King of Wrath: from the bestselling author of the Twisted series (Kings of Sin)

The Wednesday after I moved out of Dante’s house, I chartered a flight to Boston. According to my mom, whom I’d called under the guise of discussing wedding arrangements, my father was already back home.

I’d spent the plane ride rehearsing what I would say. But as I sat across from him in his office, listening to the clock tick and the shallow cadence of my breaths, I realized no amount of rehearsal could’ve prepared me for confronting my father.

Silence stretched between us for another minute before he leaned back and raised a bushy, gray-tipped brow. “What’s the emergency, Vivian? I assume you have something important you’d like to discuss if you showed up unannounced like this.”

He was the one who had something to apologize for, but his stern voice sent a knee-jerk spiral of shame through me. It was the same voice he’d used whenever I received anything less than a perfect test score. I tried not to let it affect me, but it was hard to overcome decades of conditioning.