by K. M. Scott
“You know, you really were my favorite. Still are, if I’m being honest. I meant it when I said you were my adopted son. Then again, it’s family that can hurt you the most more often than not. Right, son?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question. Nobody knew how to hurt his family more than Robert, but he seemed to be referring more to my hurting him than his hurting his children and me.
His arm jerked behind him and suddenly I saw a gun pointed down at me. “I know all about what you’ve been up to with the FBI. You didn’t think I’d figure it out? I figured it out with your friend Jesse before you too.”
Terror raced through me, making my mouth go dry. “I didn’t know what you’d figure out. Did you intentionally send me to get rid of him that night because you found out he was working with the FBI?”
Robert pursed his lips. “Kill two birds with one stone, although because of you the other bird had to wait a bit.”
So Jesse has been working with the FBI against him.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“I think I can say the same thing. I just want you to know a few things before I say goodbye.”
His voice caught on the word goodbye. Circling around me, he grabbed my gun before I had the chance to pull it on him and even the odds, leaving me at his mercy.
When he came back around to stand in front of me again, he had a gun in each hand and both aimed at me. “I might not be a young buck like you, but I still know all the tricks.”
“They came to me and threatened to have the cops get me for what happened in West Virginia, Robert. I couldn’t let that happen to Serena and Cayden.”
He winced, like something I said hurt him. “And does my daughter know what you were doing with the FBI?”
I nodded. “She knows.”
“And just like that her loyalties to her father are replaced by loyalty to you,” he said with a disgusted sneer.
His ability to be ignorant to how he’d treated her amazed me. “How can you expect her to be loyal to you at all? You pretty much set this in motion with every time you treated her like shit, Robert. Just since I came into the picture, you exiled her to another continent away from the only home she ever knew, brought her back just to imprison her in that home, married her off to a man she didn’t love, beat me senseless for protecting her, and killed her mother. And just recently, you brought Kitty to the house to live. What did you expect?”
“I’m guessing you’re the reason she left the other night,” he said in a low voice.
The news that Kitty had moved out surprised me. “I have no idea why she left. Maybe she realized how shitty a thing it was to be there around Serena and me. Then again, for someone who would kill his daughters’ mother, what you did with Kitty was nothing.”
Staring past me, he got a faraway look in his eyes, and I expected to hear him claim he didn’t kill Alita. Not that I’d believe him. I knew he did it.
But instead he said, “Those aren’t the reasons why my daughter so willingly turned against me.”
“I don’t know what made her do it, Robert. I just know you terrify and upset her, now more than ever since Cayden came along. I think she worries you’re going to take him away and make him like you.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Did she ever tell you about when she was kidnapped as a little girl? She was only around seven years old.”
“Yeah. It’s the reason she hates shoes and why you brought her home to be taught there because she was so traumatized by the whole thing.”
He stared down at me and shook his head again, his mouth stretching to a thin line across his face. “It never happened.”
“What do you mean? Don’t bother telling me that Serena’s a liar because I know better.”
“It never happened. Everything she thinks happened is a false memory. I had to do something because she overreacted and I couldn’t have her telling anyone. I’d gotten rid of her mother and I’d convinced her sister she couldn’t be believed, but I didn’t think she’d react that way. When she did, I had to come up with something fast. So that’s what I did.”
I’d never seen Robert look like this. His face twisted into a strange expression that looked like a mix between fear and satisfaction.
“What are you talking about? Are you saying you had your own daughter kidnapped? Why?” I asked, horrified at even the thought of someone doing that to their child.
“I didn’t expect her to react that way. I was her father, after all. I’d tucked her into bed every night after her mother left. But she started crying and I hadn’t even done much of anything, but I couldn’t get her to stop crying. So I had to think fast and come up with something believable.”
My mind whirled with confusion. What the fuck was he saying?
“Why would she cry, Robert? What did you do to make her cry like that?” I asked, unsure I wanted the answer.
“I’ve always loved Serena more. She was my favorite of the two of them. She’d sit on my lap and play with my tie with her little fingers. I was never happier than when she was next to me.”
No.
He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was saying.
But he kept talking, like he needed me to know his darkest secret before he killed me.
“She was crying and I didn’t know what to do, so I had someone take her for a few days and they made sure she remembered only the kidnapping. But then her teacher told me she kept talking about it to the other students at school and suggested she needed professional help. I couldn’t risk her saying anything to anyone, so I brought her home to be tutored there.”
“Are you fucking saying you did something to her that night? Something a father shouldn’t do, Robert? Is that what you’re fucking telling me?” I asked as my heart began to pound so loud I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear his answer because of sound of the beating in my ears.
“I loved her like I’d never loved anyone else in the world. I’d never felt that way for anyone before Serena. I didn’t dare try again, though, because I couldn’t just have her kidnapped again.”
Lost in his thoughts, he looked like he didn’t even know I was still there, so I took the chance and charged him. He fell to the ground easily, the guns skidding across the concrete as his hands hit. He stared up at me in surprise, and for a moment, I just looked down at him, finally knowing what kind of monster he really was at last.
Then something in my brain snapped as the horrible image of him abusing Serena all those years ago settled into my mind, and I cocked my arm back like I would with anyone I’d taken to the ground in a fight. I pushed my fist forward with all I had, slamming into his face so hard I heard his cheekbone crack.
“You fucking bastard! How could you do that to her?” I screamed over and over as I hit him harder than I’d ever hit any fighter I’d faced.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to. He raised his hands to try to defend himself the first few times, but it was no use. I pounded his face over and over for what he’d done to Serena. For all the abuse she’d suffered over the years at the hands of a monster who claimed to love her most.
I beat him with my bare hands until I couldn’t feel anything in them anymore. My bloody and raw knuckles landed onto his face until he was unrecognizable. I didn’t even know if he was still alive when I sat back on my heels, exhausted and still so full of rage I didn’t know what to do with myself as tears streamed down my face.
He lay there motionless, and I didn’t care if I’d killed him.
Whatever I did to him was nothing compared to what he’d done to her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Serena
The bedroom door opened and Ryder walked in and said nothing as he picked up Cayden. Holding him to his chest, he kissed him and looked over at me.
“I need to take a shower, but I needed to see this little guy and you more.”
His knuckles looked like he’d spent the last hour sparring with a cinder block. I
scanned his face but saw no cuts or bruises, but he didn’t look right. Something was definitely wrong.
I hurried over to him, and he put his arm around me. “Are you okay, Ryder? You look awful. What happened? Did my father make you fight someone? I sat here the whole time worried he’d spring that on you.”
Shaking his head, he frowned. “I’m okay. He had a surprise for me, but I’m fine now. I want you to take Cayden to his crib and put him down for the night. I need to talk to you.”
My blood ran cold at the seriousness of his tone. “Why? What’s wrong? What did he do?”
He kissed me and then kissed the baby. “Just take him and come back, okay? It’s all going to be fine. I promise.”
I did as he said and found him coming out of the shower when I returned. A quick study of his body told me whatever had caused the cuts on his knuckles hadn’t touched him anywhere else.
He rubbed a towel over his wet hair and then looked up at me with an expression that made my heart sink. I’d only seen fear in his eyes once or twice before, but never like this.
“What is it, Ryder? What happened? He can’t send you away, right? We’re married. Even he can’t change that.”
“It’s not that,” he said, stepping forward to kiss me softly on the lips.
“Then what is it? You’re scaring me. I’ve never seen you like this.”
He gently pressed his hands against my cheeks and stared into my eyes. “I have to tell you something.”
I covered his hands with mine and felt like my entire world was falling apart as I stood there looking up at him. “What? What is it, Ryder?”
“I did it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t go there to do that, but he started talking about…”
Shaking his head, he slid his hands from my face and pulled me into him. “I’m sorry. He’s dead, Serena.”
Dead? I stood there in his arms as the news that my father was gone settled into my mind. I’d thought about life after him so many times, but that had always been something that might happen at some point in the future when he grew old and finally left this world.
But now Ryder was saying he was dead.
I leaned back away from him and stared up at him in disbelief. “Dead? He’s really gone?”
“I didn’t go there to do that, Serena. He pulled a gun on me. He got me there to kill me.”
“Why?”
Ryder hung his head. “He knew all about me talking to the FBI. He wasn’t going to just let that kind of betrayal go.”
I pressed a kiss onto his still wet hair and whispered, “What now? Are you going to be arrested? It was self-defense, right? They won’t put you in jail for that. You didn’t have a choice. You have the right to defend yourself.”
With each word, my voice pitched higher as my panic began to take over. My father couldn’t win. Ryder didn’t deserve to pay for just defending himself.
He lifted his head and tried to smile. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Serena. I don’t know if anyone is going to believe it was self-defense since all I have are some busted knuckles and he’s…”
I watched as he couldn’t even say the word. Dead. I knew I should have been sad. This was my father and he was gone, but I didn’t even feel like crying. After all I’d been through, I didn’t have any more tears for him.
All I felt was relief.
And complete terror at the thought that Ryder would be put away for life after all we’d gone through at the hands of my father.
“I won’t let them take you away. They can’t. Not after all we’ve been through because of him, Ryder. This can’t happen. He can’t win in the end. I won’t let him!”
He held me by my shoulders as I began to sob. “I’m not afraid of paying for what I did. He had it coming and it was self-defense, but I’m not sure anyone’s going to believe that. I’m going to stay here with you and hold you in my arms, and when Cayden wakes up, we’re going to go into his room and spend however long we want with him. If they come for me, they come. I told you I’d protect you and our son, and that’s what I did.”
“But I can’t stand the idea that after everything we’ve been through that he’s going to win in the end.”
Taking my hand in his, he brought it to his lips and kissed my fingers. “Whatever happens, you’re safe now. Whether I’m here or not, you won’t have to worry anymore.”
I wrapped my arms around him and clung to his neck, afraid at any moment I’d hear a knock on the door and the police would be there to take him away forever. “Don’t talk like that! I don’t want to even think about you not being here, Ryder. Cayden and I need you!”
“It’s going to be okay. I promise. Just believe me. You’re safe now.”
We lay together silently for hours until Cayden’s cries came through the baby monitor, and then the two of us walked down to his nursery. Ryder sat at my feet as the baby fed, watching like it might be the last time he saw the action that had been commonplace before. I wanted to burst into tears, but I didn’t because if this was the last night we all had together, it was going to be the way we always dreamed life would be.
Happy and content.
When we woke up in the morning, we warily walked down to the kitchen, the two of us expecting at any moment to hear that knock on the door.
But it didn’t come.
Day after day, we continued to live like we always had, except the fear that at some point someone would come looking for Ryder hung over our heads. I did as he suggested and reported my father missing and told Janelle about him not coming home. I’d expected the police to launch a major investigation like they did on TV when important people went missing, but all they did was take my information and assured me they would be in touch when they had any news to tell me. Janelle barely acknowledged him being missing. I’d expected her to be upset, but she never even called back after I told her.
Every night I asked Ryder why no one seemed to miss my father. None of his men came to the main house, and by the time a week had passed without any sign of my father’s return, they had all left and I began to wonder if anyone cared at all that he seemed to have just disappeared.
And then one day nearly two weeks after Ryder came home that night with bloody knuckles, the police came to the front door. I answered it and felt every ounce of my strength evaporate when I looked out and saw the two men standing in their dark blue uniforms.
“Officers?”
“Miss, we’re here to speak to a relative of Robert Erickson’s. Are you his daughter?” one officer asked in a grave voice.
“Yes,” I answered, my mouth bone dry.
“May we come in?”
The last thing I wanted to do was let the police in, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. Stepping back out of the way, I put on my biggest smile.
“Sure. Please come in.”
My hands shook as I closed the door behind them, and when I turned to face them, I saw not the authoritarian expressions I’d expected but sympathetic ones. The man who spoke before took a deep breath and said, “Miss, we’re sorry to have to tell you this, but your father was found dead in the bay. He’s been dead over a week.”
I didn’t have to playact at hearing the news. I’d bottled up my emotions since that night my father ordered Ryder to the warehouse, and now that he’d been found, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. Right there in front of the two officers, I sobbed uncontrollably, but not for the reason they thought.
They tried to be kind and expressed their condolences, but it all felt so surreal. I knew who had killed my father and I didn’t blame him one bit. I knew very few people would understand why, and maybe both Ryder and I were bad people.
All I knew was I was finally free.
* * *
Janelle, Charles, Ryder, and I sat around the dining table listening to my father’s lawyer read his will. After a week of dealing with the business of his death, this one last detail remained. My sister eagerly waited to hear the financial details about what h
e had left her, and even though she and her husband hadn’t lived together for months, he sat next to her very interested in his wife’s family, for once.
Ryder and I held hands under the table as the lawyer began to get to who had been left what. The man pushed his glasses up his nose and stopped reading for a moment before he lifted his head and stared down the table at Janelle and me.
“Mr. Erickson left everything—his businesses, the estate, and all his holdings—to one person.”
I looked across the table at her and smiled. “He always did like you best.”
His favoritism of Janelle didn’t bother me so much anymore. I never understood why, but I’d never been enough. Maybe I was too much like my mother.
My sister, always the humble one, grinned at her imminent windfall. “I won’t throw you guys out, so don’t worry. I’m nicer than that, Serena. I would never send my nephew out into the streets.”
I squeezed Ryder’s hand and bit my tongue. Nice had never been a word I’d thought of to describe Janelle.
“Thanks. It’s nice to know we won’t be homeless.”
The lawyer cleared his throat, and we all directed our attention to the head of the table to hear him say Janelle had gotten everything. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose once more and began reading again.
“As I said, your father left everything to one person. Ryder Rhodes. Neither of you are mentioned anywhere in the will.”
My mouth dropped open in shock, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janelle and her husband instantly become enraged. I don’t know why I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been. My father always wanted a son, and in Ryder that’s what he’d gotten.
Janelle jumped up out of her seat and screamed, “Are you fucking kidding me? This stray he brought home gets everything? After all he did to make my life miserable, he left me nothing? Over my dead body!”
She stormed out, followed by her husband, leaving the three of us sitting there, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Made her life miserable? She didn’t have a clue.