself a daughter of this man. He was always good to me and my family. Why is God treating him so cruelly?”
The phone felt terribly heavy in my hand.
Tears poured from my eyes while my heart broke with guilt and sadness. I shouldn’t have bullied that waitress into giving me her phone. Not knowing how Dad was doing was so much better than to be told he would die without my help.
Should I ask Yakim for help?I wondered.
At once, his enraged face rose in my mind. He’d be pissed off if he knew I dared to contact Dad this way. Even Mikhail and Leon wouldn’t take my side. They all wanted me to cut ties with my family.
The little trust and faith they’d developed toward me would be blown away if they knew what I did.I can’t tell them, I realized.
Laura’s voice shouted at me through the phone as I clutched onto it.
My body shook with the force of my sobs while my tears turned my vision hazy. Despite that, I became alert of the sound of heavy footsteps moving closer toward me.
Switching off the call, I whirled around.
A tall, bulky man was tottering toward me. Dressed in a luxurious navy suit, he looked like one of the guests crowding the entrance hall. His unsteady moves told me he was heavily drunk.
He stared at me but seemed to have trouble focusing. Still, he managed to drag himself up to me.
“It’s time to go home, sweetheart,” he said in a deep, slurred voice. “Daniel Ricci won’t be coming here tonight. What a waste of a fucking night!”
Moving closer, he wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “Time to take your old daddy home now,” he said, putting all his weight on me. “It’s time Mia put her sweet mouth on my cock and sucked me to sleep.”
Disgust spread through me. What kind of a man talked this way to his daughter?
“I’m not your daughter,” I said with a huff, throwing the man off me.
He easily slumped against a column.
“Don’t sass your Pa, Emilia” he admonished. “Call Diego to bring the car to the front so we can go home already.”
I was about to protest but a sudden idea came to me. Maybe therewasa way out of Volkov Manor, after all.
“Pa, I’m cold,” I said, playing along with the drunk man.
“You’re always making so much trouble for your old Pa,” he said in a slurred voice. “Just get married already so I can have some peace in my life.”
“Yes, Pa,” I said demurely.
The man shirked off his jacket clumsily and threw it at me.
Taking his jacket, I wore it quickly. The large black attire was long enough to reach my mid thighs, effectively hiding a good portion of the dress I was wearing.
The man slung his arm around me once again. His weight nearly made my knees crumble but I soldiered on, dragging him to the entrance hall.
