Indecently Mine (Lawless MC #2)

Chapter 1

My foot taps restlessly on the hardwood floor as my eyes drift around the front room of my childhood home.

It’s scarcely changed over the years. It’s exactly how I’ve always remembered it. Perfect. Pristine. And… white. So white it’s almost blinding. There’s not a speck of dirt or dust anywhere in sight. Everything in the room is immaculate, void of clutter and mess, something both of my parents hate.

It’s cold. There’s no warmth, no heart. There’s not a single hint that a family even lives here.

That I grew up here. There are no photographs, no drawings I did as a child, no pictures from family vacations, not that we had any what with my father always too busy working.

And despite how huge and empty the room is, the stark white walls are slowly closing in on me with every minute that ticks by.

In eight years, I can safely say I’ve spent less than three hundred and sixty-five days in total inside this house.

As soon as I turned eleven, I was shipped off to boarding school so fast you’d think I had come down with the plague.

From there, I was shoved into college after I graduated and only allowed back home during the holidays.

Anyone would think my parents never wanted a child for the amount of time they’ve seen me.

If it weren’t for the DNA I share with them, they’re practically strangers to me.

I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans as my foot continues to tap on the floor, the sound echoing through the wide empty room.

The deep steadying breaths I’ve been practicing since I got on my flight from Boston are doing little to settle my nerves.

Hell, I don’t think a horse tranquiliser could help me relax right now.

My stomach lurches when I hear the crunch of gravel outside as a car pulls up on the driveway, signalling my father’s arrival home from work.

He’s pissed. I know that without even having to speak to him.

It’s not even been twenty-four hours since I quit law school just a few weeks into my second year and the nerves have been stewing in my belly ever since.

It just so happens my father is friends with the school’s president, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before my father found out what I’d done, only I didn’t expect it to be quite so quick.

I’d only left the building after announcing I wouldn’t be continuing my studies for two whole minutes before a text chimed through on my phone.

Three short, sharp words lighting up my screen that filled me with more dread than if he’d sent an entire paragraph berating me:

Come home. Now.

A couple of hours later there was a car waiting to take me to the airport and another to pick me up when I got off the plane and the tension has continued to build. Just the way he plans it.

My father has this uncanny way of being angry, but not letting it show on his face.

You can tell a lot by someone’s eyes, and all it takes is a single look from my father to know you’re in deep shit.

He’ll be pissed, but he won’t tell you outright that he’s pissed.

He won’t raise his voice or punch through a wall with his fists in a fit of rage.

He’ll sit there calmly, not looking at you directly and turn everything back around on you, gaslighting you into thinking that you’re the problem.

It must be some psychological mind-game bullshit because it’s terrified me ever since I was a child, either that or he’s a pro at keeping a lock on his emotions. Maybe it’s both.

Sometimes I wish he’d just lose it and scream at me like any normal parent would, shout at me until the walls shake and my ears ring, but he doesn’t, and I think that’s worse, and he knows it.

He knows he has the upper hand, he always does, and he’s really good at making you a quivering wreck without saying a single word.

I’m nineteen years old but in the presence of my father, I’m a child again, that same little girl terrified of disappointing her father, something I’m apparently very good at.

My heart rate spikes as a car door slams, gravel crunching underfoot as he nears the front door.

A few seconds later the front door opens and closes, the distinct sound of my father’s shoes clicking along the wooden flooring in the hallway.

My heart spikes as his controlled footsteps grow closer, so I straighten my spine and lift my chin, willing myself to remain strong.

A second later he enters the room, not bothering to glance in my direction as he heads straight to the bar where he pours himself a drink from the crystal decanter sitting there.

His black suit is tailored to precision, fitting his tall frame and lean build perfectly. He’s a creature of habit, a different coloured suit for every day. Mondays have always been black suit day, like he’s attending a funeral. And I suppose he is…

Mine.

With his back to me, he takes a swig of his drink before his voice cuts through the deafening silence in the room, “I trust you had a safe flight.”

“Yes, Father.” The days of referring to him as Daddy are long gone, left behind in a childhood that seems like a lifetime ago, and for the amount of time I’ve spent with him over the years, we don’t have a close enough bond where I feel comfortable enough to call him Dad.

“And you are well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Hm. Strange. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

His question throws me. I press my palm to my forehead, checking for signs of a fever. “Uh, yeah. I feel fine. Why?”

“I assumed you must be sick given recent events.”

My stomach bottoms out and I suck in a breath. Shit. Here we go.

He refills his glass before finally turning to face me.

“I thought it the only plausible explanation as to why you would drop out of college,” he says casually, though there’s nothing casual in his words.

“I had hoped President Knowles had been misinformed when he called me yesterday, that he must’ve been mistaken, but it seems he was not. ”

His expression is hard as he pins me with his eyes and despite his scrutinous gaze, I find it impossible to look away. My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I can feel my pulse in my eardrums.

“You know, a lot of young people would give their right arm for the opportunity to attend Harvard, and yet I find it hard to believe you would throw it all away so easily.”

“Fath—”

“Did I not give you everything?” he interrupts. “I ensured you had access to the very best education this country has to offer. Is it so wrong that I would want the best for my only daughter? Why would you want to give all that up?”

“Because it was making me miserable!” I rush out, regretting my words as soon as they come out and I slam my lips shut.

Shit.

My little outburst doesn’t go down well and he narrows his eyes. “Do not raise your voice to me.”

“I’m—” I cut myself short, taking a deep breath. “I’m not going back. I quit. It’s done.”

He slams his empty glass down on the bar and it makes me jump. “It most certainly is not done.”

“It’s my life, Father. School was making me miserable and I hated it. Every morning I woke up feeling sick to my stomach because I didn’t want to be there.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want to in this life, Kaia. The sooner you realise that, the better. Quite frankly, you’re ungratefulness to my generosity astounds me. Everything I have ever done is to secure a future for you, for our family.”

Of course, he’s making it all about him as usual and I fight the urge to roll my eyes, something I learned to never do in his presence when I was nine.

“A future I didn’t want.” I regret my choice of words instantly but I continue, “I never wanted be a lawyer, Father. You did.”

He clicks his tongue, clearly unhappy with my answer.

“I stuck it out as long as I could because I didn’t want to disappoint you, but I couldn’t do it anymore,” I continue.

“Well, consider me disappointed.”

My stomach drops at that word. Disappointed. There’s no worse a feeling than knowing you’ve disappointed your parents, I’d rather he just be angry with me than be filled with this sickly heaviness inside from displeasing him.

He finishes off the contents of his glass and places it onto the bar behind him. “We will continue this later, right now I have somewhere to be.” And with that, he strides out of the room.

Tears prickle at the backs of my eyes. I knew exactly what to expect when my father told me to come home, I knew what reaction I would get, but even that didn’t prepare me for the real thing.

Despite what he might think, I didn’t take dropping out of Harvard lightly, in fact I’d been considering it long and hard for months and it was one of the hardest decisions of my life. Hell, it might have been the first decision I’ve ever made for me.

I never wanted to study law. Becoming a lawyer was towards the bottom of my list of potential career paths.

It was my father who pushed me into it, wanting me to follow in his footsteps and carry on the family legacy.

He studied at Harvard himself, as did my grandfather and his father before him.

I’ve always known this was his plan for me, and at the beginning, I convinced myself I was okay with it, that I would get through it and do my father proud for once in my life.

I thought I might even grow to like it with time, but I was wrong.

As time went on, I knew that law school wasn’t for me and as time passed, I came to loathe it.

A noise has me glancing to the door where my mother hovers, ever the tiny fly on the wall, the silent mouse my father has reduced her to.

“Why, sweetheart? You know how much he wanted you to study at Harvard, just like he did.”

“What about what I want? Does that not count for anything?”

Her gaze lingers on me for a beat before it drops to the floor and without uttering a single word, she slinks back to wherever she came from.

All my life I’ve been waiting for her to stick up for me and fight my corner against my father, just once.

But she never does. I don’t know whether it’s out of obligation to her husband or out of fear, but in my nineteen years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say a single word against him in disagreement or in anger.

It’s not normal.

The huge empty house seems suffocating all of a sudden and not even bothering to unpack the two large suitcases I left at the bottom of the stairs, I grab my jacket off the hook and head out into the evening.