Page 20

MARISELA

I woke up in my room. Alone. My head pounding and my mouth dry.

I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again.

The dim light seemed brighter somehow. Biting too.

Like it could burn me through my eyelids.

My stomach was churning and I could feel the thin layer of sweat that had dried on my skin.

The fucker drugged me. I knew it the moment I took the first swig of the champagne and that familiar bitter taste danced across my tongue.

Molly. I knew her well. I liked her too.

Pot made me hungry, coke just made me paranoid, but Molly? She made me feel everything and nothing all at once. Couldn’t sneak a vibrator past my father’s men, but a couple of tabs in my pocket and they were none the wiser.

I should have been annoyed. I was annoyed .

Not because my shadow man had dosed me but because he thought he could do it without me knowing.

Because he thought he had a hand up in this little game we had going on between us.

Because he didn’t realize the only reason I was running was because I wanted to. Because I liked someone chasing me.

You didn’t grow up in the home I did, with a man like my father, without knowing how to keep one foot inside the box they put you in and one dangling out.

I could be whoever they wanted me to be, while never being that at all.

It was a delicate balance I had to constantly maintain or risk everyone finding out the truth.

I was smarter than them. I could outsmart them. And I had. More than once. They were all just too dumb to realize it.

Just like my shadow man.

I stretched my arms above my head, groaning at the tightness in my limbs.

I was used to this feeling. The chills and the blurry vision.

The tension in my jaw that had my teeth clenching and the pounding in my chest. What I wasn’t used to was the slight bruising I spotted at the crook of my elbow when I finally pried my lashes open again.

Yellow and purple with a miniscule red dot in the center. A needle prick.

I didn’t mind popping the occasional pill or even snorting some powder up my nose, but my veins were off limits. I wasn’t a junkie, and I couldn’t afford to look like one either.

I remembered his mask dipping between my thighs, the feel of his tongue on my pussy, the heat of his breath and the weight of his heavy palms spreading me deliciously wide. What I didn’t remember was what happened after that. Or how he was able to slip a needle into my arm without me realizing it.

Then again, I was flying high after the multiple orgasms. They were unlike anything I’d ever done to myself before. Thigh-clenching, earth-shattering, mind-numbing. That must have been it. He tongue-fucked me into a coma.

I had to admit my head wasn’t throbbing all that much either, a dull ache—just like the one between my legs—but not the usual axe-through-the-brain I was used to feeling after a long night of indulging in all the things I shouldn’t.

It was nothing a few glasses of water wouldn’t fix.

So I peeled off last night’s clothes, tossing them in the back of my closet and not the hamper, and threw on a pair of pink pajamas with long sleeves to hide the bruises before slinking my way downstairs.

Past my father’s closed office door and into the kitchen.

By the time I opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and shut it again, my father was staring at me from the other side.

All the blood whooshing through my ears meant I didn’t even hear him approach.

He must have heard me, though. He must have been waiting for me too.

It was the only time he ever sought me out.

Beratements and birthdays were all this man knew about being a parent.

And today wasn’t my birthday. Not that he ever wanted to celebrate .

No, that little tic mark on the calendar wasn’t about me. It was about him. Every year came with another reminder that I was one year closer to having to pay off the debt I owed him for coming home from the hospital in a pink hat, instead of the blue one he was expecting.

I was pretty sure that’s why he insisted on surrounding me in it.

All the pink. So I would come to hate the color as much as he did.

The type of conditioning I learned about in that psychology class I took last semester.

The one with the dog and the bell. My father was Pavlov and I was his obedient pet…

until I sharpened my teeth enough to bite off his hand.

Another thing I had learned in that class? Back an animal into a corner, and its survival instincts would kick in. And right now, my hackles were rising to the surface, my pupils dilated by more than the leftover drugs in my system. The body sensed danger long before the brain did.

My father cleared his throat and I waited for him to address me before speaking. I was too tired and too dehydrated to provoke his temper.

“Dinner will be served at five o’clock sharp tonight, Mari,” he grunted.

Two hours earlier than usual. But that wasn’t what gave me pause.

What had my heart plunging into my stomach and stirring up the waves of nausea that had already settled there.

It was the way he smirked at me. The smallest break in his cold exterior that tipped up his mouth so that he appeared more disturbing than cordial .

“Don’t be late,” he added, his tone dryer than the back of my throat. “I have a surprise for you.”

I have a surprise for you. The most terrifying words to ever leave my father’s mouth, especially when his idea of a surprise was always more horror story than Hallmark.