RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,34
schools.
“I’m sorry, I know this is crazy. I’m fine, though, Lee. Really, I promise, I’m totally fine. Never been better, in fact. I know you probably have a thousand questions, but I have to go. I need to call my father and find out what the fuck is going on before I have a nervous breakdown.”
“Uhhh…okay,” Lee says, laughing shakily. “All good. Call me back, though, yeah? If you don’t, I’m gonna think I dreamed this up and you’re still dead.”
“Don’t worry. I’m one hundred percent gonna call you back. You have my word.”
I hang up, reeling from the brief conversation. Over the years, my father’s done a shit load of cold, hurtful things to me. He’s done the most heinous things imaginable. He’s never told people that I’m fucking dead, though. Dead. What the fuck is wrong with him? I’m numb all over and dizzy as I hit the call button on the only number my new phone came equipped with when Colonel Stillwater gave it to me: the number to his personal aide.
The phone rings eight times. Nine times. Ten. I think it’s about to go to voicemail, when Officer Emmanuel finally picks up. “Colonel Stillwater’s office. How can I assist you?”
“Carl, it’s Elodie.” Carl’s only been with my father for six months, but that’s three months longer than any of his other military aides have lasted. Usually, the lucky ones are reassigned pretty quickly. The guys who had no strings to pull or favors to call in had to somehow make it through month after month of my father’s explosive, borderline abusive behavior before he finally lost his temper with them and had them demoted to cleaning out latrines.
“Elodie? Great to hear from you. How are things Stateside? Are you enjoying being back home?” I like Carl, and I think Carl likes me. He was always appropriately apologetic whenever he had to pass on a hostile message from my father. It kinda felt like we were co-conspirators who empathized with one another, because we each knew what the other person had to deal with on a daily basis.
“I just got off the phone with one of my friends from Mary Magdalene’s, Carl.”
“Oh. Oh, man…” The chipper pitch in his voice takes a nosedive. “Well. I can imagine you’re pretty pissed right now,” he says.
“I’m confused right now. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be angry soon, though.” A group of girls pass me in the hallway, concerned looks on their faces. I realize what I must look like, hugging the wall, white as a sheet, tension pinching my features into a pained expression; I give them a tight smile to let them know everything’s fine, even though it’s not. “Why the hell did he do that, Carl? Why did my friend just call me in tears, devastated because he thought I was dead?”
“Urgh. I—I don’t think you’re gonna like the explanation.”
“Spit it out, Carl!”
“Your father had me look into your old school’s tuition rules. It turned out that the only way to get a partial refund for the semester you were already halfway through was if you were...was if you had died. So…”
Oh. My. God. Un-fucking-believable. “So, he told them I’d died. In order to get a partial refund for the remainder of the semester. What does that come to? Four thousand dollars?”
Carl gives up the exact amount reluctantly. “Not quite. Uh…two thousand, eight hundred.”
“He has millions in the bank. MILLIONS!”
“I know…”
“He let my friends believe I’d died for the sake of two grand and change?”
“I did try and explain to him how it might make you feel. I suggested we tell you what was happening so you could let your friends know you were okay, but he—”
“But he didn’t give a shit about hurting me, or hurting my friends, and he told you to keep your mouth shut, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Sorry, Elodie. I should have sent you a heads-up.”
With elastic, wobbly legs, I walk down the hall, toward the door to room 416. I need to get into my room and sit down before I fall down. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. My father shouldn’t be such an unbelievable bastard.”
Carl titters nervously. He wasn’t the one to call my father an unbelievable bastard, but these lines are generally recorded. If the top brass finds out he was even present to hear trash talk against my father, he could wind up in some serious shit.