Page 59 of Power

Her eyes welled up. “I’m going to make you proud, Scarlett. I’ve kept track of every cent?—”

“Stop.” I squeezed her hands. “I don’t want repayment. I want you safe.”

She was taking steps with sharing her résumé, asking about job benefits, and learning how to exist in a world she’d been sheltered from for decades. In many ways, my mother was like a teenager, and I was her reluctant guide to adulting.

“Have you eaten?” I asked. “I was just about to make some food.”

My mom joined me for dinner. We talked about lighter topics, and at some point, we even laughed. This was another thing I wanted Mom to experience: normalcy. Not everything had to be dark and heavy and about my abusive father. The more experiences she got that were normal, the more normal she would feel, I suspected.

Still, it was hard for my eyes not to wander to the scars that were visible.

After dinner, I walked Mom to the elevator, both of us riding down in comfortable silence. The lobby’s fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as we pushed through the heavy glass doors into the night.

The evening was warm, the kind that drew people out of their apartments like moths to a flame, and streetlights cast warm halos on the row of parallel-parked cars, transforming puddles from yesterday’s rain into pools of liquid shimmers.

“Look.” Mom pointed to her car, wedged into a coveted spot between a fire hydrant and a moving van. “I parallel parked it in only two tries this time.”

I grinned. “Soon, you’ll be teaching me tricks.”

We were almost to her car when I heard a fresh set of steps emerge behind us.

“I knew I’d find you.”

That voice. My blood turned to ice in my veins, and Mom took a sharp intake of air.

Slowly, so slowly, we turned to find my worst nightmare.

I shifted automatically, pushing Mom behind me as a burly figure emerged from between the cars. The streetlight caught his face, and those familiar features twisted into something almost feral.

“Dad,” I spat, my heart trying to hammer its way out of my chest. My palms were slick with sweat, but I kept my voice steady. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing my fear.

I’d always known this moment would come. Had rehearsed it in my head a thousand times. But standing here now, with Mom trembling behind me, I wondered if any amount of preparation could have been enough.

30

JACE

She never responded to my email.

I stood across from Scarlett’s apartment building, watching windows glisten in the dark like a hundred judging eyes. What the hell was I doing here? The NDA terms could wait until tomorrow. There was absolutely no rational reason I needed to review them with her tonight, off company grounds, in private.

Except you’re not here about the NDA, are you, Lockwood?

No. I was here because ever since my day concluded, my mind had been consumed with one thought: who had hurt her and what I would do to him when I found out. The rage simmering beneath my skin demanded action, demanded answer tonight, not tomorrow.

I’d told my driver it was a quick business matter. I’d only been here once before, for Scarlett to grab clothes before going horseback riding. Back before everything got complicated.

God, what was I becoming? Standing here like some obsessive stalker outside an employee’s apartment. A woman’s apartment. A woman who’d just endured workplace harassment, no less.

Walk away. Now.

The business side of my brain was screaming at me to leave before I crossed a line I couldn’t uncross. Because if I went up tothat apartment … the image of Scarlett’s lips, the memory of her laugh, the way she’d felt in my arms?—

Stop.

That was it. I couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t do this.

I took a deep breath and turned to leave, to walk back to where my driver waited down the block, when suddenly, I saw her.