Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,128
eyes, I let out a sigh and move across the room to sit on the bed.
It’s too bad for Harrison and my dad that I figured out how to escape this room a long time ago, so rather than pitching a fit, I pull my phone from my purse and dial my lifelong accomplice.
Emily picks up after the first ring.
“How’s life being the future Mrs. Gabriel Dane?” she teases, obviously aware of everything that’s going on because she’s still talking to the twins.
“Not so great. I need to be rescued.”
She laughs. “From Gabe’s house or Tanner’s?”
On her end of the line, I hear a deep voice and realize I’ve interrupted something. “Shit. Is that Ezra?”
A deep sigh blows against the phone. “Yeah, but he can be the muscle if you need it. It’s not like he hasn’t helped out before.”
Laughter bubbles over my lips, and I lie back on the bed, my eyes staring up at the ceiling. “I need a rescue from my dad’s house.”
“What?”
Her voice explodes over the line, and I have to pull the phone from my ear to keep from going deaf.
“What the hell happened?”
“Long story. Can you be at our normal spot in an hour?”
“See you then.”
After hanging up, I drop the phone to the bed and fight the panic attack sneaking up on me. It lingers like a damn stalker, just out of reach as my pulse picks up speed and my throat closes.
All I can see every time I blink my eyes is Gabriel walking away. Like I didn’t matter. Like I gave the first fuck what my father would do.
My tears weren’t for what my father was doing to me, they were for a man who only an hour ago told me he was on my side. I don’t think he knew how much those words meant to me.
He has no idea how long I’ve waited to hear them.
But then at the first hint of trouble, off he runs like he couldn’t escape fast enough.
He couldn’t have been serious about never contacting him again. Not now. Not after what we’ve been through in the past month. I know that. But there’s still the lingering doubt that he was serious. That my dad was right to say I’m being used.
It’s hard not to remember that the only reason I’m sitting here now is the price Tanner first demanded of me. Is it possible this is all just a part of an elaborate scheme to get what they want?
I have to take a breath and calm down to remember who I’m dealing with.
Gabriel.
The liar.
Fraud.
He promised me he wouldn’t wear that mask anymore. But only for me. When it comes to everyone else, Gabriel hasn’t changed.
Knowing that is what keeps me from losing my mind at the moment, the small voice in my head that whispers he had to be lying.
He’d retreated too fast.
And it’s nothing like the boy I’ve known who never walks away from a fight.
Gabriel never retreats.
He only regroups and tries again.
That thought is what pushes me up from the bed and sets me on my feet. It’s what shoves me toward my old closet to change out of my dress and heels.
Thankfully, I still fit into all the old clothes I didn’t take with me when I got back from college and moved into my other house.
Once in the appropriate attire for sneaking around, I take a deep breath and promise myself that Gabriel Dane hadn’t just let my father win.
He’d only bought us more time to figure this out. Which means I need to do something that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do.
Decision made, I open the window and crawl out. But rather than taking the usual route that leads me down the side of the house and away from the mansion, I carefully navigate my way to the back of the house and find a path to climb down.
Silently thanking my mom for all the handy trellises that climb the sides, I use a service door to sneak back into the house.
My father started a war he won’t win when he threatened my life. And it sucks for him that he doesn’t realize dark clouds rolled in when he wasn’t expecting them, a storm sitting just on the horizon full of rolling thunder and the deadly threat of lightning.
My father is accustomed to the trouble I can cause when I’m on my own, but he has no clue what he’s dealing with now that I’ve joined forces with my