“What’s the address to his residence?” Papa’s gaze narrowed. “Where do you live? Surely a smart girl like you knows that.”
Wait…what?
Why would he bother asking? If he was somehow tracking my phone, didn’t he already know? Or maybe he was pretending. It could be a cover-up for the text he’d sent about the weekly confession.
That seemed the more likely answer.
I gave him a non-answer. “I follow the guards when I drive. I haven’t looked at the street signs or the house—”
Something flew at my face.
I ducked just in time. A crash exploded behind me.
“Papa!” I scrambled back as he climbed out of his chair. “Papa, what is it?”
“You are next to useless,” he snarled, cheeks puffing. “Find out and text me. I want to know where you are, where your husband is. Got it?”
My father was right in my face. His finger shook as he glared at me.
“I’ll text you,” I hedged. “But…I’m often asleep before he comes home. And Liam leaves at the crack of dawn.”
Papa’s lip twitched in disgust. “Don’t lie. A husband goes to fuck his wife, no matter when he gets in.”
“Liam doesn’t,” I snapped.
It was the wrong tone. Or maybe the wrong thing to point out that my husband wasn’t some rutting hog.
Papa moved like the crack of a whip. The back of his hand slapped my face. The sting radiated through my jaw. Teeth ached. The flesh burned.
His voice dripped with poison. “You’re rotten enough that your husband doesn’t even want to fuck you.” Papa laughed, a vile, mechanical grating. “What a waste of a daughter. Get out, useless girl.”
I rushed to the door.
“And don’t forget to text me,” Papa warned as my sweaty hand slipped on the knob. “I want to knoweverything.”
As I rushed to the front door, not stopping to get ice for my face, but heading straight to the car, I vowed this was the last time I would come visit. It was a trend. Mama summoned me because she was allowed to accept my visits. But they would always come at a price. I didn’t know how I would throw my father off the scent. I only knew there was no way in hell that I would report Liam’s whereabouts.
The cost would be that my mother didn’t have her little visits.So be it.
Liam might be a monster, coming home covered in blood. Last night, I’d seen him from a crack in the door to the kitchen. Iwanted to know what he thought about the kitchen. If he hated or approved of my work, and what he did with the note about dinner. There’d been blood everywhere. He’d stunk of metal and death.
But Liam never laid a hand on me. Not when he’d been irritated. Not when he’d held me close, hauled me to his bed in the dead of night. He hadn’t even woken me to take his husbandly right. And that wasn’t because he didn’t want me as my father suggested. Dio sopra! That husband of mine wanted me. Badly. But he only tucked me into his bed and had fallen fast asleep.
I wasn’t betraying that kind of trust. My mama would have to find some other way to escape for an hour or two a week.
Chapter 23 – Gabriella
The first thing I did when I got home was order a new phone with my credit card. It would arrive late in the afternoon. Next, I put the pickles in a Tupperware container, smashed my phone with the handle of a cooking knife, and then dumped it in the glass container. The bleach glugged into the glass. Once it was filled, I twisted the jar lid tight. I hid the jar in the cupboard, planning to let the chemicals deteriorate the internal workings of the device for a few days before I threw it out.
Then I began to bake to cover the scent of cleaner.
Devious. Probably.
Necessary? Absolutely.
I was no man’s pawn in this underworld game. I didn’t know what my father wanted with his questions, but he would never find an ally in me.
***
