“But I also vowed that if I had a daughter, I would make sure she never, ever had to face the sort of shit my father and I did,” he said. “A son? Sure, go fucking fight. But a daughter? You? No. You were not going to suffer—”
“You say that like I couldn’t handle this, Dad,” I said. “And it’s not like ‘suffering’ is bad. I’m not going to starve. I’m not going to war. I might lose a job or go through a breakup, but I can handle that suffering.”
My father just groaned as if I was too stupid to understand it.
“I gave you a life that I never had,” he said. “And you chose to reject it. No, even worse. You chose to run away from it. And why? So you could indulge in some... alcohol? Some day drinking? With the fucking Reapers?”
I tried my best to not make it obvious I knew what he was talking about, but his persistence was wearing down what little façade I had left.
“I don’t know…”
“Lilly, one of the perks of being your father is I know you very well. And I know when you’re lying.”
I didn’t say anything. My father snickered.
“OK, fine. Let me spell it out for you. A week ago. Tom’s Billiards in Ashton. We were able to locate your phone there. I sent two of my men down. You hid, likely in the women’s bathroom. The only reason we didn’t finish the job was because you made nice with two of the fucking Reapers. The enemy! You’re lucky I’m your father. Rusty would have beaten you for such a betrayal. If you were lucky.”
I didn’t care about my grandfather. He’d died when I was so young, I could only remember him in the most abstract sense. I didn’t have any specific memories of him. He was just there, and really, my father had almost never spoken about him before this conversation. I just imagined he didn’t want to remember some of the harsher moments of him.
Maybe madness was pushing him to recall, to revere, his old man.
“So let me ask you this, now, since I know why you ran away,” he said. “Where did you hide the last, oh, ten days, give or take?”
Now that was a question I absolutely, unequivocally, could not answer. Not if I wanted the towns of Springsville and Ashton to still exist by the end of the weekend.
“I bounced around from place to place—”
“Bullshit!” my father snapped with unbridled fury. “Do not fucking lie to me, Lilly! I have a pretty damn good idea of where you were. You’re already in deep trouble when you get home, don’t fucking make it worse for yourself!”
And then, like someone had literally thrown a switch on him, he smiled, chuckled, and put his hands on his knees, looking quite at ease.
“Now, where did you stay? The more you tell me the truth, the less trouble you’ll be in.”
I shook my head. I laid down across the platform I was sitting on, staring straight at the roof of the van, and put my arm over my eyes.
“Such a child, trying to ignore me like this,” he said. “Perhaps you were staying with Cole Carter?”
Oh, fuck.
I swallowed. I prayed he didn’t notice the tension in my body. My father never had truly paid attention to me, but now, I was under a microscope.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said. “I just bounced around from place to place.”
My father sighed.
And then something strange happened.
He didn’t say a word.
For the duration of the entire ride, in fact, all the way back to my house, he did not say a single word. I wondered if this was some sort of mind game to get me to talk, but there was never a moment where he pushed the issue. It was almost eerie how quiet he became.
Finally, we got back to the house, along with a few other bikers. He gathered them all around, with me still in the van.
“My daughter has decided that she would prefer to try and protect the lives of the Reapers who kidnapped her than to tell her father the truth,” he growled. “Whatever sort of shit they pulled to make her this way, we cannot forgive. It is time to remove any rules, any fear that we have, and strike them at their homes. And we will begin with the residence of Cole Carter.”
What? No!
“He lives in Ashton at the Fairway Apartment Complex. Apartment 312.”
“Dad!”
“Oh, so now you want to talk?” he said with a snicker, which led many of the other bikers to laugh. “We will kill Cole first. And then we will kill Lane and that fucking deputy DA girlfriend of his. And then we will move down the line, wiping out these assholes where they sleep. This will be the end of the Reapers!”
The crowd cheered. Tears formed in my eyes. All of this, just because I’d tried to just have some freedom.
And now, Cole would die.
