own two feet and walk out of there with my head held high... old habits died hard. I paused. "If you walk out of this house right now, I'll have you declared medically unfit and committed to Riverview Heights against your will."
I turned around slowly, hardly believing what I was hearing. "You can't do that," I said, shaking my head. "I'm over eighteen; I'm not under your control anymore."
My father looked totally unperturbed, and the guys—all fucking three of them—were like damn statues. None of them looked at me as my father removed my freedoms.
"I can, and I will." Samuel Danvers reached for his phone, holding it up in a threatening way. "Try me, daughter. A few doses of sedatives and mood stabilizers might do a world of good for that rebellious nature of yours."
Speechless. I was fucking speechless. This had to be some kind of head injury–related hallucination. Disbelief warred with outrage and fury as I shifted my gaze over everyone else in the room. Samuel Danvers was the one delivering my sentencing, but no one else was speaking up. No one was defending me. No fucking one.
"You're all just going to sit there and let him threaten me like this?" I demanded, my glare sweeping across the guys. I knew Cherry was a lost cause already; my father’s casual comment about drugging me had given me a solid clue why she was so fucking docile. Archer had probably been in on this whole plan all along. But... Kody? Steele?
"Say something!" I shouted at them. They weren't avoiding my gaze, anymore, but their eyes were hard and their postures stiff. I would get no help from them. Not today.
"It's for your own good, Madison Kate," Archer said, his voice like glacial ice.
I'd never wanted to kill someone as badly as I did right then.
"I'm not fucking standing here and taking this," I replied, my mind whirling so hard I was growing dizzy. I started for the door again, but of course my father had to have the last word.
"You leave this house without supervision, you force my hand." He didn't even sound like he cared. "I expect this hysteria and acting out to stop, Madison Kate. You're making this family look ridiculous, and I won't stand for it any longer."
I had no words. I just flipped him off and shoved my way out of the dining room, letting the door slam against the wall.
Tears burned my eyes, but instead of running for my bedroom like a sulking child, I paused a moment outside the dining room. Listening.
No one spoke for a moment, and then someone let out a heavy sigh.
"Was that all necessary?" Steele asked, and my heart squeezed painfully. How could he not have stood up for me? After everything he'd said to me, after all the raw emotions he'd poured out. I’d thought he cared. I’d thought...
"She's still better off in Riverview, if you ask me," my father snapped back, his voice carrying more feeling in that one sentence than the whole time he'd spoken to me, "safely medicated and out of public eye."
"We didn't ask you, Sam," Archer replied with a thread of disgust in his tone. "You've done your part. I think your girlfriend would really enjoy a world cruise, wouldn't you, Mom?"
A delighted female gasp and then, "Oh, I've always wanted to do a cruise!" Her voice was dreamy and... drugged. She was drugged. How the hell was Archer okay with that? It was his mom for Christ's sake!
"Good," Archer replied. "There's one departing Seattle in two days. You'd better leave Shadow Grove in the morning to make it in time."
What the fuck?
The sound of chairs being pushed back spurred me into action, and I silently slipped away, racing up the stairs and into my room. My heart pounded against my ribs so hard it hurt as I leaned my back on the door and tried—desperately tried—to make sense of everything that'd just happened.
But I couldn't. Once again, I was fumbling around in the dark, trying to plug a lamp into a non-existent wall socket. Totally hopeless and insanely frustrating.
My father throwing threats and power trips around was nothing new. He'd never taken it quite so far before, but as furious and disgusted as I was... I wasn't overly shocked. What gutted me to the core was that the guys just sat there and said nothing.
Worse, if I was to draw any conclusions from what I'd just overheard, they almost seemed to be the