The words, the memory of that gaze lingering on her skin, stroking her naked back, caressing her flesh made her falter on the third step. She quickly recovered before the falter could be noticed and kept her voice cool.
"Isn't that why you doll me up?" she asked, her heart hardened over years of disappointment and hurt.
"He was gone from the place. You were too. And then he comes back and can't keep his eyes off you?"
Morana ignored his harsh words that evoked rough, physical memories, and kept climbing up.
"What were you doing with Tristan Caine?"
Her father followed after her, for the first time in her memory. He never came to her suite. It had always been summons for her.
Morana reached the landing and turned to him, gritting her teeth, the anger in his voice fuelling the cold inside her, the wheels in her head turning.
"I was having sex with him," she told him, her eyebrows raised in challenge.
She saw his arm come up to hit her, hover mid-air, and drop back down.
Her heart pounded, the cold, cold ice in her heart seeping deeper as she stood her ground.
"Tell me the truth," he demanded, his jaw clenched and eyes mad.
"I told you," Morana insisted, prodding him. "I was having wild sex with him in the bathroom with you right outside."
Her father sighed. "No, you weren't. You're not that kind of a girl. I raised you better."
Morana scoffed a laugh at that. "You didn't raise me at all." She was exactly that kind of girl. The heart of the daughter in her – the young girl who'd never won either her father's love or approval – ached. Morana hardened it again.
Her father narrowed his eyes. "What about the man on the bike? Who was he then?"
Morana smirked. "Oh, I slept with him too."
Technically, she had.
"Enough!" her father glared at her, his voice cutting, his accent deepening in the anger. "If you think I will not bring a doctor to have you checked, you are mistaken."
How dare he?
How fucking dare he?
Her blood boiled.
"I dare you," Morana snarled, her lips curling in a sneer. "You even think of bringing a doctor to violate me, I'll shoot her in the head and anyone else who comes near me."
"I've given you too much independence," he grit out, his dark eyes raging. "Too much. It's time it's put to a stop."
"Try to lock me in," Morana clenched her teeth, her voice lowering, her eyes glaring at the man who had spawned her, "and I will dump a heavy file on you right in the FBI's lap and serve you up like meat."
Her father gritted his teeth.
"Oh, I'd die too, but I'd take you down with me," Morana told him, uncaring about her own death. "Keep your nose out of my business, or I'll put mine in yours. And you wouldn't like it, Daddy."
The sarcastic emphasis on the word couldn't be missed. The threat lingering in the air couldn't be missed. The utter, black rage in her father's eyes couldn't be missed.
"You should have died," her father spit out, the words like bullets to her chest.
What? What was he talking about? She couldn’t ask.
Morana turned to leave but he gripped her arm tightly, swinging her around. "I'm not done!"