Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I have no choice this time, either. My feet are heavy, though, about as heavy as the lead weight that replaced my heart sometime today. With every step, all I can do is remember the flat, endless pain in a pair of baby blue eyes. All of the light drained from them. I wonder if she’ll ever get it back.
He’s already settled in at his desk, leaning back in his chair with his ankles crossed on top. “A little birdie told me you made him unhappy last night.”
I’m so deep in my own shit, it takes a second for me to understand what he’s talking about. I have to go back through the events of last night, trying to pinpoint what he could mean.
It doesn’t take long. My fists tighten when I remember how pissed that piece of shit got when I denied him Tamson. “Oh? He came running to you?” I ask, trembling at the memory. I almost wish he had tried to force me aside. It would’ve given me an excuse to do what I’m imagining now.
“I guess he was looking forward to it,” Dad murmurs, almost sad. For her, or for Dante? Wait, who am I kidding? Why would he consider what Tamson went through?
A ripple of cold disgust races through me before I mutter, “What can I say? I don’t like sharing my toys.”
A laugh bursts out of him like he was trying hard to hold it back all this time. “Listen, I’m only fucking with you. I know you don’t like to share, and I can’t blame you.” And now he’s self-indulgent, generous, gulping back his coffee before setting the mug down and waving a hand. “That’s why I got you a present. Just for you. No sharing.”
I’m too tired and too fucked in the head to make any sense out of this. “A present?”
“Up in your room. All yours, for as long as you want. Go on,” he urges, waving again. “I have work to do. You go enjoy yourself like you did last night,” he adds with another indulgent chuckle that freezes me inside. Like there was anything to enjoy last night.
How have I spent my life living with this man but been so fundamentally different inside? The things he does, he does because he enjoys it. He loves his work. It’s a good day if he can make someone else cry—or bleed.
I’ve only ever done it out of duty. And I still have enough humanity left in me to be capable of regret. I guess that’s the kind of shit you have to learn to turn off if you want to survive in the world he’s built around himself.
I walk through that world now, seeing everything around me but not really seeing it. Like none of it is real. The guards casually strolling the grounds outside the windows as I walk by. Staff in the kitchen, fixing food. The housekeeper vacuuming one of the rugs. It’s happening all around me, but I might as well be on another planet. The one where there’s any hope of Tamson and me being together, like we’ve imagined. Somehow, that world feels a hell of a lot more real than anything around me now.
I take the stairs two at a time, hurrying more out of curiosity than anything else. What could Dad have left me? I think I know, because I know the way his mind works, but I need to see for myself.
And what I see once I reach my room makes a certain, sick sort of sense.
At a quick glance, she could be Tamson. Petite, blonde, with big blue eyes that stare at me expectantly. She’s young, too—probably just on the legal side of eighteen. But barely.
He deliberately chose a girl who would remind me of her. This is my reward. And I’m supposed to keep her as long as I want. Jesus Christ.
She bites her lip, and I guess she’s supposed to be seductive, but right now, she’s anything but. “Hi,” she murmurs with a come-hither smile. “I heard the boss’s son was hot, but I didn’t know how hot until just now.”
She’s new. Not just to Dad’s payroll, but to this whole world. She’s clumsy, obvious, leaning back on her palms while sitting on the foot of the bed and spreading her legs in a skirt that barely covers her ass in the first place.
I’m only human. Of course, my attention drifts down to those spread thighs and the smooth, shaved pussy she’s revealed. “I heard you were a very good boy who deserves a reward. Do you like what you see?” she purrs.
I am so fucking tired. Of all of it. The performance, the fakeness of it all. I didn’t know how fake my world really was until I met someone authentic—someone who opened me up to thoughts and feelings I avoided before. I wish I could still avoid them. Life wasn’t easy, but it was easier than this. Feeling like one giant, exposed nerve, sensitive to even a faint breeze.