Chapter 21
Ihauled open the door of my room, determined to swim laps in the outdoor pool until I passed out. I needed to work through the intense feelings threatening to explode right now, and the pool always offered me that solace.
The guys had knocked on my door more endlessly, trying to get me to open up to them, but I’d needed space to process how truly fucked up my life had become.
Again.
Hurrying from my room, I made it six paces before I stopped dead, feet frozen to the plush carpet beneath them. My father stood at the end of the hallway, clearly waiting for me, surveying the art worth more than most people’s homes that hung on the hallway walls.
What the hell was he doing up here? Byron barely stepped foot in this wing of the house and he owned it. My mother only came up here when whichever member of the household staff she’d sent to fetch me couldn’t find me.
This was a power play from my father. He wanted to infect every part of my life until I was looking over my shoulder every minute.
“What are you doing up here?” I demanded, forcing confidence into my tone and my feet to start working again.
My father swivelled in my direction, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.
“It’s lovely to see you too, daughter.” His smile widened, dark and predatory. “I’m so glad we’re finally back together.”
My heart seized with fear at both his words and his proximity, and I pressed my lips together to hide my ragged breathing.
He placed his hands behind his back, slowly closing the space between us and dropping his voice. “It’s interesting that you haven’t told your mother and stepfather about your new marital status.”
I swallowed. “I ran from you to avoid being manipulated into a marriage I didn’t want with one of Seattle’s most dangerous men.
You’re clearly desperate enough to come and force my hand, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever willingly fall in line with what you want.
I’m not the same girl I was in Seattle. I’m not going to give you what you want. ”
He watched me with the look of someone totally at ease with his decisions. “Boston is your husband, darling. The sooner you learn to serve him and only him, the better off you’ll be.”
I’d already suspected that my father knew about my relationship with my stepbrothers after the anonymous video I’d received all those months ago of me with my stepbrothers in the CCU parking lot, but hearing him allude to it now had a cold sweat breaking out all over my body.
My father wouldn’t hesitate to out us if he served to gain from it.
And he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt the people closest to me to get what he wanted.
The fear I’d felt about Boston’s arrival in Cape Canyon was nothing compared to what I felt now that my father was here and he had successfully invaded the one safe place I had left.
The man was a cancerous cockroach.
“A marriage formed under duress isn’t legal,” I stated, trying for outward confidence that I definitely didn’t feel right now.
He chuckled, but there was a darkness in his eyes that told me he was irritated.
I’d learned my father’s tells a long time ago. Learned to read every micro-expression on his face to try to predict his violence. He was prone to lash out when angered over the smallest detail, and he knew how to make it hurt.
I wanted to take a step back, to put as much space between us as I could, but I couldn’t let him know that I was afraid of him; that he still had that level of power over me.
“A prominent Seattle judge says otherwise, sweetheart.” His tone was sickly sweet, like a father gentling his words for a small child.
“He’s far more likely to be believed than a petulant child who doesn’t like the union that’s been orchestrated for her.
Besides, your new husband agreed to it. He signed the papers. ”
Boston agreed to this?
Why?
He’d said to me that night at the club that he hadn’t wanted any of this. So why would he have signed the marriage papers? The holes in his story reinforced my fears that maybe I couldn’t trust him.
“You forget that I have the means to fight back now.” I’d meant to say it with confidence, but it came out as a small, timid whisper.
My father didn’t miss the apprehension underlying my tone, and he shot me a smile that was both smug and sinister.
“You mean your stepbrothers have the means to fight me. You, darling, still have absolutely nothing to your name.”
He let the statement hang between us, deeply satisfied by my predicament.
“Unless of course you decide to lean into your role as Mrs. Dempsey Ivers, in which case, I’m sure your new husband would happily give you some kind of allowance to buy your silly little dresses and shoes, and you’ll be a well-kept woman.”
I seethed on the inside, refusing to let my emotions show on my face and give my father the satisfaction of knowing his words had riled me.
Sinclair, Dacre, and Presley would murder him if he dared lay a hand on me again, I believed that with every part of me. But my father was no stranger to taking a man’s life, and I wouldn’t put them in a position like that.
I had to play nice.
“Regardless of whose money it is, Sinclair, Presley, and Dacre are willing to fight for me. Everybody has a price, isn’t that what you taught me?” I tilted my head, attempting to bait him with his own words.
He sniffed a laugh, taking a step back like he was bored of this conversation.
“The thing you can’t seem to understand, Dempsey, is that fear is a far greater motivator than greed.
Your stepbrothers can throw all the money in the world at that judge, or any judge in the state.
No one will go against the Ivers-Falconer empire now. ”
I swallowed, biting my lip to calm my racing heart.
“You’re going to give Boston as Ivers-Falconer heir because I demand it. If you refuse, I have so many other ways I can force you to do what I want. You’ve made sure of that with your life choices.”
The threat hung in the air between us, and I tried not to hyperventilate.
“Because of your… choices… I have leverage. Not just with you, sweetheart, but your precious stepbrothers too.” He shrugged casually as he added, “I know so much about them now, after watching you. It would be easy to find them vulnerable. I’d just have to wait until Presley gets drunk again.
Or Dacre is distracted in his studio. Or Sinclair is working late all alone in that big, fancy office of his. ”
I seethed internally, trying to hold back the tears of hopeless frustration burning the backs of my eyes.
He was threatening the people I cared about most in the world.
No matter what I did, he always came out on top.
No matter how evil he was, he always seemed to win.
And it was one thing to threaten me, but to use Pres, Sin, and Dacre to get at me was something else entirely.
“Ah, I can see I’ve hit a nerve.” My father smiled, deeply satisfied. “Think it over, darling. I’m sure you’ll come to the conclusion that’s best for everyone.”
Then he strolled down the hallway, leaving me more hopeless and lost than when I ran from him the first time.