Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
Zephyrine
My heart is beating out of my chest as I pull up to the gates at my father’s ranch.
It’s been so many years since I’ve been anywhere near it that I do a double take at the sign to be sure I’m in the right place.
I let all the emotions flood my senses. I think about the times my father ignored me growing up, the day he forced me down the aisle with his arm wrapped around mine, and the night I begged for his help to get away from Corey.
It does the job, the tears start to form in the corner of my eyes, and my hands shake as I roll down the window and press the call box.
There’s a video link, so I need to play the part of the emotional damsel in distress who's fled captivity for the freedom only her father can provide.
“This is private property.”
“This is…” My words fade on my lips, and I take in a deep breath before I continue, doing my best to sound a little hysterical.
Much like the night I begged him to keep me safe.
“This is Zephyrine Schaefer. This is my family’s home.
I’ve just—I drove as fast as I could. Please. I need help! Please!”
“Zephyrine?” the man repeats.
“Yes. It’s Zephyrine. Please help.” My voice is shaky from nerves and I hope it serves its purpose.
“Just a moment.”
He kills the intercom, and everything falls silent, save for a few birds in the distance and the low rumble of the engine. It feels like an eternity before he comes back. But then I hear a beep and a new voice booms over the sound system.
“Come down the drive and straight to the main house. We’ll meet you there,” the voice instructs.
This one sounds older, more authoritative.
I don’t recognize it. I used to know all of my father’s old staff, but now, so many years later, with his paranoia having grown, it’s likely I won’t know a single person here.
Which is probably for the better. If I have to fight someone to get out of here, use force if necessary, I’d rather not be thinking of their family at home when I do it.
“The main house?” I confirm.
“Yes.”
The truck rolls over the gravel at a slower pace than I’d taken the paved roads to get here.
As I travel down the long path, I start running through all the scenarios we practiced.
Thinking of all the ways I’ll need to think fast once I’m inside the garage of the main house to make decisions that will keep the guys stowed away and safe until it’s their moment.
When I get to the house, the garage door opens, and I can see two of my dad’s security guards standing at the door to the house, watching as I pull the truck in.
My stomach tumbles, and I feel nauseous.
I hate how stressed I am. I wish I could be calm.
But then, it will look more convincing if I'm anxious and frazzled. I’m supposed to have escaped the Stocktons’ clutches, stolen a set of keys to a truck, and run screaming home to my father for help.
So nerves and stress should make sense to them.
My window is still rolled down, and I plan to keep it that way. Just in case they take my keys. My thoughts go to the guys. Levi under the seats in the back, and Rowan and Bishop who are neatly tucked in the false compartment in the bed.
One of the security guards rounds the truck, checking for anything unusual, and opens the lid to the bed, peering inside to find it appears empty.
The guys are silent as church mice when the first security guard opens my door and ushers me out.
I take a breath, saying a silent prayer.
The tears are still fresh on my cheeks as I step out but security has little interest in my wellbeing. They’re too busy following protocol.
“Let’s go.” He motions for me.
“Is my dad here? I need to talk to him,” I say immediately as I step down out of the truck. He shouldn’t be. He’s at a meeting in DC according to his schedule.
“We’ll get to that part.” The second guard gives me a once-over and then starts to pat me down.
So far, it’s going just like the guys predicted it would.
This was my home. My family’s home growing up.
I came here a million times, and now I'm being treated like an enemy combatant. I feel violated. Searched and watched suspiciously when I’m telling them I escaped captivity.
They offer little in the way of consolation, and I’m shuffled toward the door and barked at without any remorse.
Genuine tears start to form in my eyes as I think about how we got here.
How I used to play here as a little girl, happy and careless and free.
It was so different from the reality I faced as I got older.
When I stopped being a cute kid and he started looking at me like a product to be bartered instead.
An advantage on the campaign trail, an asset to raise money, and a pawn to deepen his connection to people he felt could keep him safe.
To him it might as well be the Middle Ages, and I was nothing more than another commodity to buy and sell in his empire.
“You escaped, but you could grab your purse?” The one guard gives me a doubtful look. I was grateful for the belt buckle and the lipstick case tucked in my pocket that Dakota gave me as security guard one snatches my purse and rifles through it.
“I had my purse with me when I escaped.” I give him a nasty look and return his once-over with one of my own.
Two can play this game. He wants to treat me like trash that’s beneath him?
I can do the same. In fact, I was raised to think exactly that way.
Something that never settled well on my conscience.
“I see.” The second guard waits for the first to finish searching my belongings.
“Can I see my father? Please? I just want to see him. I was kidnapped by these awful men. Tortured. They kept me caged, and I just want to see my father. I want to tell him what happened,” I plead, doing my best to sound hysterical.
Satisfied that they’ve checked me for weapons and electronics, they usher me in the door.
Down a hall I played in thousands of times—racing my half brothers and sliding in my socks while I sang into my toy microphone.
The memories won’t stop flooding back. We turn another corner, and I see the dining room.
I assume that’s where they’ll take me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to talk to my father via video chat.
It’ll be the first conversation in a very long time, but it might convince him to have his guards calm down with their armed interrogation.
But we don’t stop in the dining room. They march me all the way to my father’s office, and when they open the door, my heart stops.
Seated behind the table, grayer around the temples than I remember him, is the man in the flesh.
This part I wasn’t prepared for, and the sight of him knocks me off kilter.
“Zephyrine,” he acknowledges me, and his eyes drift over my countenance. We purposely dirtied my clothes, even ripped them in a few places—a thing I was very grateful for in this moment when I was likely about to give the greatest performance of my life.
“Dad!” The tears flood my eyes and fall down my cheeks as I race around the desk and throw my arms around him.
One of his security guards moves to stop me, but in a rare turn of paternal tenderness, he holds his hand out to stop them and lets me wrap my arms around his shoulder.
The last time we hugged was almost certainly when I was still a child, seventeen years old, and getting ready to start college.
He gave me one last hug as a send-off to adulthood.
Right before he lectured me about being on my own without the help of someone holding my hand. I think I did all right without him.
“How did you get here?” he asks, briefly hugging me before he pulls back to search my face.
“I stole a truck. It was the first place I could think of to come from where I was.”
“Is Corey with you?”
“No. Just me.”
“Did you see him?”
We hadn’t discussed this part. I didn’t have a plan for my answer, so I lie because I’m too afraid of the questions that will come if I tell the truth.
“No. I don’t know where he is. He’s not at home?” I force a worried look on my face.
“He went looking for you when he found out you left the convent.”
“I didn’t leave. I was kidnapped. You have to tell him that. I don’t want him hurting me again.” It’s what I would have said if I thought he was still after me, what I pleaded with Levi to let me do in the first place.
“Kidnapped by who?”
“The Stocktons. They claim that you stole things from them. Killed their parents. I told them it’s not true. It’s not true, is it?” I know he won’t admit it but I hope if he has any conscience at all left, he feels shame at the reminder.
Something flickers across his face. A look I learned as a child was a premonition of him telling a white lie or a fib. It appeared when he talked about where he was or why he couldn’t make a dance recital or a soccer game just as often as it appeared when he talked about Santa or the Easter Bunny.
“Of course not. I doubt I even know who they are. You know how people are with us. Making up stories for attention. The way they always do.”
“Why would they think that? They were so insistent that you killed their parents. They were threatening to kill me as retribution, but I begged them to let me go. I told them I was just a nun. That we didn’t even talk anymore.
But they were furious.” A sob racks out of my chest as I explain.
I’m still thinking of Levi. How much it must have hurt him to get the call.
It feeds the lie I’m trying to tell my father, buying the guys time, but the tears are for Levi’s parents. Because I know for certain what he said was true. Somehow, someway, my father was behind it. Regardless of whether or not he pulled the trigger.
“I have no idea.” He shakes his head, and then he studies me again, looking at me like he might find evidence of something on my skin. “Did they touch you? Rape you?”
“No.”
“Good. Corey would be even more furious if he found out. I don’t need him starting a war right now. I’m up for reelection soon.”
“I don’t think his opinion or the election matters right now.
” For a million reasons, including the fact that he’s six feet under rotting away without his balls at the moment.
A thing I have to assume my father knows and is pretending not to for my benefit.
Whether it’s to catch me in a lie or keep me from going hysterical, I’m not sure.
“These men, dad. They’re serious. I could have died. ”
His countenance changes then, at the anger I’m having and at the fact that I’ve accused him of being responsible for the danger by implication.
“I told you that convent was a bad idea. That you should have stayed close to your husband. He would have never let this happen.” He turns away from me, back to the work on his desk and his phone. “I think you should see a doctor.”
“I will tomorrow. Tonight, I just wanted to see you and sleep in a familiar bed. Is my room still here?” I didn’t care about the bed.
But I do care about the bedroom’s proximity to the staircase that leads to the basement.
The one where I need to meet Levi, Bishop, and Rowan so we can steal whatever we can find in the vault.
But my father being here complicates things because now we can’t be sure it’s just a few members of his private security on the property. Now we have to worry that it’s a small army. That part I’m not prepared for—none of us are.
“There’s still a bedroom, yes, but Caroline put your stuff away a long time ago.”
“Is Caroline here?” I ask about my stepmother because I hope she’s not. The older I got the less she liked me. I always assumed it was because I looked like my mother.
“No. She’s at a fundraiser in DC,” he answers, looking at me carefully like he’s trying to see if he can figure out more than I’m telling him. “Do you need to talk to a woman about things?”
“No. I was just hoping to see family. It’s been days and days of being away from anyone I know with not very much food or water.”
“Well, we’ll get the cops here soon enough, and you can make a report.” He eschews my basic needs for protocol. I knew he’d want to call them, but I was hoping I could buy some time first. I should have known my father’s number one priority never wavers.
“Can’t I do that tomorrow? I just don’t want to be interrogated tonight. I just want to be here with you and sleep in a real bed. Maybe have some food.” I try to think as fast as I can.
He blows out a breath. “They won’t like that. Especially since you came here. They’ll worry about my safety as much as anything. The governor’s house, even if it isn’t the governor’s mansion, you know.”
Of course I knew. I always knew.
“I don’t think anyone followed me here. I’m sure they would have caught up to me by now.
And even if they did, you have a small army here.
Please, Dad. I just want a night of peace.
Then I’ll talk to whoever you want, and we can call Corey to come up here.
I just want one night of peace first.” I plead with him, hoping it won’t fall on heedless ears.
“I suppose it won’t hurt. If they follow you here, my guys will take care of it. I can’t believe they thought they could touch my daughter and get away with it.” He makes a disgusted noise at the back of his throat as he complains.
“Is there a phone I can use? I want to call the convent. Let my friends know I’m okay.”
“That can wait until tomorrow with everything else. You should go to your room and get some sleep. Take a shower. I’ll see if we can scare up an extra set of clothes for you somewhere in the house. Some food too.”
“That would be amazing. Hot water and sleep sound like a dream.” I offer up a small smile through my drying tears, forcing it for his benefit because the fact that he won’t let me do something as simple as let people know I’m okay says everything.
“Okay. I’ll send someone to help you shortly. I’m glad you’re okay, Zephyrine. But now that I know you are, I’m on a tight schedule. I’ll be sure to see you in the morning, though, when we call the authorities and start getting to the bottom of this,” he explains brusquely.
If this were real, if I had really been kidnapped and escaped when I was younger and more na?ve, this would have crushed me. Broken my heart into a million pieces. I’m a minor inconvenience. One that’s to be scheduled alongside other more important matters.
“Of course. I understand,” I lie, and I give him a quick squeeze before I head to my old bedroom.