The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,113

I swallow. His questions ring alarms bells in my head. I try to move back but the corner of the mantelpiece digs into my back. I shrug, trying to shift his hands off but his grip is pincer sharp.

I’m so very afraid.

“That’s the problem with you, Mari. You want to know everything. You snoop, and dig, and sneak.” He bares his teeth.

“You’re hurting me,” I cry, as his fingers dig in some more. He doesn’t seem to take notice. I shrug again, but his grip is tight, so I try to yank one of his hands away but I twist awkwardly and slip, still clutching my cell phone. I hit my head against the mantelpiece then stumble back in pain. A sharp pain slices through me. He grabs me and pulls me away with such force, I’m thrown onto the couch.

Shocked, and terrified, I jump up and run out. Out of the study, out of the hall, out of hell.

My heart beats so fast, and adrenaline surges through my blood. I sprint across the street as if my life depends on it. I’m now convinced it does. And then I run and run and run until I flag down a taxi and beg the driver to take me to my friend’s house. I lift a hand to my head and see blood on my fingers.

“Get in,” he says.

Chapter 45

WARD

His laughter cackles in my ears and I’m sixteen years old all over again.

My step father roars with laughter as he reads my story. It’s something I’ve never been able to forget. I labored over this piece, spent hours perfecting it and rewriting it, and making it the best I could make it. Then I gave it to Mrs Fennelly, my high school teacher who always encouraged me. In fact, all of my teachers did. I got more love and acceptance from them than I did my own mother. Mrs Fennelly said it was perfect. She had high hopes, she was excited. I took it home to copy it out neatly before submitting it.

But the bastard found it, and read it, and laughed about it. He made more fun of it because it was my work, and he took joy in making me feel small. Then he read it out loud to my mom, taking the mickey, saying nasty things. She took his side. Laughed as well. Asked me what I was thinking when I wrote this. She said she didn’t understand it.

He was a stupid man, and when he didn’t understand something he made fun of it. I expected more from her, even after all those years when she had let me down, I still held out hope that she might have taken my side. That she might one day come to her senses and see that man for the loser he really was.

She never did.

I’ll never forget his jeering voice saying my words out loud, making my story sound like a rubbish piece of overblown prose.

He laughed and said I was a stupid, soft, gay boy. My mom didn’t say anything. But when he ripped it up, and said it was pile of horseshit. I lost it. I went for him. Lunged at him and socked him one in the eye, then smashed into his face.

This wasn’t the first time. Ever since I’d turned thirteen, when I started to be as tall as him, he turned physical, slapping me around when locking me in the attic wouldn’t scare me. We’d come to fist fights before, but that day, when he laughed at my competition entry and then ripped it up into shreds, that was the worst. It went beyond a simple scuffle. I went for blood. I wanted to kill him and I almost did.

Those shreds of paper were a metaphor for my life with this man. He made me feel useless and discarded.

But I’d never hit him as hard as I did that day. I’d spent my life taking his crap, being locked up, watching my mom sit around and do nothing. This was the final straw, the thing that pushed me over the edge. I smashed into him, his face and ribs, and he didn’t hesitate to hit me back.

Social services got involved. My mom called the police, and I was sent to Grampton House for a while.

That’s why I never let anyone read my manuscripts. Only Rob and the editor. Professional people. Catching Mari betraying me so sneakily took me back to that moment when my step