AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You think your leaving ‘upset’ me? I’ve been fucking miserable every second of every day, you selfish little brat!”
I expected his temper, and yet, his raised voice makes me feel like I’m a child.
“Dante...” Eli bravely interrupts. “Take it easy on her. She just got back. You don’t want to drive her away again, do you?”
“Fine,” my father huffs so heavily it blows my hair. “You’re still in deep shit, understood? You better not put a fucking toe out of line, or I’ll slap a tracking bracelet on your ankle faster than you can blink.”
No. He wouldn’t. I willneverlet him be able to track me like I'm his property, like I’m no better than a dog.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asks.
“I-I was living in a small town on the Virginia coast.”
“Eli?” Daddy asks, looking to his employee for more information.
“She was in Rockland, Virginia, sir, baking cupcakes, selling them, and living with a private investigator. That’s why we couldn’t find her. He helped hide her.”
Okay, wow, I don’t know where he came up with that story, but at least it keeps Jordan and the Savage Kings off my father’s radar.
“A PI? Really, Madison?”
“Don’t worry. He’s dead now,” I grit out as if I mourn his loss like I would a lover’s.
“Is he?” Daddy turns to ask Eli.
“Oh, yeah. Eyeless, tongueless, and very dead. His friends who helped hide her dead too. He was…extremely regretful before his death.”
“Good,” my father says with a vicious smile.
“Good? You think it’s good that a man is dead just for being with me? What if I loved him?”
“Did you?” Daddy asks calmly like he already knows the answer.
“That’s none of your business.”
“You don’t look very distraught so I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you were only using the poor idiot this entire time. Do you even feel guilty that he’s dead because of you?”
“Nope.” That is at least the truth.
“Then you didn’t love him. And if you had simply, I don’t know, called to tell me where you were and that you were alive, then I wouldn’t have had to send Eli after you and those men would still be breathing!”
“What’s all the yelling about in here?” Vanessa says as she walks into the office to join our little reunion. “Madison!” she exclaims. “Oh my god!” She launches herself at me, hugging me just as hard as Daddy even though I only knew her for a few weeks before I ran away. “I am so, so glad you’re okay and that you’re finally home! You are okay, aren’t you?” she asks when she lets me go to study my appearance. Her gaze stays on my throat a little too long.
“I was okay until Daddy started bitching me out.”
“Dante, can you please take it easy on her? She just got home. Don’t make the same mistake by pushing her out the door again,” Vanessa warns him.
Whoa. I’ve never heard anyone talk to my father like that, putting him in his place, even blaming him for me running away.
“Oh, she’s not pulling that disappearing shit on me ever again,” my father says. “In fact, that gives me a brilliant idea for how to punish you.”
Oh, great. Here it comes.
“You’re going to work every night here in the casino… for our magician.”
“What? You can’t be serious,” I huff in disbelief. “I would rather wash all the resort dishes or take out garbage than work for a cheesy magician,” I tell him.
“Oh, then you are definitely going to do this.”
