Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
And I received them without any right to. Back then, my guilt was too strong, and it still sometimes is despite what Arsen repeatedly told me.
My father pretty much abandoned me after my mother died, as if the only reason he put up with me was because of her; because I somehow came as a package deal and wasn’t his own flesh and blood. It still doesn’t mean that he’s going to let me go unscathed. Not only because he’s my father, but also because he works for the Turners.
And the Turners are the ones who brought me here.
I’m pretty sure it has something to do with what he has planned. Although why they would kidnap me, I don’t know. I’m not a Turner or a Grayson. I’m just some girl who got caught up in all this.
So I push myself to sit up, and as soon as I do, my father’s beady eyes take me in. He lowers his bottle and tips his hat up so he can look at me. He takes in my attire, which is just Arsen’s T-shirt, and I feel naked. I force myself to sit up straight, though, folding my bare legs to the side. Before I can say anything, he goes, his voice scratchy and rough, “You look all grown up, girl.”
He used to say that a lot: girl. Like I’m some nuisance and not his own daughter. It used to hurt me, but I don’t have time to feel any hurt right now. I need to know what’s going on so I can find a way to get out of this mess.
For good.
I grip the sheet and ask, “What… What am I doing here?”
“Brecken’s men brought you,” he tells me. “Told him I could take you off his hands until he does what needs gettin’ done.”
I swallow. “What does he need to do?”
“Some Grayson business. Wouldn’t tell me what,” he grumbles. “Except that you’ve taken up with a Grayson.” He takes another look up and down my body, and I want to hide myself again. “And I can see that he was right.”
“I don’t understand what—”
He takes a pull of his beer. “Turned out to be a whore like your mama, didn’t you.” I flinch, but he keeps going: “Although even she wouldn’t touch a Grayson.”
“Graysons are ten times the men Turners will ever be,” I snap, unable to stop myself. “Than you will ever be.”
His dark eyes flash with anger. “See you get your mouth from your mama too.”
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Is that right?” He chuckles, his beer belly shaking. “Wonder how you’d feel if you knew the truth about her.”
“What truth?”
He shrugs then. “Maybe you already do. Who knows what she told you when you were both livin’ in the big city.”
My heart, which was already racing, starts beating in a different rhythm now. “What truth? What would she have told me that I didn’t already know?”
He studies me for a beat, and I think he might be messing with me. My father was always fond of using his fists, but I can’t remember him playing mind games. He was always too drunk to do things like that. But then he says, “You never wondered why you look so much like the Turner girl?”
And my heart drops down to my stomach.
Yes, I have wondered about that. How is it that we both look so similar, Peyton and I? How come we have the same shade of blond hair and blue eyes when both my parents have dark-colored hair and eyes?
“I see you figurin’ things out,” he drawls, taking another pull of his beer. “Told you your mama was a whore. All because I wouldn’t pay her enough attention so she thought sleepin’ with my boss would make me come around.” He spits on the floor, making me flinch again. “Fuckin’ crazy-ass woman. And then she tried to pass you off as mine like I’m some dumb asshole who can’t tell his own fuckin’ child…”
He says several other things after that, cursing my mother, but I don’t hear them. I’m still reeling from the fact that I’m Hank Turner’s daughter.
I am a Turner, after all.
Half Turner, but a Turner nonetheless.
I sit with it for a few seconds while my father rambles on about how my mother deserved every beating he gave her, how he was right to cheat on her, and how I deserved to be beaten as well because I mooched off him all my life even though I wasn’t his daughter. I try to think how this news makes me feel, how it changes things. It does explain some things. Why my father never really treated me as his daughter. Why he was so abusive to both my mother and me. Maybe it also explains why Peyton and I are so close. Because we’re sisters after all.