“I’m a monster,” he whispered brokenly to the girl on his lap.
“I like monsters,” she said, and grinned. And the next thing Preacher knew, she was nose to nose with him, licking the rum from his lips. He made a half-hearted attempt to push her head away while his own lolled backward, hitting the wall.
Giggling, she resumed tugging at his belt.
Too tired to move, too drunk to care, Preacher’s eyes began to close, and soon… everything faded to black.
Chapter 33
Present Day
Preacher released a shuddering sigh, and as the air fled his lungs, the light leached from his eyes. He slumped back against his pillows, looking shaken.
“Daddy?” I whispered. “What happened next?”
He turned his face just a fraction, enough for me to see the tears in his eyes. “I went home the next mornin’ and found you in your crib screamin’ something fierce. Hungry, diaper hadn’t been changed.”
I was gripping the bedrail so hard my knuckles had turned white. “Where was she?”
He shook his head. “She was gone, Eva.”
“Gone? As in—”
“As in half her shit was gone and so was she.”
I glanced up at Deuce. Standing beside me with one hand on my back, he was watching Preacher intently, every bit as captivated by the story as I was. Releasing the bedrail, I wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my jeans. “So she did run off, then?”
“Never woulda guessed she woulda left me—or you—like that.” Preacher’s voice began to quiver. Blinking rapidly, he swallowed several times. “But I fucked up, Eva. I said some shit I shouldn’t have. None of that shit was her fault. It was mine—it was all my fault.”
“Did you ever find out anything? Anything at all?” My voice was hoarse—strained with desperation. And my skin felt too tight, my lungs and throat, too—as if my last shreds of hope were strangling me.
“I kept thinkin’ she’d show back up after she cooled off. I kept thinkin’ that she had to come back… for you, at least.”
Tears burning in my eyes, emotion lodged in my throat, I could hardly speak. “So she didn’t come back?” I managed to ask. Deuce’s hand on my back began to move in soothing circular motions.
Preacher stared off across the room. “I was a mess—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I had Tiny stayin’ at the apartment, gave you to Joe and Sylvie, and I went lookin’ for her. Looked everywhere. Even filed a missing person’s report. That’s when the Feds came knockin’, tryin’ to say I did somethin’ to her. And that’s when I found out who she really was.”
Preacher released a chest-rattling sigh. “Elizabeth Stephens—that was her real name. Born and raised in Southern California. Parents were Linda and Daniel Stephens—blue-collar family. Daniel died in a car crash when she was only three years old. Fell asleep at the wheel. Linda worked odd jobs for a few years until she remarried some hotshot real estate developer from Newport Beach. Name was Bruce Holtz. Guy was loaded. And a real fuckin’ scumbag.”
Listening to Preacher, it sounded as though he’d memorized a file on my mother—which, knowing my father, he probably had.
“A few women filed rape charges against him over the years.” His eyes on the ceiling, Preacher shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ ever came of any of it—the charges were always dropped. Back then, things being the way they were, him being as rich as he was, I figured either nobody believed those poor girls, or he’d paid ‘em off.”
“Rape,” I repeated numbly. “Did he—”
“She never told me,” Preacher interrupted. “But with him bein’ such a fuckin’ scumbag, and her bein’ so damn scared of bein’ sent home, it wasn’t hard to put it all together.”
I closed my eyes and just breathed—an attempt to clear my head of the uncomfortable, painful images filling it. Just like my mother, I knew what it was like to be violated by someone who’d been like family to me. Had she blamed herself, too?
It certainly wasn’t something I was glad to share with her, but it did help me understand why she’d been so secretive, and why she lied to everyone. Even the fear that had caused her to betray Preacher to the FBI made sense.
“What happened to Holtz?” It was Deuce who spoke. The hand on my back stilled, and I opened my eyes to find my husband staring at my father, a menacing gleam in his eyes.
Looking between them, seeing a similar expression on Preacher’s face, I swallowed hard. It was easy to forget the kind of men they were—how cold and detached they could be when it came to those who’d wronged them or dared to hurt the people they loved.
Preacher smiled faintly—a slight baring of teeth. “He died the followin’ year. Got carjacked at gunpoint, and took a bullet in each eye.”
“The followin’ year?” Deuce sounded amused.
