Page 70 of Ruthless Prince

“Okay.” He sat down again. “Your father was well-respected when he was young. He was a Rhoades, he was rich, and he had all the connections a person could ever need to ensure success. He chose to squander all ofthat.”

I blinked rapidly. “That’s not true. He runs all the family companies, and he’s worth over $100million.”

“Now, yes. But you don’t know what he did back in the day. Even your mother doesn’tknow.”

I sniffed back a fresh set of tears. “What wasit?”

“He had a gambling problem, and he ran up a lot of debt at the Wonderland casinos. Nothing major at first. A couple of million here and there. He always paid it back, so it wasn’t an issue. But in the mid-90s, thingschanged.”

“How?”

“Wonderland has a secret gambling floor beneath the main casino. It’s illegal, obviously, but everyone turns a blind eye. Anyway, it attracts all the high rollers, and they bet massive amounts. Gives them some sort of rush, I guess. Last year one guy bet an entire sports team worth $3billion.”

I rubbed my temples and sighed. “So my dad started goingthere?”

Logan nodded. “He ran up $150 million indebt.”

My eyes widened. “Oh mygod.”

“Anyway, he eventually realized how fucked he was, because he couldn’t afford to pay it back from his personal fortune, and he had a wife with a baby on the way. Not only that, his wife had serious political ambitions. His problems threatened to destroy all that for her, not to mention the Rhoades name ingeneral.”

“So whathappened?”

“He started doing a bunch of shit with the family companies to try and get the money together. He embezzled as much as he could without anyone noticing—at first, anyway—and when that still wasn’t enough to cover his ass, he started doing shit with the investor accounts. Insider trading. Securities fraud. Stuff like that. Anyway, long story short: he gotcaught.”

I slowly shook my head. “Oh mygod…”

“Because of his family name and influence, he was able to keep it quiet at first. It wouldn’t have taken long for everything to blow up, though. He would’ve gone to prison for a longtime.”

I took a deep breath. “What happenedthen?”

“He approached the Order council. Begged for their help. Usually they’d choose to help a high-ranking member like him, but in this case, they were prepared to throw him to the wolves. See, some of the people he defrauded in his schemes were Order members themselves. He betrayedthem.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to imagine all of this playing out. If I wasn’t shackled to a bed right now as a result of my father’s actions, I probably wouldn’t believe it in a thousandyears.

Logan cleared his throat and went on. “They were going to deal with him the usual way they deal with traitors, but Q steppedin.”

“Theleader?”

He nodded. “He decided on a different solution. He’s a long-term thinker, and he realized that a Thorne-Rhoades marriage could be advantageous a couple of decades down the line. It would work in favor of the Thornes for various political reasons. He also knew Stephen’s wife was expecting a baby girl. So he suggested a sort oftrade.”

“A trade.” I exhaled deeply and shook my head. Before I was even born, I was considered mere chattel. It wassick.

“The deal was: in return for a Rhoades woman, my father would forgive the gambling debts. He would also pay all the people your father ripped off. As for the legal issues he was facing, Q was able to make them disappear so cleanly it’s like they never even existed. His reputation was restored instantly. Like nothing everhappened.”

“And now it’s finally time for him to pay the price for that. With me,” I whispered, looking down at the bed. The gold-threaded pattern in the duvet seemed to wobble and as my eyes swam withtears.

“That’s right. My family held up their end. Now it’s yourturn.”

I kept staring down at the bed as the video of my father replayed in my mind on an endless loop. My shoulders felt heavy, weighing me down, leaving me paralyzed. This betrayal was pure agony. It felt like there was a knife in my heart, cold metal catching on every thread of tissue as it twisted in mychest.

Dad was supposed to be the good parent in our little family. He was the one who cared for me and my brother while my mother swanned around acting like she didn’t even have children until it was convenient for media appearances. He was the one who read me bedtime stories when I was a little girl while my mother was too busy brown-nosing at bipartisan mixers. He was the one who showed me all the affection I ever needed with warm hugs and softly-spoken words while my mother barely even pecked me on the forehead unless a reporter waswatching.

Now he’d abandoned me. Thrown me to thewolves.

The worst part was that he always knew he was going to doit.

I wiped my eyes and looked up at Logan again. “When did you find out aboutthis?”