31. Maddison
Maddison
Arough groan passes through my lips. My head feels like it weighs a ton, hanging forward against the strain of the ropes around my neck. When my eyes finally peel open, part of my vision is skewed from my swollen eye.
The first thing I see is red.
My own blood soaking my leg and dripping onto the floor. It looks like too much blood. Dizziness and an aching throb war inside of me. Something isn’t right.
Lots of things aren’t right, right now.
A sob hitches in my chest when my eyes zero in on the man in front of me, still wearing the same impeccable suit. How can it still be so clean? After the blood he spilled on me and being in this disgusting room, he shouldn’t look the way he does right now. Maybe all of his rot is buried inside him.
“Good morning, darling,” he croons, glancing at me before going back to his phone. “Or good evening, who knows down here.”
Down here?
My vision comes in and out of focus as the ringtone of a phone infiltrates my mind.
When I glance back at Kai, my heart breaks.
He looks just as defeated as I do. His eyes are weary and narrowed on the man in front of us.
His skin is pale, and the bags under his eyes show he has not slept since we arrived, if that was even possible while being strung up like a dog.
His eyes slide across to mine, and they soften just a fraction. Blink and you’d miss it. But when the call connects, we both turn towards Zeke.
Because I know the man who’s on the other end of the call, his voice fracturing my already broken heart.
“Zeke,” my father’s voice rumbles through the speaker, harsh and cold.
“Hello, Howard,” Zeke drawls, watching me as he says every word with purpose.
His eyes crinkle with delight, as I’m sure my face shows exactly how I’m feeling.
If I could move my arms, I’d lift them to cover my ears.
Whatever is said over this phone call, I have a strong suspicion that it’s something I don’t want to hear.
Something I can’t hear. But I can’t move my arms, strapped to the chair, bound and useless.
“Did you get the video I sent you?” Zeke asks casually.
My stomach drops. He saw the video Zeke filmed to send to Ash. The one of him torturing me.
“I saw,” is all he replies.
He gives nothing away, zero emotion bleeding into his words, his voice that same, monotone, cold thing as usual.
Zeke pauses for a moment, and all I can hear is my rapid breaths soaring in and out of me.
“You did?” Zeke asks. “I guess I expected some sort of response. But if you want to play hard to get, I’ll bite.”
My father is silent on the line, and a lump forms in my throat. Part of me wants to scream for him, scream for him to help me.
Another part whispers in my mind that he won’t help, which is confirmed when my father stays silent on the other end of the line.
Zeke lets out a low chuckle. “I guess I underestimated how far your carelessness goes when it comes to your daughter. Probably should have realised it when you let her go to the event with me.”
This pulls a response out of my father, who huffs an impatient breath.
“You’re wasting my time,” he says coldly through the speaker, like I’m not strapped to a chair bleeding out in some underground nightmare. Like he didn’t just watch a video of me being hurt.
Zeke’s smile deepens, slow and satisfied, as though he’s been waiting for that exact tone. He paces a lazy half-circle in front of me, phone gripped in his hand, the other sliding into his pocket.
“Oh, Howard,” he drawls, almost fond. “That’s the thing about time. It’s only valuable when you’re the one running out of it.”
My stomach rolls. I swallow hard, throat scraping against the rope, and a small sound escapes me. Half sob, half breath. My father doesn’t react to it.
Zeke glances at my face, dark eyes flickering over my expression.
“I think you’ll find I don’t respond well to threats,” my father spits. “Especially not from the likes of you. I gave you my business, and I can just as easily take it away. Now get to the point.”
Zeke goes completely still, and that makes me nervous. He makes me nervous. Then he laughs quietly, and not with humour.
“Your business?” he repeats. “Oh, Howard, I really don’t think you understand what’s happening here.
” Zeke’s tongue darts out to wet his lips before he continues.
“I don’t want your business. In fact, when I found you, you were haemorrhaging serious money trying to keep your extracurricular investments quiet. Do you remember that?”
My father remains silent as the words echo in my mind. Extracurricular investments?
Zeke’s gaze drifts to me for a moment before returning to some invisible point on the wall, pacing slowly as if he’s outlining a presentation instead of standing over his bound captor.
“You know where to send the money. And for giving me a headache, it’s just gone up to two billion. Before midnight, or pretty little Miss Maddison’s brains will paint the wall.”
This time my father laughs.
“Go ahead. She made her decisions, and I won’t be paying for them,” he grits out.
Even Zeke’s brows raise at the words, as a ragged sob breaks free.
I’m so damn stupid for thinking my father gives even a fraction of a worry about me.
That I thought he’d care if I died. But to him, I’m nothing but an inconvenience.
A burden. Tears blur my already limited vision as my body goes numb.
“Dad,” I whimper, shocked at the word before it even leaves my lips. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve called him dad, but something inside of me is cracking open, bleeding heavier than the wound in my leg. “Dad! Please...”
I feel small. So small. Like the little girl who used to cry herself to sleep, wishing her parents would bother to come in and read her a bedtime story. Or even kiss her goodnight. And here I am, crying over the same thing. Fracturing down the middle, over something I knew a long time ago.
His heavy breath through the speaker sounds irritated.
“Maddison,” he rumbles, and my name on his lips holds no care. No love.
My head shakes as much as it can, tied to the back of the chair, tears streaming down my face.
“What is so wrong with me that you could never love me!” I cry out.
I guess knowing you are about to die brings a certain level of courage.
“I’m your daughter! I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me...
Everything! And it still is not enough. It’s never been enough.
And you... You’d rather I die than pay him... ”
My throat is raw, the words bleeding out of me. “What is so wrong with me?” I scream, the words echoing in the small room. A broken sound falls out of me, before I whisper, “What is so wrong with me?”
Everyone is silent as I cry quietly, feeling a sense of dizzying euphoria over the words I let drop from my shoulders.
“You did this to yourself,” he replies. “I will not pay to remedy your own foolish mistakes.”
His words should break me. They should be the last straw. But they roll off me. He’ll never love me, and he never did. He ruined my childhood. Moulded me into the person he wanted, and yet still wasn’t happy.
But Ash... my sweet Ash. He saw through me. He saw the real me and forced it out. He never let me pretend to be someone I wasn’t.
To me... that is love.
That is what I deserve.
The irony is not lost on me that I threw that away for this asshole, and I’ll die before I ever get to rectify it.
Zeke clicks his tongue, his head cocked to the side as he studies me, a line between his brows.
“I assumed paternal instinct would override ego,” Zeke continues. “I assumed you would prioritise blood over pride.”
“You assumed wrong,” my father says coldly.
“Yes,” Zeke replies. “I did.” I clench my teeth, willing my tears to stop. “So now we pivot.”
My father’s voice tightens. “Pivot?”
“Yes. I was hoping I could kill two birds with one stone, pun intended,” he adds, as he winks at me.
“I’m about to get my hands on a very interesting drive, thanks to your sweet daughter.
And on that drive is evidence that you and your associates are involved in the dealings of sex trafficking...
Gosh, no amount of money is going to get you out of that one, Mr Dally. ”
Everything quietens. Nausea rolls through me as the realisation I’ve been trying to avoid slams into me like a semi-truck. All this time, my father has been involved in something so horrific? And I’ve been working in his above-ground business, helping him along the way.
“Imagine what the public would do to a man who claims to throw wonderful charity events, only to be using these charities to launder his dirty money. It’ll ruin you and you know it...” Zeke croons, knowing he has already won.
This makes me throw up, my head twisting to the side as far as possible as I empty the contents of my stomach onto the floor.
The one good part of my job... of my existence, was all a sham.
I used to cling to those charity events like they were proof that something in my life was redeemable. That my miserable existence brought some good to someone. But it wasn’t. It was actually doing more harm than I could ever fathom.
They meant nothing.
They were washing blood.
My stomach convulses again, even though there’s nothing left to bring up. Acid burns the back of my throat. The smell of bile mixes with rust and damp concrete, and I think I might actually suffocate on it.
“You’re lying,” my father says through the phone, but the confidence is gone. There’s a crack in it now. Hairline, but there. Something I’ve never heard before.
“Am I?” Zeke asks mildly. “The drive contains transaction logs, Howard. Offshore transfers tied to your charitable foundation. Names of buyers routed through shell corporations. Dates. Amounts. The names of the women you moved last quarter.”
My vision tunnels.
Women.
All the times I walked through that office. Smiled at investors. Threw events. Laughed at their wandering hands.
All of it funded by something so vile I can barely breathe.