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“I was paying for your college tuition. I was paying for this house, keeping you in the lifestyle you were accustomed to. If something were to happen to me, I didn’t want you to end up like I was at your age—broke and alone.”
Oh, God.
Bile climbs up my throat, and the sip I took of my drink sours in my stomach. “You did all this for me?”
He gives me a sharp nod.
It makes everything ten times worse—that all of this could have been prevented so easily if he had just told me about his financial situation before he went and did something stupid.
“You should have come clean, Dad. You should have told me it was happening. I would’ve told you I don’t need all this. I don’t need any of it. Just you, safe. But now it’s too late.”
Nodding slowly, tears shimmer in his eyes. “I know, but I’m trying to fix it.”
“What exactly did you do?”
He purses his lips, then downs the rest of his drink with a hiss. “I went behind the Rosewoods’ backs. Instead of paying them a ‘service fee’ to ensure my shipments made it through customs and their warehouses smoothly, I tried to divert products or intercept them before they arrived in the port to remove any contraband.”
Fucking hell.
Circumventing them means massive financial losses, something I bet they’re not very happy about.
“I don’t have to tell you how stupid that was…”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t. And if I had known they were backed by the Barkers, I never would have even attempted it. Now I’m just scrambling, trying to undo the damage.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?” The tremble in my voice gives away the panic that’s welling inside me, that I’ve been trying so hard to keep bottled up in front of him. “When you came up to get me, you already knew then they’d never let you walk away, right?”
It took me far too long to realize it myself. But they won’t.
The Barkers don’t just accept apologies and reparations and send people on their way. Anyone who crosses them either ends up under Barker Mountain or stays beholden to them forever.
Dad gives me a hard look, the true terror and worry in it matching my own. “I know. I’ll probably be stuck under their thumb for the rest of my life, but at least I’ll have one. And if I can get you out of here, so can you.”
WESTON
Sweat pours down my back and off my brow, dripping into my eyes, stinging and burning as I slash away at the massive tree lying across the edge of the clearing.
Just one of several I’ve decimated over the last two days.
Swinging this axe and physically exhausting myself has been the only thing I’ve been able to do to keep myself from completely obsessing over the fact that she’s gone, that I let her walk away, drive down the mountain, with no guarantee that she’ll come back other than her word.
What the fuck was I thinking?
It was easier to justify my decision on day one when I was still confident that she needed to see her father to stay content. When I was convinced she needed it to even consider staying here with me like I so desperately want her to do, after the Rosewood situation is resolved.
Night one was harder.
I couldn’t stay out here indefinitely, driving my axe blade into these poor trees that have done nothing to deserve my ire but stand tall and strong for centuries. Which meant I had to return to the house. To the library. To the bedroom. Neither made my anxiety any better.
Both places are so Callista. Filled with her things, her scent, her presence. So much so that the fact that she’s gone only stands out more sharply, like a knife twisting in my heart. And knowing I’m the one who drove the blade right there by allowing it to happen made it impossible to sleep or work.
Today, my frustration has only grown as the sun moved across the sky, working its way toward evening.
Because she’s coming back.
I expected her by now, before it started to get dark, because coming up that road without light is treacherous on the best day, and the light drizzle starting to fall now that the front has moved in will make it downright deadly.
My blade catches in the log, interrupting the rhythm I’ve been working for hours, attempting to lull myself into some sort of trance that might keep me from flying off the handle and doing something really stupid.
