My fight with Titan allowed me to spend extra time with her today. I’ve been so wrapped up in him and spend too much time up at Kingdom. I’m needed here. I’m wanted here. Even if my relationship with my mother isn’t perfect, at least I know she loves me. Titan was just that itch I wanted to scratch. I wish it would have been a letdown.
I go downstairs and enter the kitchen to grab a drink but hear a noise coming from down the hall. It sounded like glass breaking. “Hello?” I call out.
My mother has two nurses that change shift. One is always here and stays upstairs with her. Maybe Liv couldn’t sleep tonight either. “Liv?”
No answer.
I make my way down the hall and see my father’s office door ajar. “Hello?” I ask again, pushing it all the way open. “What the hell?” I say when I get a look inside.
His desk drawers are open. One lies on the floor. Papers scatter the room. A picture has been removed from the wall and shattered on the Persian rug, to reveal a safe that I didn’t know was there. It’s still closed.
I place my hand in the pocket of my robe. “Shit.” I left my cell upstairs on the bed.
“Open it.” I feel something shoved into the back of my head.
My heart begins to pound, and I throw my hands up in the air. I don’t need to see it to know that it’s a gun. “I … uh …”
“Open it!” a man shouts, shoving me forward with his hand on my back.
I trip over the rug and feel glass puncture my bare feet. “I don’t know it.” My voice shakes.
“Bullshit!” he says through gritted teeth. “Fucking open the safe or I will put a bullet in your head.”
I’m trying to think of what my father would use for a combination. My mother’s birthday. Maybe their wedding anniversary. But I quickly squash that idea. It turns out, they didn’t like each other as much as they made me believe. “I don’t know …”
He grabs a hold of my hair, and I cry out. He shoves my face into the wall beside the safe but holds me up with his tight grip.
“Please?” I beg as tears run down my face. I try to catch my breath and can taste the blood in my mouth.
“Last time,” he growls in my ear. I feel his spit hit my neck, and I want to vomit. “Fucking open this safe or I will splatter your brains all over it for Daddy to find.”
I blink. My heart stops, and my body goes rigid at his words.This guy thinks he’s alive.“He’s … dead,” I manage to get out.
“Fucking open it!” He shakes my head, my scalp burning from how tightly he holds my hair.
I grit my teeth, place my hands on the wall, and try to get out of his hold. “He’s fucking dead!” I shout, thrusting my elbow back and making contact with his ribs.
He lets out a grunt and slams my head into the safe. Once. Twice. Then he shoves me to the side. My body hits my father’s desk before falling to the floor. I try to look up at the man in the room, but my busted face can’t see anything. I feel his shoe to my ribs, though. I curl up into a ball for protection when he does it again. This time, it was my back.
“I’ll get that money,” he growls, out of breath. “I’ll be back, and you better have the code.”
He runs out of the room.
I grab the side of the desk and manage to get to my feet as I hear the front door open and slam close. On shaky legs, I make my way up the stairs.
“Emilee.” Liv gasps as she exits my mother’s room at the end of the hall on the second floor. “What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?”
I nod and wrap my arms around my stomach. “Fine,” I hiss. “Check on my mother.”
“She’s okay. I was in there with her.”
I make my way to the third floor and enter my room and grab my phone. I dial the only person who I can think of to help me right now.
TITAN
I bring mycar to a stop. Bones and I exit and run up the stairs and into the York residence. “Where is she?” I ask the nurse who had opened the door for us.
“Office.”
