“Great.” Coach glances at me and nods. “Enjoy your weekend.”
I follow my father out the door, curious and somewhat sick. I’m not sure what he’s planning or what he’s already done. We stand in silence in the elevator and exit on the floor with the suites. I saw him watching me with his friends during the game, but I was more interested in Violet.
Violet, who has pulled a disappearing act.
Worry squirms in my stomach.
And yet, I’m not entirely surprised when we arrive at my father’s suite, and the man who had been posted outside the door steps aside to reveal Violet and another woman.
Her mother?
Violet sits in the corner, her legs drawn up to her chest. And the other woman, identity to be confirmed, paces in front of the glass. On the ice, the Zamboni is making slow passes. There are still people lingering in the seats, taking their time filing out. The last dregs, it would seem.
My teammates are long gone.
At our entrance, the woman stops moving. Violet shoots to her feet.
“You’re bringing him into this?” the woman spits.
My father doesn’t react. He just watches her for a moment, then nods to his guard who followed him in. He’s one of the newer bodyguards, unlike some of the others my father employs who have been around since I was a kid. I don’t even know this one’s name.
This one doesn’t seem to have a moral compass, because he marches over to the woman and grips her forearm, hauling her toward us.
“It’s about time he learned the family secrets, don’t you think?” He shakes his head at her, then gestures to the woman. “This is Leigh Reece, Greyson. Violet’s mother.”
As I suspected.
When I don’t react, Dad faces her. “I’ll get to you in a moment. Let’s have a little chat about your daughter.”
My shoulders inch higher. He better not have his guard manhandle her like he did to her mother, or I’ll go fucking mental.
“Violet.” There’s a new chill in Dad’s voice, laced with something like… disappointment?
She cringes, still sitting in the far corner. She seems so fucking small like that, and I clench every muscle in my body to stop myself from reacting. I need to know what my father is planning—and that means he has to reveal a few more cards before I can act.
He doesn’t wait for her to stand. He sends his fucking guard over there with a look, and I ball my hands into fists to stop myself from reacting when he bodily lifts her out of the chair and marches her over to us. She lets out a squeak, and her gaze cuts to me.
I can stop him, she’s thinking. And she’s wondering what keeps me immobile two steps behind him.
When the bodyguard releases her next to her mother, she takes a quick step back. My father pins her with a glower, and she goes still.
“You and I had an agreement, young lady.”
She swallows. Her throat moves, and she brings her hands in front of her. Her fingers tangle together. I hate her nerves and that she ended up here. How did she even get up here? Was she caught by my father’s guard like a fish in a net… or something worse? Led here by her mother? Or perhaps she came up here simply because he asked.
But this is the confirmation I needed that he did do something. And this is the last time he’s going to see Violet. I’m going to make sure of that.
My dad glances at me. “She was going to stay away from you.”
How did my father turn into this?
I have so many questions, and I know I won’t get the answers I want.
“Her physical therapy is expensive, and little Violet Reece hopes to be a ballerina again one day. Since you took that away from her, I assumed it wouldn’t be a hardship on her to just stay away.” Dad narrows his eyes at her. “But she couldn’t do it, could she?”
Her mother gasps. “Physical therapy?”
“No,” Violet says. Her voice is steady, her expression bland. She ignores her mother and instead tells me directly. No, she’s not going to put up with this. And I can tell she’s trusting me to catch her, since she’s abandoning any chance of lying.
“Our agreement is null and void,” he snips. He waves a hand, and that guard-turned-lackey retrieves a folder from Dad’s briefcase across the room. When the pages settle into Dad’s hand, he flips through it. “Four thousand, four hundred sixty-three dollars and fifty-two cents,” he says slowly. “You can write a check… or I’ll take cash.”
He holds it out for her.
I step forward and take the folder from his hand, opening it to the first page. An invoice.
“Well, this is fascinating.” I run my finger down the list of itemized charges, which of course included her therapy bills, but also include service charges, labor, and tax. It’s laughable. And completely ridiculous. The labor and service charges are almost forty percent of this invoice.
Leave it to my father to try and bury her for this.
“Greyson.” Dad snaps his fingers at me.
Of all things.
I can’t fake my way through this anymore.
“Fuck off, Dad.”
Wow. That felt better than I thought it would.
“Fuck you and your pretentious ideology, and fuck the way you think you can bully the woman in my life.” I hold out my hand to Violet, and she practically leaps forward. As soon as her palm connects with mine, a weight lifts off my shoulder. I pull her into my side and wrap my arm around her shoulder.
I throw the folder down at his feet. “And fuck this inflated bullshit you have going on here,” I add. “You can’t just meddle in my life like this anymore. I’m done.”
Silence.
My father laughs.
Laughs.
My face gets hot. My body flushes. I’m so fucking sick of him, I can barely see straight.
“Grey,” Violet whispers. “It’s not worth it.”
I grimace… and then I notice my father’s expression. He doesn’t like to lose control—and he’s lost control of the most important thing: me. And the room. Violet’s mother has resumed pacing, casting glances at us like we’re about to start fist fighting. She keeps gnawing at her fingernails, too. Violet’s hand slips under the hem of my shirt, pressing against the small of my back. She’s grounding me.
I look down at her, and my resolve hardens.
She’s mine. Not something to be manipulated by my father. Not a pawn or a toy or leverage.
When Dad’s laughter has subsided, the mirth falls from his expression. His tolerance for disobedience is low at best. Something tells me that I should’ve held out longer. That he still has a trump card to play.
And sure enough, he seems smug when he says, “This girl you’re championing has been stealing from our family for months.”
47
VIOLET
Stealing from our family for months.
That’s why we’re here, right? Because my mother’s been getting paid by Senator Devereux, and she’s developed a drug addiction, and it’s on me. It’s my fault that the payments have stopped and her way of life is disrupted.
Her flightiness makes sense now. I can fill in a million motives for her absence, for the way she hasn’t returned my calls. The loneliness I felt, the abandonment. Maybe she’s always been addicted to something, and the opioids just provided another level of escape for her. But at the end of the day, she stopped talking to me because of the drugs.