Page 171 of Broken Daddy

“Honey grabbed it when they found her,” Hayes said. “And Kent brought in the charger. It’s in the bedside drawer.”

Oh. She hadn’t even thought about her phone.

Hayes stood, setting her down on the bed while Gwen found her phone.

She immediately felt the loss of his touch.

“Right, in about ten minutes, you’re getting a call from your brother. There will be a guard in the room with him but it’s as private as I could make it. I met with him yesterday to go through everything that has happened. Unfortunately, that hideous detective got to him first to tell him about what happened to you. He’s not in a good headspace. That warden at the jail is a total ass. This was the earliest he’d let me set this up.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to get him out of there?” Devi asked. She didn’t dare let herself hope yet.

“Oh, I plan on it, don’t you worry. It might take longer than I like, but he’s going to walk free.” She turned to Hayes. “Do you want to go somewhere private to talk?”

Hayes looked torn.

“I’ll be all right here,” Devi said.

“Donovan is outside,” Dominic said. “But I can stay outside too, if you take care of Gwen.”

Hayes looked startled for a moment, then he nodded. “Thanks.”

Gwen and Dominic left the room and Hayes turned to her. “I’ll be back very shortly. If you need anything, yell for Donovan or Dominic, understand?”

“Yes, all right.” A call started to come through on the phone as Hayes left.

She took a deep breath in, letting it out slowly.

Here went nothing. She quickly took her hair out of the braid that Hayes had put it in and pulling it forward, she answered the call.

Rohan’s face filled the screen. He looked tired. And thinner.

Devi could see herself in the small camera, but it was hard to make out much more about her cheek other than there was a big bandage on it. But she could see she looked pale, too.

“Ro, are you all right?” she asked in concern.

“Am I all right?” he snapped. “Jesus, Dee-dee. Fucking Jesus.”

There was a noise from behind him and he turned for a moment, before spinning back to her. He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

“What happened? Tell me everything,” he urged.

“I thought Detective Brown already told you.”

“That bastard? Yeah, he did. So did that lawyer you sent. I don’t know where you found her but that woman is a firecracker. If anyone can get me out of this place, it’s her.”

“She’s a friend of Hayes,” she said. “Well, sort of. I’m not sure Hayes would consider her that. He seems to think he doesn’t have friends.”

“Right, from the start. Beginning with who the fuck Hayes is.”

So she went through everything, leaving out the stuff about her threatening Stein. By the time she got to the end her mouth was dry and her voice had grown hoarse.

Her brother had a hand over his face. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“Rohan, stay calm.”

“It’s hard to stay calm when my own sister . . . when you were attacked and I wasn’t there to take care of you.”

“It’s not your fault I was attacked,” she told him.