Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

30. Daisy

Iwas shaking when I got to the tent. I felt like someone had just detonated a bomb at the center of my life, my past, everything I’d believed to be true.

I knew my mom had struggled. She’d had bouts with depression, had had a therapist, had taken medication.

But I’d always refused to believe her overdose was intentional.

She’d gotten confused, taken too many of the pills that had been in the bottle inside her medicine cabinet. She’d had a glass of wine, not uncommon for her after dinner. It had been a bad combination, and my dad had been away for business that night.

She hadn’t been found until morning, by Blake, when it was too late to help her.

I plucked a glass of champagne off one of the trays being carried by the servers Cantwell had hired for the event and drank it in one long gulp.

My dad’s words echoed in my mind.

She spent some time at Oak Hill. It did her a world of good.

It’s a wonderful facility. Perhaps we should consider it.

He was setting me up. He’d kidnapped me not just to punish me for disobeying and living with the Beasts (although I’m sure that had been a bonus) but to set up a scenario where I’d go to the police and sound crazy.

Did he know I knew about the trafficking he’d been involved in with Blake? Or was it more sinister than that? An attempt to control me like he’d controlled my mom?

I took another glass of champagne from a passing tray and downed half of it, trying to calm my shallow breathing, wishing that the Beasts were here and hating that the only time I felt truly safe was when they were nearby.

I felt like I was in a bubble, the after-party in full swing around me, everyone drinking and eating and laughing. Piers looked dignified and pleasant next to Susan Sheridan, the mayor of Blackwell Falls, as he smiled and shook hands with a steady stream of starstruck attendees gushing about the beauty of the building site.

I took a deep breath, relieved that my pulse had slowed, my heartbeat coming back under control after the confrontation with my dad, who was nowhere in sight.

A knot settled in my stomach when I thought about Ruth. Had my dad been poisoning her against me? Dripping word of my “illness” so it wouldn’t seem surprising when he locked me up like he’d locked up our mom?

And what was I supposed to do with this new knowledge? Did Ruth already know? Was this yet another thing I should protect her from or did she deserve to know?

I looked for my sister in the crowd. It took me two passes but I finally found her, standing in the corner and talking to Gray Cantwell.

He was gazing down at her with a familiar smile — the one that had seemed boyish and cute before I’d realized he was a rapist-in-training — while she looked flirtatiously up at him.

Dread seeped through my chest like a stain. Ruth was full of big talk but she was only fifteen, and she’d been insulated by the Hammond name.

It was obvious from the way she looked at Gray that she thought he was just another potential victim of her breezy smile and sparkling personality, like the boys at Blackwell High who were probably falling at her feet and the guy from the Blades she’d invited to her bed on a school day.

Gray laughed at something she said, then caught my eye while Ruth continued talking.

She didn’t know Gray was a predator, but I did, and if my encounter with him in the alley after the office hangout at the Mill hadn’t convinced me, I was convinced now.

Because in between attentive nods and smiles at Ruth, he was looking at me with an expression that made my blood run cold. One that said he knew exactly who Ruth was.

And exactly what he was doing.