to go out with friends, Dad always told me no. It had been different when mom was alive. I had friends then. But she had died when I was nine, and after living with my father for a couple years, I started to recognize the cage he had built around me. Dad said I was powerful. But in reality, he had made me powerless. I clued in to who my father was, what his business meant, and what that made me.
I was a pawn. Sometimes I was a bargaining chip or a pretty face, but I was never me. My sister, Renee, blamed our father for our mom’s death. She despised him and everything he stood for. When the cage became too small for her to handle, she left—left me. It was just after I started high school that she woke me in the middle of the night to tell me goodbye. I wasn’t coherent enough to realize she was serious, but the next morning I woke up to find that she really was gone. That’s when the loneliness that had plagued me ever since my mother died settled even more securely around my shoulders.
When my dad found out that Renee was gone, he acted as if he didn’t care. Good riddance. She was a disappointment anyway. After all, he still had me. I would carry on his legacy. I would fulfill all his hopes and dreams. The cage got smaller.
When Sam showed up in the middle of my freshman year, he was the new kid, a junior, and a loner. I caught him staring at me a lot the first week. Then he started flirting with me. He was sweet, unassuming, and really cute. So when he asked me out, I was thrilled. A boy was interested in me, and it wasn’t because my dad was dangerous. He didn’t know he should stay away from me. I’d never dated before, though I’d been dressed up and assigned an escort-bodyguard whenever Dad had a special function to attend or host.
Going on actual dates with Sam wasn’t an option. Dad never let me go out with friends, but Sam and I were inseparable during school hours. We held hands and he would play with my hair and talk close to my ear as if everything he said was just for me. After a couple weeks of hand-holding, he gave me my first kiss, then a second and a third. I liked kissing Sam. He felt safe and dangerous all at once.
My fifteen-year-old heart called it love until the day he convinced me to skip class with him. We didn’t go far from school, just to a little cafe close to campus. It was practically empty when we walked in. A couple of guys with coffee sat at a table. No employees behind the counter.
I squeezed Sam’s hand. “Are you sure they’re open?”
When I looked up into his face, his smile was sad. “I want you to meet someone,” he said, pulling me toward the one occupied table.
An uneasiness crawled up my spine. It didn’t feel right. Where were the employees? Who were these men coming to their feet, with their button-up shirts, loafers and military haircuts?
“Hello, Miss Marchant.” Panic bubbled up as the man showed me an FBI badge. “My name is Agent Bolton. I’d like to speak with you about your father.”
“No.” I stepped back, bumping into Sam as I shook my head. “No, I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
I turned and tried to leave, but Sam caught me and hauled me around to face the agents. “They’re not going to hurt you, Leila. This is my uncle and his partner. They just want to talk.”
Sam had brought me to the cops?! The FBI! How could he? I kept trying to squirm away as I begged. “You don’t understand. I can’t talk to you. I can’t. It’s against the rules. I’ll get into so much trouble. Please just let me go before someone sees me talking to you.”
The agent held out a hand meant to calm me. “No one will know you spoke with us. The last thing we want to do is get you into any kind of trouble, Leila.”
“Then let me go back to school. I shouldn’t have skipped anyway. It was stupid of me.” Stupid to skip out on my bodyguards.
“Your father ruins lives, Leila. He pretends to be a saint by saving people from financial ruin, and then he blackmails them into doing his dirty