Dad…
For the first time since she’d seen him that day on the street in Misty Peak, he didn’t have an angry scowl on his face. In fact, he looked pleased with himself.
The last memory suddenly hit her. The cloth over her mouth as she’d struggled with someone in the kitchen of the bar—it was him.
“You,” she whispered. “You drugged and kidnapped me.”
He raised a brow. “Surprised?”
No. And wasn’t that the saddest part? That she wasn’t surprised her own father would do something so horrific? The man who was supposed to raise her. Love her. Protect her.
Straightening her spine, she let the old hurt shift into anger before slowly forcing herself to her feet. Her head ached and her knees threatened to crumple, but she ignored it all, refusing tolet whatever her father had drugged her with keep her down. She needed to be on somewhat of an equal level with him for this conversation.
“Why?” The word was quiet but strong. “Because you still can’t take responsibility for your actions? You still can’t acknowledge that it wasyourfault you were arrested all those years ago? That you wouldn’t have been arrested had you not hurt your daughter or had those drugs?”
The smug expression slipped from his face, the scowl she’d grown so familiar with once again returning. “You were always an ungrateful little bitch. Even growing up, you didn’t show one ounce of gratitude for what your mother and I did for you.”
“What you did for me? You did nothing but hurt and disappoint me! Make me feel like I was a burden on you both. What exactly should I have been grateful for? The fact that you had no ability to regulate your emotions? Or maybe for beating your family whenever you lost your temper? The only thing I was ever grateful for was your arrest.”
Her father was across the room in a flash. She barely saw his fist coming before it slammed into her face. Pain cascaded through her skull as she fell back to the floor. It was so intense that bile rose in her throat, threatening to break free.
“How about being grateful that I didn’t fuckin’ end you when I could have?” Her father growled as he towered over her. “That I didn’t starve you. That I allowed you to go to school.”
Despite the pain, she could have laughed. So she was supposed to thank him for letting her exist? She probably should have kept her mouth shut, but the need to get her long-unspoken words out was greater than any self-preservation.
“You’re a sad excuse for a human being.”
The kick blasted through her ribs so hard that it stole her breath and caused her to curl into a ball. “No. That’syou. Eightyears. You tookeight yearsoff my life! Now I get eight years ofyours. That’s how this works.”
She turned his words over in her head a few times before they finally computed. Did he mean…
“You plan to keep me here for eight years?”
“Yep. Not so cocky now, are you?”
She shook her head, the pain barely registering now, white-hot panic taking its place. “You can’t do that.”
He crouched in front of her, his face blurring before her eyes. “Who’s gonna stop me?”
“I’m not on my own anymore. I have people in Misty Peak who care about me. They’ll search for me, and they won’t stop until they find me.”
“Let them try.” He rose to his feet and moved toward the door.
She tried to push up, but the pain in her ribs and head had her groaning and falling back down. “What are you going to do with me?” The words were supposed to be yelled, but she wasn’t even sure they reached him.
He stopped on the stairs and turned his head, that ugly grin back on his face. “Whatever the hell I want.” His eyes raked over her from head to toe. “You turned out decent looking. I’m thinking you can make me a pretty penny.”
Nausea welled in her belly.
“But for now,” he continued, “I’ll just let you lose your mind down here.”
Then he kept walking, like he hadn’t just revealed he was going to let his daughter rot in a basement while selling her body.
The panic rippled in her chest, gnawing at her insides and pulsing in her throat.
Don’t panic, Harper. Panic won’t get you out of here. You need a plan.
She was struggling to focus on her breathing when something poking into her hand caught her attention.
