Page 276 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

“Ah. What attracted you to getting a degree in business?”

I laugh. “Nothing. I thought it would make Bebe J proud.”

“You didn’t think she’d be proud of your art?”

“She loved my art. I sent her sketches all the time. But she didn’t want me to struggle the way she did. She was a banana-picker until her joints gave out. My Ma didn’t even finish high school before she got pregnant with me. She worked shitty, minimum-wage jobs until life drove her into a bottle. Bebe J didn’t want any of that for me.”

Mac’s eyes lift to the middle distance, trace a flight of pigeons. “We all want better for our kids.”

I squeeze his lean waist with the arm I have around him. “Sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean to remind you ... what do you want for your daughter?”

“I just want her to be healthy. And happy. But mostly healthy.”

“I can tell you have a lot of love for her, Sir.”

Mac sighs. “It’s not enough. All the love in the world can’t fill the hole in that kid’s heart. I should know. Her mother’s got the same damn hole and all my love didn’t fill hers, either.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “Is that why things didn’t work out between you two?”

Mac shakes his head. “You sure you want to hear this now?”

“Whenever you’re ready, Sir.”

He snorts. “Amy’s not something I’m ever ready to talk about.” He kisses my temple. “No matter how I say this, I’m going to sound like an asshole. All I can say is that I’ve grown upa lot since I married Amy. Navy made me a man. I hope, a good man.”

Mac seems like a very good man to me, but maybe he wasn’t always.

“You married young, didn’t you, Sir?”

“Yeah, as soon as Amy finished high school. That’s where we met. I was a junior when she was a freshman.”

“High school sweethearts?” I ask as we turn the corner onto East 6th Street.

Mac makes a choking noise in his throat. “Not quite. I ... I said I was an asshole, Bren. I wasn’t exaggerating. When Amy started high school, she was this tiny thing. Not even five feet. All eyes and elbows and knobby knees. I was already six feet. I played football. I worked out every day. I must’ve outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She didn’t stand a chance.”

I don’t understand. I try to read his expression, but he’s looking at the pavement as we walk slowly down the street. If I had to guess, he looks ... remorseful.

I try to lighten the mood. “What’d you do, force her to be your girlfriend?”

“Worse.” He nods sadly. “I forced her to be our slut. Me and my three best friends. We called ourselves the Four Aces. Stupid, I know. We were kids. Not a brain between us. And we did a lot of stupid, fucked-up shit. If Teddy’s father hadn’t been a cop, we’d have all ended up in jail long before we graduated.”

No wonder the things I got up to when I was a teen didn’t make him flinch. And I bet Mac was super-hot as a high school bad boy with his three, bad boy friends. Being their slut doesn’t sound so bad to me. If not for his expression and the way he said heforcedhis ex to be their slut, I’d be tempted to make a joke.

“So, there wasn’t, um, consent?”

Mac squeezes my shoulder as he steers me around a mother coping with a crying toddler.

“No, there wasn’t,” he admits. “Not the way I think of consent now. I bullied her into being my toy and then I groomed her to be our slut.”

That doesn’t sound good at all.

“But things must have changed if you got married?”

“We got married,” Mac says. “And everything changed. But not for the better. I’d trained her to be our slut. I’d taught her to crave constant, negative attention from several men. Then I stuck her in a tiny house on a naval base, five hours away from her family and friends, and expected her to be a perfect little housewife while I went off and lived on a sub for six months at a stretch.”

I turn my face into his shoulder and let him guide my steps while I think. This is like every sub’s nightmare: getting trapped into a relationship with a Dom who wants to remake them into Suzie Damn Homemaker. Worse, his ex was clearly a full-time sub and that’s what he wants from me, too.

“Mac, I?—”