CHAPTER SEVEN
Cammie
I walked back up the driveway with a knot in my stomach, wondering if Colin was going to believe my lie, if he was going to see my tear-streaked cheeks and swollen eyelids, and think something else was up.
Luckily, I found both of my brothers and one of the usual guards standing out front waiting for me.
“Hey guys,” I said, offering them a small smile.
“Looks like you have another migraine,” Nicky, the elder of my younger brothers, said, frowning.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “And that quack just told me to take some vitamins,” I told them, waving the bag at them.
Nicky and Lucas were both similar in looks and builds. Both had the same sort of blond hair that I did and green eyes, though their’s were a slightly darker shade. They were both average height with average builds.
Nicky had been building his tattoo collection since he came of-age, but Lucas didn’t have any so far.
“Sucks,” Lucas said, shaking his head.
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “And these vitamins, if they even work, can take weeks to start being effective,” I told them, giving myself future headache excuses to miss dinners.
“Assholes. Couldn’t just give you the meds? You’re the one paying for it,” Nicky said, even though we both knew that he was the one paying for it.
Colin would have paid. Because he liked making me have to ask. Because he knew how disgusted and desperate I’d have to be to do it.
That was why Nicky had stepped in when I’d mentioned it to him.
Granted, yes, Nicky’s money was still Colin’s money, but the slight separation made me feel better about it.
I did feel a little guilty about lying to Nicky about it, but I knew he had enough to spare. And that it might, hopefully, put an end to this whole nightmare our lives had become.
I needed some of the money to pay for gas, then I’d gone ahead and treated myself to some crappy fast food to make up for the fact that I wasn’t sure that I had really gotten through to Massimo Grassi.
I was a little paranoid that someone could smell the greasy fries, hamburger, and onion rings on me.
See, Colin’s control was pretty complete. Which meant that unless my brothers snuck me something, I ate exactly what he provided and nothing else.
I ate a lot of salad and plain chicken and steamed vegetables. And, hey, there was nothing wrong with healthy food. I would eat many of the same things relatively often even if I was given the choice.
That being said, Colin’s motives were to “keep me the same weight I was in high school” because “so many women let themselves go after that.”
Which, yeah, was one of the scummiest things I’d ever heard him say which was saying something because most of what he said was scummy.
“Have you made any progress in getting Colin to let you take that job?” Nicky asked as he followed me through the garage and up the stairs that led to the apartment I’d been calling home for years.
I’d been trying to get him to let me work for years. To which he always reminded me that he “provided me with everything I need, so there is no reason to work.”
And that was always the end of that. He didn’t want to hear anything else about it.
I would drop it for a few months before bringing it up again, not wanting to piss him off too much, but also not willing to give in on the matter.
Recently, I actually had a little bit of hope. Because Colin and Cody’s parents owned a small deli, and there was a desperate opening for a reliable employee. My brothers and I figured that it would be a possibility because he would know that his parents would keep a close eye on me. Because, despite it being fucked up beyond measure, they were somehow okay with what he’d done to me.
I figured that maybe their motivations were monetary as well, wanting Colin to get the money that Cody had made, and the connections to make even more of it.
Either way, it never failed to make me a little sick to be around their mom.
I could somehow accept that his father, like all of his men, had just gone with it.