Page 18

CHAPTER 18

March 8 th

8:16 A.M.

What on earth was going on here?

How were her parents and the man they wanted her to marry in her apartment?

They didn't even have a key.

Well, at least Ava hadn't given them one. But considering they were standing there, looking completely unrepentant, and neither she nor Nathaniel had heard them break down the front door, it was clear that they must have a key.

Which meant only one thing.

They’d stolen her key and had a copy made. More than likely while she was vulnerable in the hospital.

Instead of coming to support her as she dealt with a major trauma, offering comfort, reassurance, and love, they’d come only because they thought they saw a weakness. They thought they could use her abduction to their advantage and convince her to give up the life she’d built for herself and come crawling back home to take up the one they’d planned.

Anger flooded her system, and Ava shoved away from the table. “Mother. Father. What are you doing here? I thought I told you I didn't want to see you again.”

At the time, she hadn't known whether she meant she just didn't want to see them anytime soon, or whether she meant she never wanted to see them again in her entire life. Or even if the lingering parts of the hopeful little girl she’d once been meant she hoped she didn't see them again until they learned to be actual parents and love her rather than always trying to manipulate her and play her like a chess piece.

Now she knew the answer to that question.

If they could use her like they had when she was at her most vulnerable, she didn't want to see them ever again.

They weren't going to change, and it was time to stop pretending that one day they would. If her being kidnapped by an organ trafficking ring and barely escaping with her life wasn't enough to make them care about her then literally nothing else would.

“We thought you’d have finished having your little tantrum by now,” Mother said as she strolled into the kitchen like she owned the place.

“Tantrum? Mother, I almost died and you thought it was a good time to play matchmaker. Then when I had a panic attack, you couldn’t even summon up one iota of compassion.”

Beside her Nathaniel stiffened, and she was so glad she hadn't been alone when she was ambushed by her parents. Just because she’d been handling them on her own all her life, and knew what to say and do, it was so nice for once to have someone who was on her side.

“You were being childish, Ava. Carrying on about the food cart like it was going to kill you.” Mother huffed.

Telling her mother that in her mind there was every chance that the squeaky sound heralded her impending death would be pointless. The woman didn't have it in her to understand what she’d been through, nor did she care to try.

“You need to leave. Now. All of you,” Ava added, looking at her father and Bentley Jones. “Otherwise, I’m calling the cops and having you all arrested for breaking and entering.”

“It’s not breaking and entering if you have a key,” Mother singsonged as she dangled her keychain, which Ava had no doubt also contained the key they’d used to enter her home without permission.

“It is when you weren't given the key. Did you steal mine from my purse while I was in the hospital and have a copy made?” The smirk on her mother’s face said that was exactly what they’d done, and that she wasn't the least bit repentant about it. “That’s low, Mother, even for you. I can't believe you would do that to me.”

“If you would just stop being so childishly stubborn then you would see that the life we’re trying to provide for you is the right one. One where you would be provided for and cared for.”

Glaring at her mother, she clenched her hands into fists so she didn't do something stupid. Ava might be mostly bluffing about calling the cops and having her parents arrested—although it would serve them right if she did—but she knew for certain that her mother wouldn't have any qualms about doing it if Ava let herself lose control.

“What does it look like I'm doing, Mother? You're standing in my apartment. One I provide for myself. And I take care of myself. I escaped from those people. Me. Not anyone else. When are you going to understand that I don’t want the life you think I should have?”

“Provide?” Mother scoffed as she looked around the small kitchen. “You live in an apartment with two other people. And he’s here. I think we can all agree that you don’t make good choices. Which is why you need this little push. Despite your ridiculous behavior and atrocious lack of care for your family’s legacy, Bentley is still willing to marry you. Something with all your challenges you should be entirely grateful for.”

Beside her, Nathaniel gave a cold chuckle as he pushed to his feet. “Yeah, it takes a real genius to figure out why a man who has to be in his fifties is interested in a woman almost half his age.”

While Ava didn't bother to hide her giggle, Nathaniel had echoed the same thoughts she’d always had about the creepy older man. Her parents and Bentley Jones all stiffened in righteous indignation.

“If you think Ava is a good catch, then it only goes to prove that you know nothing about the world she grew up in. The world she never should have left,” Mother said with that arrogant smile Ava had always loathed.

“I can assure you, I would be bringing much more to the table than Ava would,” Bentley said, his voice so smarmy she literally cringed.

She’d been seventeen and a couple of months away from leaving for college when her parents had first introduced him to her as the man they thought would be a suitable husband. He’d been forty. The very thought of being sold off to him had been so repulsive to her back then that she’d literally run to the bathroom and been sick.

That hadn't changed in the last decade.

But she had.

No longer was she a kid who had been forced to endure several dates with a man old enough to be her father. He’d seen her as nothing more than a pretty, young possession that he could flaunt to make his friends and colleagues jealous. He’d always found excuses to touch her, and she was sure he hadn't forgotten what had happened when he tried to kiss her.

He’d stupidly thought that just because they were in a fancy restaurant she wouldn't make a scene and would let him put his disgusting lips on hers.

He thought wrong.

She’d screamed and everyone had looked, forcing him to back off.

Thankfully, the next day had been her eighteenth birthday, and her parents could no longer force her to go on dates. They hadn't cared that she’d virtually been assaulted, instead, they were angry with her for making a scene and ruining the marriage they wanted to sell her into.

That was the day she realized that letting them push her around was not an option. That was the day she’d wised up and finally accepted that her parents didn't love her and didn't care about her happiness.

Clearly almost losing her hadn't changed anything.

They still didn't care and they never would.

If they thought she would be more susceptible to manipulation because she’d almost died, they were so very wrong. Now she’d seen her own strength, her own bravery. She’d escaped. She’d survived against the odds.

“After all,” Bentley continued with another of those nausea-inducing smarmy smiles. “What kind of intelligent woman leaves a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet sitting with a doorman.”

Her gaze landed on the small red velvet box in his hand, and she realized she’d forgotten to pick up her grandmother’s bracelet from the desk downstairs when she got home last night. She’d been too busy talking to Nathaniel, getting him to open up to her. The bracelet would have been safe with the doorman until she got to it. If she’d believed otherwise, she would have had the jeweler deliver it to Prey. Ava knew how lucky she was that the jeweler had realized something was wrong and not considered the bracelet abandoned property, instead holding onto it and keeping it safe.

“If you're going to be so careless with your belongings then you really should be with someone who is capable of replacing them for you when you lose them,” Bentley said, his tone so condescending even a child could figure it out.

“You left a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet lying around with a doorman?” Nathaniel asked. “Like it was just easy come, easy go?”

Hurt lanced through her chest at his coldly spoken and cruel words. Now he was against her too? From the look of fury dancing in his normally warm chocolate brown eyes, she guessed that he was, because he was looking at her the same way the others were.

Like she was some ridiculous, childish, little girl who needed to be looked after for her own safety.

* * *

March 8 th

8:37 A.M.

“Even he gets it,” Mrs. Hendricks snarked, her expression smug as she looked at her daughter.

Oh, he got it all right.

Got that Ava was so ridiculously out of his league that he’d been kidding himself, thinking any amount of not allowing his past to dictate his future could account for it.

“Easy come, easy go?” Ava said, her voice low, hard, not at all like he was used to hearing from her. “Did you really just say that to me? I was lucky the jeweler hadn't given the bracelet away because I didn't pick it up in the time frame because I was tied to a bed while doctors stole my organs. Do you really think I would allow it to be left with someone I didn't trust to take care of it?”

“It’s worth fifty thousand dollars, you should be more careful with it, or is fifty thousand dollars just nothing to you?” he demanded. Nathaniel was aware that her parents and the man they wanted Ava to marry were all watching him with smirks that implied he was only proving their point that he wasn't good enough for their daughter.

“You're all acting like the doorman is some sort of master criminal. Do you even know anything about him?” Ava’s angry glare included all of them. “Do you know his name? Do you know that he and his wife had just retired when their only daughter and her husband were killed in a car crash? Do you know that he took this job because he had to go back to work to provide for his two young grandchildren who he and his wife are now raising?”

“Even more reason not to have left it with him then, isn’t it, darling?” Mrs. Hendricks drawled. “Poor people can’t be trusted around valuables. I thought this little play venture of yours into the land of the common people would have taught you that.”

Whirling on her mother, Ava was so angry she was vibrating with it. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? All of you.” She spun about including him in her furious glare. “It’s like you think it’s all that matters, well news flash, it’s not. I don’t care about money. I don’t care about stuff. I care about people. I care about living. I care about actually doing something with my life that means something. I wouldn't have expected anything else from you three, but you.” Turning to look fully at him, there was disappointment in her eyes now. “I thought you were different. I thought you were better than that.”

How the hell was he coming off as the bad guy here?

All he was doing was responding to the facts. Ava had grown up in the lap of luxury with everything money could buy. She lived in a nice apartment with an extensive art collection, owned jewelry worth fifty thousand dollars, and saw nothing wrong with treating it the same as one would costume jewelry. He’d grown up poorer than poor, with abuse and neglect thrown in as well, he couldn’t afford one of the pieces of art in her collection let alone all of them, and to spend fifty grand on a bracelet he’d have to go without food, electricity, and water for an entire year to even come close to affording it.

Asking Ava to give up all the things she was accustomed to would be cruel.

Even though it made him feel worthless to know he couldn’t provide the life she deserved, he still wanted her to have all those things. He wanted her to be happy, to be free, to be safe. He wanted her to be able to have as many pieces of art as her heart desired, to be dripping in diamonds and jewels that could only hope to be as beautiful as she was.

Nathaniel wanted her to have everything he’d never be able to give her.

She deserved the world.

“You should be with a guy like him,” he said wearily, the fight draining out of him. He was done pretending that their pasts didn't matter, that they were compatible, that they stood a chance.

If he kept allowing himself to believe he could actually get a woman like Ava, he was only setting himself up for pain when it all came crashing down around him. Ava might think she could do without all of life’s luxuries, but when that became her reality, she would grow to resent him. Once that happened, it would only be a matter of time before she left him, realizing that she could do better.

No way in hell was he hanging around and waiting for that inevitable end.

Better to make a clean break of things now.

Before he wound up getting hurt.

Smug smiles on Ava’s parents’ faces had his gut churning, he didn't want to be saying this, especially not in front of them. But they were right. He wasn't good enough for their daughter. They might not be nice people, but he couldn’t fault them for at least recognizing that their daughter deserved someone who could give her not just the world, but the sun, moon, and stars as well.

The man they’d brought with them was all but preening, and when he took a step toward Ava it was like she snapped out of a trance, quickly taking a step back.

To say Ava looked furious would be an understatement, but there was more to it than that. She looked betrayed. By all of them. Her parents, and him.

But all he was trying to do was make sure she got the life she deserved.

Walking away from her would shatter another piece of his soul. Whether he admitted it or not, he had already started to become attached to Ava, to see a future with her, one he never would have thought of just weeks ago. When you cared about someone you were supposed to do what was in their best interest, and that’s what he was attempting to do. Ava could have everything, why would she want to give that up to be with a guy like him?

“I should be with a guy like him, huh?” Ava spoke, her voice so cold it seemed to send a chill throughout the room, one even her parents didn't appear to be immune to. “A man who’s more than twenty years older than me. Who my parents tried to set me up with when I was only seventeen. Who would touch me inappropriately given my age. One who doesn’t love me, who doesn’t even care about me. Who only wants to marry me because my parents have money. One who would want me to give up the career I love and am good at to be his trophy wife. To give him children he also wouldn't care about to continue on the legacy. Who would treat me as nothing more than a fancy accessory to bring out and play with when he’s in the mood. That’s what you think I deserve?”

What the hell?

Of course not.

“Not what I meant. Not him. Not a guy who can't get a woman his own age and preys on teenagers, but one who can give you everything you deserve.” With his eyes, Nathaniel tried to will her to understand. He was willing to walk away so she could have the life that should be hers, one he couldn’t give her. He was trying to do right by her.

“You really don’t know me at all, do you?” There was sadness in her gaze, and still some lingering anger and betrayal.

It was the sadness that gutted him.

Made him feel like he was making some sort of mistake, only he wasn't really sure what exactly it was.

“I guess I don’t,” he said softly.

No longer able to breathe in there, through all the tension and emotion, Nathaniel knew he needed to take a short break. Clear his head a little. Let her sort things out with her parents without him having to be there and see how they looked down their noses at him, like he wasn't even fit to breathe the same air as them.

“I’m going outside to get some fresh air. I won't move out of sight of the front door so I can still watch over the building. Don’t leave the apartment for any reason,” he told Ava as he brushed by her parents. Just because he needed a break didn't mean he was going to leave her alone and unprotected. If anyone suspicious entered the building he’d come right back.

Part of him wanted her to ask him to stay.

To ask him to talk through what was going on inside his head.

But Ava didn't speak a word as he stormed out of the kitchen and grabbed his keys and cell phone, then hurried out of the apartment so fast he almost walked right into a pair of movers carrying a couch into the apartment across the hall from Ava’s.

She hadn't asked him to talk, hadn’t asked him to stay, which meant she finally agreed with him that she deserved better than he could ever hope to give her.