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“DAMMIT!” I roared as I threw the bottle against the brick wall to my left. It shattered, and what little whiskey was left in there sprayed the area.
“Whoa!” Tex walked over to the glass. “No need to waste perfectly good Jack.”
I dropped my head into my hands and closed my eyes. I couldn’t keep going like this. Not knowing where she was. Not being able to hold her. Show her that I was gonna be a better man. I just needed her.
“I see you’re doing better.” Madeline’s voice didn’t give me the joy it once had.
I loved my daughter, but I felt betrayed by her. I didn’t lift my head to look at her. I didn’t care why she was here.
“I’d call it more of a spiral,” Tex drawled.
“Yes, the glass all over the floor and the whiskey-soaked wall speak volumes.” Madeline’s amusement wasn’t required.
“Unless you’re here to tell me that Blaise is gonna help me, then please, Madeline, just go. I’m not in a good mind frame right now,” I told her.
The sound of something hitting my desk caused me to finally look up. A folder was lying there, and Madeline pushed it toward me, but kept one finger on it. She tapped her long, pointy nail on it, and I lifted my eyes to look up at her questioningly.
“There. It’s all there. I’ve held on to it as long as I can. I’m all about women sticking together, but I can’t watch this anymore. Cree is asking for his Papa, and at this rate, you might drink yourself to death. So, here. Go get her, but please shower first and try not to smell like you drank the entire contents of the bar downstairs.”
I grabbed the file and slung it open.
I could go get her! I could hold her!
“Liam.”
I looked up at my daughter.
She placed her hands on the desk and looked at me eye level. “Make it good,” she said, then straightened back up before turning and walking away.
“Thank you!” I called out to her, my focus already back on all the paperwork in this file.
“You should probably thank Blaise. He was the one who told me today that if I didn’t give in and bring that to you, I was going to be bailing you out of jail or putting you in rehab soon.”
“Tell him thank you for me!” Tex called out. “If he’ll come in, drinks are on me. I know he’s either at the bottom of the stairs or guarding the exit door.”
“He is, but you know better than to invite him inside the club. If he wants a lap dance, I’ll be the one giving it to him.”
Tex chuckled. “I’ll follow you out.”
I picked up the first printout in the file. It was every detail of her childhood, starting in Charleston. How the fuck had Blaise gotten all this? I read through it, then moved on to the next page.
She had been taken to the hospital by a school nurse after arriving with a broken arm that needed a cast. The same school nurse had noted three times in one year that she had been sent to school with a high temperature, but she’d beg them not to call her stepmother. A counselor had noted six times during her three years in junior high school that Liberty was often bruised, and she was concerned about her home life; however, when asked, the child had claimed she was just clumsy.
The paper in my hand was shaking as I gripped it tightly. Every word I read, her life only seemed to get worse.
At fifteen, she’d admitted herself into the emergency room. A rape kit was required. Doctor noted that she was a minor, and they asked how to contact her parents, but she cried and begged them not to call her stepmother. The nurse left the room, and when she returned, the patient had left.
Bile burned my throat as I moved on to the next sheet. Her student loans that had gone delinquent. Grades in college courses she’d finished. They were all A’s, except for a history course, where she had gotten an eighty-six percent.
The purchase of a piece-of-shit car that she’d paid one thousand dollars for in cash.
The address where she’d lived with Wallace Gabler.
I continued to scan, looking for the present. If I continued to read all the hell she’d lived through and survived, I was going to begin tearing this room apart.
My entire body tensed as I read the last page. Her job. Her apartment. A photo of a man, with the name Wallace Gabler taped over his head, was touching her arm outside of an office building. She looked angry. This was current. Her round stomach showing in the dress she was wearing meant it had been taken this week.
He had set it all up.
