Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
“Beg to differ.”
My father grabbed the collar of my tuxedo. I was still in the damn thing. Rumpled and smelling of cigarette smoke, but still dressed to impress. He nearly tore the damn thing off.
“Carlyle!” Elizabeth said. “Let him go!”
But we just stared at each other. I saw my father for what he really was—a coward. He didn’t stand up to his foes. He ran. He didn’t make others feel bigger by the force of his personality. All he cared about was making everyone else smaller. And I wouldn’t back down. Not from him.
He finally released me, pushing me backward. “You’re bluffing.”
“Ah, you know so little about me.” I angled my head down and stared him squarely in the eye. “I always follow through on my promises.”
“You’ve never had the spine.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. For a long time, I let you walk all over me,” I told him confidently. “I let you have your tantrums and your bullshit negotiations. I let you blame me and push me. I thought you were trying to make me a better man.”
“And I see, that was hopeless,” he said, trying to cut me down.
“Then I found out what you did to my mother.”
My father stilled completely. Preternatural stillness. Death. “What did you just say?”
My anger was a supernova, ready to consume everything in its path. He stood no chance. None against me.
“You’ll pay for what you did to her.”
“Your mother abandoned you,” he snarled.
“That’s the lie you have to keep telling yourself? You beat her!” I crowed. “You left her no choice but to flee your presence. When she tried to take me, you used all your influence and money to keep her from getting custody of me. Just to punish her.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He lost his conviction. His face went pale.
“I would have let you get away with it. But not her,” I snarled. “Not her.”
“Your mother was a low-class whore. She was running around on me. You’re not even my son!”
I clenched my fists at my sides to keep from punching out his teeth. “She said that you’d say that. That you’d accused her of that when she ran away. But we both know it’s not true.”
“How did you find her?” he demanded. “Where the hell is she?”
“Far, far away from you.”
My father snapped. He grasped me by my lapels again. There was more than anger in his eyes. He was totally mad. I’d never seen him like this. Even when he’d been horrible when I was younger, he’d always had this calculated control to him. But now, he was just that bully that I’d painted him as.
“Carlyle,” Elizabeth cried. I could hear the pain in her voice. She was witnessing his deterioration, too. And I was sorry for that. I could tell she cared for him, but I didn’t put it past him not to do the same to her.
“Violence is all you know,” I told him evenly. “You divorced and abandoned your first wife. The second ended up dead. The third was annulled, but there were bruises on her. I remember them now. Did you kill Candice’s mom? Is that why she isn’t here? Was my mom the lucky one who got away?”
“Camden, stop!” Elizabeth cried.
And then my father lost it completely.
I watched in slow motion as he pulled his fist back. I didn’t think he’d actually do it. Even as it was happening, I didn’t believe he’d hit me.
Not until his fist connected with my jaw and I was thrown backward, my head snapping sideways.
My hand came up to my busted lip and touched the blood now running down my chin. I looked back at my father. I saw nothing living inside him. Just the monster I’d always known was there.
“You’ll pay for that,” I told him. “That’s a promise.”
38
Katherine
I screamed.
There was no thought to it. Just fear.
Carlyle had punched Camden. Oh god! I couldn’t even imagine what had provoked that. What had made him do it. I had known he was horrible, but I’d never thought that he’d hit Camden. Not in a million years. And from Elizabeth’s horrified expression, neither had she.
Lark gasped in shock. “Oh my god.”
“The police,” I told Lark before rushing forward to pull them apart.
My scream must have drawn a crowd. Suddenly, there were nurses coming out of doorways, ready for whatever new horror awaited.
“The police,” I shouted as I passed one. “Get the police. This man just assaulted my husband.”
I didn’t wait around to find out if she listened. I had to get there now. I didn’t know if Camden was going to retaliate. I didn’t know if it was going to turn into a full-out brawl. And it couldn’t.
I knew his father. I knew how manipulative he was to Camden. If Camden threw that punch—and I was sure he wanted to throw it—then his father would use it to his advantage. No matter how mad at Camden I was for what had happened in my life, I didn’t want his father to hurt him again.