Chapter 42 #2
The longer I stay up here, the safer I am from my father, but the more at risk I am from the smoke and flames.
I glance over the railing and contemplate jumping. But broken legs won’t help me.
“Maren. Quickly,” my father encourages.
I know it’s a ruse, and yet, I don’t have any other choice. I drop the photo album and painting over the top of the stairs to the parking lot below.
I run down the stairs, hoping to gain momentum, enough to push my father out of the way. Instead, he bands his arms around me as I try to shove him away. The sickeningly intense scent of something that smells a lot like gasoline hits me.
I try to fight, sending my head backwards in the hope I’ll smash his nose.
My fingernails snap and break as I claw his hands, trying to force him to release me.
“Couldn’t you have…just stayed…in bed?” He grunts as he tries to shove me through the door into the burning store.
My own father knew I was in there and lit the fire anyway.
I lift my legs and push them against the doorframe. My words come out on a desperate cry. “Why are you doing this?”
Staying alive until Knox gets here is all I can do. It’s my only out. But my father has a size and strength advantage.
The smoke is hot when it touches my skin, and my eyes water as I cough and splutter.
“I gave up my life for you and your mom.” He curses. “And for what, for you to throw it away for a gangster?”
With a final shove, my father causes my knees to buckle, and he manages to force both of us through the door into the shop.
The flames are incrementally hotter, and tears sting my eyes at the sight of everything my grandfather and I worked so hard for burning to the ground. I’m insured. I can rebuild.
But it’s the sight of one of Grandpa’s irreplaceable sketches curling up to escape the flames that breaks my heart. “Please, Dad. Don’t…Stop.”
My reasoning disappears as I realize I’m never going to be able to stop him.
“You should have listened to the men I sent to tell you to stay away from Knox.”
The grocery store. I knew something felt off. I want to know who the men were and understand how my father found them. “You sent them?”
“It was a warning, Maren, but you were too stupid to take it seriously because you’re an embarrassment, just like she was,” he says, like a man possessed.
My chest tightens. “Don’t…We can talk.”
I manage to get an arm free and grab for the shelves he’s dragging me past. But I only manage to get my fingertips on it.
“She trapped me.” He drops me to my feet and shoves me up against the structural column, pinning me to it, his forearm tight to my throat.
His face is red, sweat drips down his temple, and his eyes are wild.
“Did you know that? Your mother? Got herself pregnant so I couldn’t walk away.
Not in a small town like this. It would have ruined my reputation for life if I’d abandoned her.
So, I was stuck with a wife who came from this… a fucking bait shop, Maren.”
Something cracks inside me. I knew my father was an angry man. But this is something possessed. A man consumed with hatred. I let out a sob, followed by another. Not for him. I don’t care about losing my father.
But I know I’m not going to make it out of here alive.
Because even though I know that Knox is coming for me, my father doesn’t intend for me to live past the next few minutes.
“All I wanted was for you to love me,” I say, looking at the man who raised me. The man whose sins have been dumped on my head for decades.
He smirks at that. “How could I? You’re a constant reminder of the life I could never have.
I wanted a wife I could be proud of. Kids I could be proud of.
Instead, I got her…and you. You’re worse than she was.
Spreading your legs for a common thief. A scum-of-the-earth weapons dealer. You disgust me, Maren. On every level.”
The flames catch the roof of the building, and a piece of me dies inside as I pray it collapses on the two of us. I’m resigned to the fact I might die. But if I do, I’m taking my father with me.
I want the people who find my body to know he was here with me, although, with my poetic luck, it would be reported that he died trying to help save me.
The heat surges, drying my tears to my face. “Let me go,” I say, the words frayed. I claw at the chokehold he has me in. The inside of my mouth tastes metallic, and white dots spin in the corners of my vision.
“I should have killed you with her.”
The fight leaves me. “What?”
He leans so close, our noses touch. “I should have killed you with her. What, you think your boyfriend is the only one who knows how to take a body out into open water and dump it?”
My grip on reality slips.
The heat surges closer. It burns my lungs as I try to inhale.
I close my eyes and think of the way it felt when Knox kissed me. When he held me. How he gave me a taste of a life I’m grateful for but won’t get to share with him beyond what we’ve already had.
Faintly, as the strength slips from my body, I swear I hear his voice.