RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,77

you’ll see that I am a monster. And maybe you’ll fall in love with me anyway.”

In The Dark…

I kick and scream.

I learned a long time ago that kicking and screaming doesn’t help, but I have no choice.

I am a deranged, trapped animal, howling for freedom.

A freedom that will never come.

“Please! Please, I promise…I won’t tell anyone. I won’t breathe a word, I swear. I promise, I promise, I promise. I won’t tell a soul what you’ve done. PLEASE! LET ME OUT!”

18

WREN

She agrees to my proposal like the prospect of spending the next three nights with me will be so traumatic that she’ll need a decade of therapy afterwards. And perhaps she will. If that turns out to be the case, then I know a great guy in Albany who’s rates are reasonable, and I’ll happily pass on his information. But until that comes to pass, I’m going to make the most of the hours I get to spend with her. She sits Indian style on the blanket, using the material to cover her bare feet—they must be freezing—staring at me like she’s facing down the most daunting experience of her existence.

“Ask me your questions, then,” I tell her, flopping down onto my back again, affecting an air of carelessness that I don’t feel. I’m far from careless, actually. This is a risky move on my part. I’ll be brutally honest with her, so that I can say I gave her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it is dangerous. She could decide that I revolt her and she really doesn’t want anything to do with me. If that happens, I’ll have to honor the deal I’ve made with her, and I’ll have to leave her in peace. Only, I know how badly that’ll affect me. It’ll destroy me from the inside out, and I won’t be able to do shit about it. A promise is a promise, and I don’t make them lightly.

“Where are you from?” she asks, her voice as dull and flat as can be. She’s trying her best to show me how tiresome she’s finding this entire thing, and she’s doing a really fucking good job of it.

“I was born in England. Surrey, to be exact. My mother was English. My father’s American, though. New York. The Jacobis have lived in New York since the city was established. We were money guys in the beginning. Bankers and investors. My grandfather joined the military, though, and then my father after him. Career army guys, both of them. I’m a blistering disappointment to both of them.”

“Because you aren’t going to join up?”

“Oh, no. I could enlist and I’d still be the biggest let-down either of them has ever suffered. See, I’m not traditional Jacobi stock. I’m disobedient.” I laugh as I say the word, hearing the identical ire in both my father and my grandfather’s voices at the same time. “I’ve always poked at the fences designed to control me and keep me in line. Tested their boundaries. It seemed imprudent not to.”

“If your father’s anything like mine, then I’m sure that didn’t go down well.”

Ruefully, I shake my head. “Not particularly, no. Are you telling me you railed against the almighty Colonel Stillwater?”

“No,” she answers stiffly. “I decided at a young age that I didn’t like pain.”

A knot forms in my stomach, tightening until it reaches the point where it’ll take days to unravel. “He hurt you?”

“Oh, come on, don’t sound so surprised,” she says bitterly. “Don’t tell me yours didn’t hurt you. That’s all they know how to do, men like our fathers. We just made different choices, didn’t we? I didn’t fight back. You did.”

I can’t tell if she sounds so angry right now because of the topic of conversation, or if it’s because I’m forcing her to stay here and do this with me. The why isn’t really important, though. I don’t like the harshness of her voice. Makes me think that she’s suffering. “No,” I answer. “I don’t like pain, either, Little E, but I couldn’t let him use it to control me. You should never give anyone that kind of power over you. No matter how much it hurts.”

She makes a strangled, unhappy sound. “You haven’t met my father. You have no idea how badly he can make something hurt.”

I don’t like the sound of that. Not one little bit. The beast inside me snarls, a low, threatening growl rumbling out from between jagged, sharp teeth. It rages