Fighting For Light: A Dark Sports Romance (The Coldwell Brothers)
Prologue
Kai
14 Years Old
“Hurry, Kai, we have to go. Your father could come back any minute,” Mom says. My heart is leaping out of my chest. I’m scared for me, for Mom, and for my brothers. Emerson looks over his shoulder at me. His eye is purple and yellow from getting into a fight with Dad. He protected Liam and me, taking the brunt of the beating.
Mom’s bruises and wounds are hidden in places someone wouldn’t typically look. But the angry bruise from Dad’s hands wrapped around her neck as he choked her, trying to kill her, was the last straw. All three of us went after him then. It was chaos before he left in his drunken, high stupor. His driver picked him up, and he disappeared.
One would think that abusive husbands typically only come from lower-income, high-stress situations, but they don’t because I looked it up. It turns out you don’t have to be poor to be abused. Money has nothing to do with it.
Mom pushes us to the garage door. We toss what we could grab into the trunk of our Expedition and hop inside the truck. She backs it out, and we drive off into the night. We have some money. Mom told us she had been gradually untying funds since Dad stole it all and was trying to figure out how to get away from all of this. But she had to do it painstakingly slowly, so he wouldn’t notice because if he did, if he found out that she was taking his money, then he would have killed her, then us. And he would have made it look like an accident.
Our father is a United States Congressman and is as corrupt and cruel as they come. He’s much better at hiding it than others. Behind closed doors, he is the evil he yells about extinguishing from the cities of Massachusetts.
Streetlights flash in my face as we drive and drive and drive. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t care, either. Anywhere that is far away from Dad is good enough for me.
Mom and Emerson whisper in the front while Liam and I sit in the back, staring out the window.
“Are you sure that won’t bring more attention to us?” Emerson asks quietly. He’s the most angry of us all. I think I understand why, but I never ask. He’s done enough for us. The last thing I need to do is push him to tell me something he doesn’t want to talk about.
“It’s the only way for us to protect ourselves,” Mom answers. “We have to hide in plain sight.”
I don’t know what that means. She has bigger goals for us. She wants us to be able to make our way in this world, knowing Dad could find us at any moment and rip her away. But she says she refuses to live life in fear. So I won’t, either. None of us will.