had been weeks since my father opened my cage, and I still hadn’t learned why. Jeremy had been called off as my babysitter except for the jobs my father sent me on, like today. That didn’t mean, of course, that he wasn’t having me followed, which is why I took extra precautions.
I wasn’t exactly eager to sell my soul, but with each menial job that my father gave me, I grew impatient. I’d given up my dream of playing football to traffic drugs and guns and even human fucking beings. I—
No.
I’d given it all up for a much greater cause, and right now, she was somewhere out there, hating my guts. Probably wishing I was dead, too. I wondered at what point over the months I had begun to want the same. Shaking off those thoughts, I slammed my foot on the gas, intending to spend the rest of my day getting shit-faced.
I’d been living at the beach house—my only hope of sanctuary. No one knew that it belonged to me. My mother had placed my name on the deed before she left as if she knew I’d need it. I wondered how she never realized that I needed her and not some goddamn house. Sometimes I thought about flying to Paris to ask her, but I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize her. It had been over a decade since my mom left, and I’d only been six years old.
Gripping the steering wheel, I sped down winding roads, taking advantage of the late hour and the lack of other cars on the road until I found myself at my old stomping grounds. I wasn’t sure what drove me here, but I didn’t bother questioning it as I parked my car, grabbed the bottle of my father’s favorite bourbon, and made my way onto Brynwood’s empty football field. It was after nine, so I had no worries of being disturbed as I made myself comfortable on the bleachers and stared out onto the field. For years, I’d allowed myself to get caught up in a fantasy. Football was the only thing I’d ever been free to love. The only thing my father hadn’t been able to take away from me.
Leaning my head back and closing my eyes, I recalled that day a year and a half ago when I met what I thought would be just another distraction but had turned out to be my doom instead. I waited, expecting any moment now for the regret I should feel to come.
At some point, I nodded off.
It was a good thing I hadn’t chosen to hold my breath as well.
A year and a half ago…
“Son.”
Powerful men could command a room and anyone in it with a single word. Cruel men only needed to enter. Unfortunately, and ironically, for my father, I wasn’t as easily bent. He’d made sure of that.
Franklin Rees, both powerful and cruel, loomed on the threshold of my bedroom between its double doors. I continued to ignore him as I searched my room for my car keys. Last year, he tried to bribe me with a car for my sixteenth birthday. The sad fact was that he thought it would actually work. Sure, I’d told him so, but for my father to believe it just showed, for all his cunning and calculating ways, how little he knew me.
I threw the last of the shit I needed into my backpack, and only then did I give him my full attention. “I’m late for school.”
Today was the first day of my senior year at Brynwood, a private academy with a hefty price tag. Along with the handful of scholarship kids attending, I was given a free ride. The tuition would have only been a drop in the bucket. However, being a Blackwood had its perks, even if being a Rees made me a pariah.
My father cocked his head at my statement, and I gritted my teeth. “Is there someone at your school foolish enough to give you trouble?” He slid hands with too much blood on them into his expensive suit pants. “I’d be happy to pay them a visit and discuss your tardiness if you’d like.”
I dropped my bag at my feet and sighed. “Make it quick,” I snapped. No one else would have dared, but my father needed me more than I feared him.
Stroking his chin, he gave me a warning look before speaking. “I wanted to congratulate you on making captain. I hear you’re Brynwood’s new quarterback.”
Of course,