“I can’t process this right now.” The man who raised me wouldn’t do the things Chandler accused him of. Betrayal exploded in my chest, shattering my heart into a thousand pieces. “But I do know one thing. Using my body to pay for his sins doesn’t give you atonement. It makes you just like him.”
Day three:
There is no escape.
There is no prince.
There are no heroes.
The sunlight crept through the cracks in the curtains in my room. Even though we were still hours away from nightfall, I curled up in a ball underneath my covers. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to drain the thoughts from my mind. Grey was right. I was better off not knowing.
My heart refused to see the truth, but my mind wouldn’t let it go. I remembered the call where Chandler had saidhelpless young girlsand my father didn’t ask what he meant. He didn’t even argue. All he said was that he wasn’t alone, and he needed more time. More time for what? To continue hurting them? If all this was a lie, then why was he cooperating? Why was he tellingmeto cooperate?
If it wasn’t a lie, then my father was a monster. Whatever had a hold on him was so sick and twisted that he was willing to sacrifice his own daughter to keep doing it. Even if I could get out of here, I no longer wanted to go home. They had won. All my fight was gone, and it wasn’t even my war.
The kind of things that would give someone like you nightmares if you knew.
Da spent a lot of time traveling. That was part of the reason I didn’t entirely question him sending me here in the beginning. Now, I wondered where he always went. Why weren’t there ever publicity pictures? Why weren’t we allowed to contact him? And then there was Sadie. She was so much younger than Da.
God, I felt so stupid.
I’d been so blind.
All my life he’d spoonfed me lies and I swallowed them whole.
I hurled out of bed and ran to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time. There wasn’t enough food in my system to completely throw up, so I was left leaning over the porcelain bowl dry heaving until my stomach cramped.
As I soaked a washcloth in cold water and ran it over my face, my mind raced through a million questions. How many girls? What other things had he done? Did my mother know? Was he the knight she told me about? The one with dark secrets behind shiny armor? Or was he the villain?
Liam. Oh my god. How was I supposed to tell my brother?
Ma would have known the right words to say to soothe me. She would have had the perfect story to read to help me escape. Sometimes if it was quiet enough and I lie very, very still, I could almost feel her with me. I could smell her shampoo. When I’d had a bad day, she would take me to the gardens behind the palace and we would take turns chasing butterflies, then give them names. Now, I just wanted to be one of those butterflies, so I could spread my wings and fly away. I missed the simplicity of it all.
I missed her.