Blood Ties (Dinero de Sangre #2) - Lana Sky Page 0,20

wedge my body in between two shelves.

It’s not my preferred hideout beneath the blankets, but it’s close enough. Here, the world fades to a dull hum, only discernable if I choose to listen closely enough.

First, there’s only silence. Endless, oppressive silence…

Then sobbing. Such loud, wracking, frantic cries as though the person voicing them is on the verge of utterly breaking apart. They can’t be coming from me.

I’ve been through enough hurt and rejection by now that nothing should be able to break me down. No one should be able to reduce me to a sniveling, sobbing mess.

Especially if they’ve only voiced the truth I already know.

My father never loved me.

He needed me.

But in my world, those are the same damn thing.

Chapter Six

“Have you ever been in love?” Pia asked me once. The question came from nowhere, uttered in her typical crisp, confident tone. But I could sense something lurking beneath her seemingly calm veneer.

We were in my room at St. Margarita’s, pretending to pore over study materials for math class. In reality, we were gazing from the window at the small sliver of lawn belonging to St. Benedict’s, the boys’ boarding school next door. That time of day, the lacrosse team would practice, and Pia and I would rate the players by their fuzzy silhouettes.

“Have you?” she prodded, sitting cross-legged on my bed.

I was on the floor, my math textbook opened in front of me. Using the pretense of reading it, I tried to disguise how I blushed.

Love was such a mystical, foreign concept back then. Something we both fantasized about with starry eyes and grandiose delusions of our future lovers.

“I hate it,” Pia declared, and I looked up to find her twisting a silver ring around her finger, her gaze on the window. “We’re told that it’s supposed to feel wonderful, like magic. But it just makes you feel crazy. Like everything you thought made sense doesn’t matter anymore. The entire world revolves around this one person. And they can decide to make it stop spinning whenever they want to. However, they want to. It’s like they own you.”

“That sounds cryptic,” I joked, utilizing one of our English vocabulary words. So badly did I want to ask her more, but I’d remembered how she’d brushed off my earlier attempts to pry about her mystery man and backed down.

All I did was clear my throat and whisper, “What if it’s not really love?”

“What?” Pia inclined her head, her beautiful lips pursed thoughtfully. “You’ll never understand, Ada. You just don’t know what it’s like.”

She gathered up her books then and left, calling over her shoulder as she entered the hall, “I’m going to hang with Alexi.”

And I spent the rest of the night crying into my pillow, seething with jealousy.

But now…

I have to wonder just what she meant. Was she referring to my father then? Or someone else?

Who knows. Damn Domino for dredging up these old memories.

I never think of her this often. Certainly not twice in a handful of days. I’ve spent years smothering her ghost beneath a heap of repressed thoughts and subsequent trauma.

I will never admit it out loud, but her betrayal hurt me the worst, before Domino’s, anyway. Such a beautiful, rare gem of a girl she was. So strong, so confident. She could empower a stone to come to life and speak with one of her smiles. She could have had any boy in a ten-mile radius with merely a wink and a nod.

Pia Inglecias could have had anyone she wanted.

She didn’t need my father. She didn’t have to prance around in outfits that—while modest—showcased her body’s subtle curves and her tiny waist. She didn’t have to be so damn beautiful, with eyes a mossy green and curling dark hair that framed a delicate face. She didn’t have to carry herself with a maturity well beyond her fifteen years.

She didn’t have to want him.

But she did. She used me to get to my father, and it was child’s play for her. She thought she could manipulate the great and powerful Roy Pavalos.

And her plan worked—as long as my father was amused by her. Pia couldn’t see it then, but she was only ever a toy to him. A playful distraction. A sick conquest.

Eventually, he grew tired of everyone. My mother. His two prior wives. Any piece of ass he took on the side.

They never held his interest for longer than a handful of minutes at a time. Why? Because Roy Pavalos only ever truly loved one