Page 28 of Broken Daddy

“No, of course not. How could you say something like that?”

Vega looked her over and there was something in his gaze . . . something hungry? Predatory?

Holy shit.

She longed to rush back into her bedroom and lock the door, to pull on some clothes and hide under the bed. That was her usual hiding place.

She and Coco could hide under the bed for hours. They often had.

“Can’t imagine that it’s easy to live with a drunken loser.”

“Don’t call him that!” she protested. Although there was no heat in her voice.

Because it wasn’t anything she hadn’t thought before.

Her father hadn’t handled her mom’s death well. Losing her had broken him. But that excuse had run thin a long time ago. Other people lost their soul mates, yet they still carried on. They managed to be there for their children.

Or, at the very least, they didn’t make their children’s lives worse the way that he had.

Her father let out a snore followed by a loud fart.

God. He was so . . . disgusting. She had to breathe through the urge to glare at him, to tell him what she really thought of him.

Sometimes, she snuck into his room at night, knowing he was passed out on a concoction of drugs and alcohol and told him exactly what she thought of him.

It was cathartic.

“Crappy place you live in. You deserve better, Mouse,” Vega said.

She wanted to snap at him not to call her Mouse. But she knew better than to give him ammunition to use against her. However, she wasn’t as good at guarding her face as she thought she was.

“Don’t like being called that, do you? Yet, he keeps doing it.” He kicked her father making him let out a grunt of pain.

“Hey! Don’t do that!” she protested. She might not like her father. But she also didn’t want him to be actively harmed.

And Devi didn’t like violence.

She wasn’t necessarily a good person. Not like the heroines in her books. They always did the right thing. Even if it meant that bad things happened to them. Or that they were pushed around by other people taking advantage of them.

Devi wasn’t like that. Maybe she had been when she was younger. But years of being bullied and abused had changed something in her. It was a gradual change. Not that she could ever be mean to someone.

But that didn’t mean that she didn’t exact her own sort of revenge when someone wronged her.

“Why? Why shouldn’t I do it?” he asked in a low voice.

Did he really not know?

Looking into his face she could see no regret in his face, no recognition that kicking a sleeping, defenseless person was wrong.

Shit.

Did Vega feel any empathy? Or regret?

Devi should be panicking over the fact that she was essentially alone with this man.

Another smile crossed his face.

Fuck. He was definitely reading her mind right now.