Someone I hated putting in Damon’s path, but I wasn’t sure I had a choice.
“Hey,” Ethan called out from the running car. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, feeling the car brush my thighs and knowing he’d opened the door for me. “I’m fine.”
It was just after midnight, and a shiver snaked up my arms as I exhaled the chilly air outside my front gate and held on to Mikhail. Of course, my mother might see headlights, so I’d told my friend to pick me up down the road, honking three times in a pattern of two quicks and one slow to alert me he’d arrived.
Awareness made the hair on my body stand up. Damon hadn’t come back tonight, but as long as nothing had changed, then he was still the same. He liked to be up at night, so he could still be on his way, and I needed to hurry if I was going to put miles between me and this town before anyone found out I was gone.
I should’ve left when the feds came after my dad more than a month ago. I knew more was going on. Or I should’ve left two days ago when my mother and sister were summoned to a meeting with Damon’s father, and Arion came out engaged. But I was leaving now. I wasn’t spending a single night with him in this house.
My duffel was pulled out of my hands, and I knew Ethan had taken it to toss in the backseat.
“Hurry up. It’s cold,” he said.
I climbed in, forcing the dog into the backseat and pulled the door closed, fastening my seatbelt.
A strand of hair, loose from my ponytail, brushed across my lips before getting sucked into the corner of my mouth with all of my panting. I nudged it out of the way.
“Are you sure about this?” Ethan asked.
“I can’t stay in that house,” I told him. “I’ll leave them to whatever sick game they want to play.”
“He won’t let you go.” I could hear him shift into gear again and the engine rev. “He won’t let any of you go. Your mother, your sister, you… In his mind, you all belong to him now. You, especially.”
The car took off, I pressed back into my seat, and with every inch we sped away from my family’s home, the non-existent breath on my neck got hotter. I hadn’t slept well in a while, but from this moment on, I’d always be looking over my shoulder.
You, especially. Ethan was one of my best friends, and he knew the whole story and how bad this was for me.
“He only married Arion because she was easy. She said yes,” Ethan warned. “It’s you he wants.”
I remained silent, clenching my teeth so hard they ached.
Damon didn’t want me. He wanted to torment me. He wanted me to hear him in the next room with my sister every night. He wanted to see me sitting quietly at the breakfast table, nervous with my knees shaking, wondering if he was watching me and what he was going to do next. He wanted to kill any peace of mind I’d achieved these last years with him tucked away in jail.
I let out a breath. “I don’t care if he comes after me. I’m twenty-one years old. Whether or not I stay in that house now isn’t his decision.”
“But it is in his power to let you leave,” Ethan retorted. “He’ll bring in guards if he has to. We need to be ready.”
I knew he was right. Legally, I could do whatever I wanted, but Damon wouldn’t care about that. With or without my consent, he’d keep me wherever he wanted me.
I still had to try, though. And never stop.
“I’m not scared of him,” I murmured. “Not anymore.”
“And your mom and sister? What he’ll do to them if you don’t come home…”
Which was nothing different than he was already going to do, I finished for him.
“They knew what happened to me when we were kids. And what he did to me five years ago,” I pointed out. “And they still brought him back into our lives. They put me back in his path, because of the money. Not only did they not protect me, but they put us all back in danger. Damon’s family is bad.”
Arion’s behavior didn’t surprise me. We’d been wealthy our entire lives, and she’d always wanted him. Having money again and being his wife, even if he was the cause of all our recent troubles, was more than she could’ve hoped for. She might even be happy this all happened in the first place.
But my mother was a different story. She knew what inviting him into our lives would mean. She knew his end game here, and she didn’t protect me.
And as much as Ari and I didn’t get along, I didn’t want her suffering.
And Damon would make her life hell. What he’d said in the car was no doubt accurate. She’d be popping pills to dull the pain of his treatment sooner or later. How could my mother let this happen? Was she really that scared to lose her home? Was she that worried about how we’d survive?