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Her heart skipped. “What?”
“Your dad’s here,” he said.
It took her a second to register. “Now?”
“Yes. He’s at the gate. He’s been beaten pretty badly.”
She didn’t give a fuck. “I don’t want to see him.” Whoever beat him had a good reason, she was sure. The last time she saw her father was the day of Uncle Louie’s funeral. She threatened to shoot her father if she heard him slander Manny again. Seeing her father so wasn’t what she needed right now.
“He says he needs to talk to you. It’s urgent,” Blade said.
“You know how I feel about him,” she snapped. She had been avoiding her parents for months. How dare her father show up here out of the blue? Of course, Gavin wasn’t here to kick his ass.
“I know he’s a bastard, but he says it’s an emergency.”
“A money emergency,” she sneered.
“I want to be sure,” Blade said and gave orders to allow her father on property.
She should have taken sleeping pills. Blade would have had a hell of a time trying to wake her up for this awful confrontation. Just the thought of having to face her father made her stomach churn with anger, hurt, and dread. For most of her life, she had played the obedient daughter. Even after she moved out of her family home, she gave a large portion of her allowance to her father, but it was never enough for him. Gavin used her father’s gambling debts to blackmail her into leaving Jonathan. Sacrificing her life for her father’s made no difference to him. It wasn’t until she had been nearly killed and witnessed Manny’s murder that she finally saw her father for who he really was. Life was too short to spend it around someone who didn’t love or respect you.
Blade left the kitchen with Carmen on his heels with the popcorn bowl in the crook of one arm. Lyla made herself busy to buy time.
“Where is she?”
Her father’s shout stoked her maelstrom of emotions. This was her house, not his. He didn’t think she might be asleep at midnight, or that she might be exhausted because she had a four-month-old? No, he arrived in the middle of the night, beaten up and shouting. Yes, that was Pat Dalton.
She stalked out of the kitchen. Her father had, indeed, been thoroughly thrashed. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him in this state. Gavin had the honor of dealing out a much-deserved punishment, which made no impact on her father. She didn’t feel an iota of sympathy since she was sure this was a warning from a loan shark.
Pat Dalton looked as if he walked through a slaughterhouse. His clothes, which she belatedly realized were originally a beige pajama set, had been tie dyed with blood splatters. His face was swollen and battered, but his injuries didn’t match the amount of blood saturating his clothes since he was standing without assistance. His crucifix, which he shouldn’t be allowed to wear, was covered in crusty red flakes. She stopped several feet away and caught a whiff of the metallic stench that clung to him.
“What do you want?” she asked, not in the mood for his shit.
His muddy brown eyes, normally filled with disdain or jealousy, now held an enraged terror that got her attention more effectively than a shout. A premonition caused her to glance around the room, but her mother was nowhere to be found.
A sense of urgency grabbed her by the throat. “What happened? Where’s Mom?”
“She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Panic slammed into her with the force of a freight train. “Where is she? Whose blood is this?”
Hands encrusted with rivulets of dried blood flexed at his sides. “They took her.”
Her world rocked on its axis.
“Who took her?” Blade barked in a no-nonsense tone that made Pat jerk.
He ran trembling hands over his chest as if to make sure he was still intact. “I-I was sleeping. I woke up when these men pulled me out of bed. They were wearing masks and began to beat me. I could hear Beatrice screaming. I think there were four of them. One of them hit me here.” He touched his temple where he had a lump the size of a golf ball. “I must have passed out. When I woke up, the house was ransacked and she was gone.”
“You owe someone?” Blade asked.
Before Pat could answer, Lyla lunged for him. Blade yanked her backward and wrapped an arm around her.
“Lyla, get a hold of yourself!”
“What did you do now?” she shouted at her father.
Pat took a step toward her, the cords on his neck sticking out as he roared, “What haveIdone? What haveyoudone?”
