happy and at peace with my demons for overcoming something I thought I wouldn’t be able to do—make Nancy proud. This man isn’t just telling me this for nothing. There’s something going on.
“What did you do?”
“You’re starting to catch up, huh? Well, I gave them as much information as I would so that they would know that you, Mia Montague, would never just up and leave just like that. Especially when you are the one who loved your mother the most. I knew and they knew you’d never recklessly run away when her funeral was close-by. It would kill you to not be able to say goodbye, though I have to wonder why you didn’t do it, but that’s probably weighing heavily on your conscious for doing the woman who raised you dirty like that.”
“What did you do!” I shout, trying my best to fight the guilt in my heart and the dread that has taken root in the middle of my chest, but it’s no good.
“Come on, baby girl, I did what any father would do in my situation,” he says, sounding offended like his action should be obvious, when they are actually just calculated steps. “I was outraged! I was worried. I was even crying, told them that you were my little Princess, as the plates of the car I bought you said.”
Oh God. No…
“I did all that to paint a picture. Thereby…” he trails off, but I already know.
“Something happened to me.”
“Bingo!” he shouts excitedly. “That’s my daughter! So intelligent and able to read between the lines, faded though they may be.”
I feel sick to my stomach. My knees grow weak, making it almost impossible to remain standing. I have no choice but to sink down to the floor, my back against the wall as images of everything I did the night Nicky told me to run flash behind my eyes.
“What game are you playing at?” I croak, my voice hoarse as pain shoots through my chest. Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say. Please…
“A game?” he scoffs. “You’d be naïve and the biggest fool if you think any of this is some kind of game. This, my dear, rebellious child, is war! And my most lethal artillery calls me Dad.”
No!
“No! I’m not doing anything for you!”
“But you already have, Princess,” he says, sounding pleased and angry all at the same time. “You see, when I came back from making a deal with Dave Montreal, I found you in a situation that I despised so much, I was about to teach you the error of your ways. I mean, how could my child, my offspring, mine, fall for a Fitzgerald.”
“No, I…” I start, but he cuts me off.
“How could my little girl have found herself in a situation where she was sleeping with those boys, whose father has repeatedly shitted on my life and my money. Tried to make my life hell, took my wife and made her obsessed with him. Made me feel stupid and inadequate next to him. Can you imagine how I felt when I heard that you were not only sleeping with his sons, but that you were living under the same roof as those abominations?”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. All I can do is take in as much air as I can, so my lungs don’t stop working like they are attempting to do.
“But then I had a moment of perfect clarity when I filed that missing person’s report!” he says now sounding excited all over again. “I knew what I had to do. I mean, the disappearing without taking a thing from your room and the car abandoned by the side of the road, looking tempered with, it was all a gift.”
“You would never…”
“Oh but I can,” he fires back, cutting me off. “You and I both know that I can. I have everything I need.”
“No, you don’t,” I seethe, anger swirling in my veins. “You are nothing but a coward! You are an abuser and now you’re trying to manipulate me into settling old scores between you and your stepbrother!”
“He’s not my stepbrother!” he shouts. “He’s the man I’m going to crush and you, Princess, will help me do it.”
“Over my dead body!”
“Well, if that’s how you want to nail his coffin, then so be it,” he says, and I can just about see him shrugging carelessly. “Murder would make a nice charge on top of statutory rape, blackmail, and kidnapping.”
Holy