Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

63. Jace

“Stay here,” Daisy said.

But I was already on my feet. “No fucking way.”

Charles Hammond’s threat to send Daisy to Oak Hill had been haunting my fucking nightmares since Daisy told us about it.

“I’ll be right on the porch,” she said. “I promise.”

Wolf stood. “Sorry, but we’re not letting him within ten feet of you, sunshine.”

“Just… give me a minute with him,” she said. “Maybe he’ll let something slip. Something we can use.”

“I don’t know,” Otis said. “I think I’m with these guys. It seems like a bad idea.”

“I’ll be right on the porch,” she repeated. “You can stand on the other side of the door and watch on the camera if it makes you feel better. It’ll take you less than two seconds to open the door if something goes wrong.”

“You’re not making us feel better, doll.”

She sighed. “Nothing is going to go wrong. He’s been texting me for days and I’ve been ignoring him. Let me just see what he wants.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Five minutes. And we’re on the other side of the door watching on the camera.”

“That’s fine.” She took a deep breath and touched her sleep- and sex-tousled hair. “Do I look okay?”

“You look like you’ve been fucked,” Otis said.

Wolf shoved him, then looked back at me. “You look beautiful.”

“Oh god…” She started down the hall for the front of the house and was almost to the door when her dad knocked again.

This fucking guy.

She opened the door just enough so that she could see him. Wolf, Otis, and I stayed in the hall behind her, watching Charles Hammond on Otis’ phone, the burner clone still in my hand.

“There you are,” Hammond said.

Daisy crossed her arms over her chest, probably because her tits were on display in her skimpy tank top. “What do you want?”

“That’s not a very polite greeting for your father.”

We were listening through the door, watching Charles on the phone, a strangely disembodied experience.

“I don’t think I owe it to you to be polite after what you did, what you said.”

Hammond sighed. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for days, Daisy. If you answered your texts, we would have cleared the air by now.”

My muscles tensed as he took a step toward the door.

Daisy stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

“Turn the volume up,” Wolf said to Otis.

“We can talk out here,” Daisy said.

Hammond’s expression twisted with disgust. “Because of them?”

And it shouldn’t have mattered — Charles Hammond was a piece of shit — but it still got me, that look of disgust when he talked about us. Even after all these years, even knowing what he was, what he’d done, it still made me feel like shit to know that he thought we were beneath him, that he thought we were beneath Daisy.

Probably because he was right about the Daisy part, at least when it came to me.

“Because of me,” Daisy said. “Just… say what you came to say.”

“Fine.” He stood a little straighter, like he was preparing to deliver a speech. “I feel bad about our conversation at the ground-breaking. Your mother was a… complicated topic of discussion for me. I’m sorry if I seemed unkind.”

“Unkind?” Daisy asked. “For insinuating she was crazy or for admitting to locking her up at Oak Hill? Or maybe for threatening to lock me up at Oak Hill?”

“I did no such thing,” Hammond said. “I was simply suggesting that if you felt you needed some rest, some time away, Oak Hill is an excellent place to catch your breath.”

“I don’t need to catch my breath,” Daisy said. “I need you to stop trying to kill me.”

Hammond grimaced in frustration. “Please don’t start that again, Daisy. I did no such thing. This is why I mentioned Oak Hill. You’re not yourself, and it all started when you moved into this house with those… those…”

“Those what?”

“Murderers,” Hammond finished. “They confessed to killing him, Daisy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to know you’re living with them?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten Blake involved in your little business.” Daisy was as angry as she’d ever sounded, her words hard and brittle as she flung them at her dad. “Maybe you should take some responsibility for the things that have gone wrong in our family.”

Wolf and Otis were staring, mesmerized by Otis’ screen, but my attention had been torn away by a buzzing from the burner clone in my hand.

“You don’t know what you’re— ” Hammond started.

Daisy cut him off. “No, I think we’re done. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. I won’t answer.”

She stepped back into the house, closed and locked the door, then leaned against it with a sigh.

For a minute, no one said anything, and it was just as well, because I was too busy staring at the text on the burner phone.

“What’s up? Wolf asked, finally noticing.

Otis was still watching Hammond on the screen of his own phone.

“Calvin just got a text,” I said.

Wolf craned his neck to look. “From who?”

“Mr. X.”

Daisy’s eyes widened. “But… my dad…” We were all thinking the same thing, replaying the last fifteen minutes, trying to put it all together. “He didn’t even take out his phone while we were talking.”

“Your dad isn’t Mr. X,” Wolf said.

Otis blinked. “But… if Daisy’s dad isn’t Mr. X… who is?”