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Trevor bolted out the door behind her. He didn’t even bother saying a word to the men left behind, still stunned and staring at the door. He caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs, as she’d taken the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, and she took a step out, saw him, and glared, then retreated back inside the elevator.

He stood there, watching her expression, one of desperation. “What will you do, Reeni? I’m not here to imprison you. I’m not here to hurt you. I only want to help.”

“Help?” she repeated, staring at him. “There is no help. I need to go into hiding. My father is nothing if not determined to get rid of the blot on his name.”

He winced at that. “Then I’ll help you do that too.”

“Oh, and how will you do that?” she asked, with a sneer. “He scares everybody off, remember?”

“I don’t scare that easily,” he said in exasperation. “Plus, certain people lend credence to our abilities.”

She hesitantly stepped out of the elevator, as other people crowded in. With her bag over her shoulder, she walked out to the front of the hotel, then looked over at him and shook her head. “No way Terk will want help now. Taking me in is one thing, but getting involved with my father is just bad news.”

“Your father is not all that powerful,” Trevor declared. “And a lot of other people are in this world who appreciate what you do.”

“Not very many,” she murmured. “Apparently I don’t have any people skills.”

“Your people skills could definitely use a brush-up,” he suggested, with a gentle smile. “Yet I think you’re wrong. I think plenty of people like you very much.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You only have to look at how Bullard treated me.”

Trevor hesitated. “It seems Bullard’s feelings are pretty rough over it all as it is, but the fact is, he’s not the one who brought your father in.”

“No, it was those do-gooder morons at the police department.”

“In fairness, that’s what they do. It’s standard practice to check in with the families, when it comes to something like this.”

“Yeah? Because families are supposed to be supportive and helpful, but, in my case, contacting them is the worst thing anyone could possibly do.” As she headed outside, a huge limo pulled up in front of them. She ducked behind a balustrade and raced around the corner of the building. Crouching now, she watched her father get out of the limo, irritation evident in every line of his body as he strode forward, his men and his assistant racing to catch up with him. They were talking a mile a minute about their plans as soon as he dealt with this.

This being her.

Trevor shook his head, knowing it wasn’t the time to brace the man, and headed around the corner behind her. As he got there, he swore because he saw no sign of her. That wasn’t cool. He turned, searching the entire area for her, and, when he couldn’t find her, he pulled out his phone and called her.

Things got worse yet when she didn’t answer.

“Well, damn,” he muttered.

He closed his eyes, knowing her energy well, and just started to follow it. He had to open his eyes several times to realign himself. By the time he made a few turns, he found her up ahead, striding at a pace that was hard to keep up with. Afraid of losing her, he ran and caught up with her. “Nice try.”

She looked at him, then shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to do anything, but that was my father, so I just left.”

“I needed to confirm it was him.”

“I didn’t need that,” she declared, with a hard laugh. “I knew it was him the minute I saw the car. That’s the way he travels, always.”

“Right now, he’ll probably be a bit delayed, while the police have a talk with him.”

“That’ll be fun for them too.” She snickered. “I’m almost sorry I left early. I might have enjoyed the fireworks.”

“Yet there wouldn’t be fireworks if you hadn’t left,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s true. Everybody just falls in line and does what Dad says. I thought that maybe being over here would be different, but apparently he has pull everywhere.”

“Once the cops called him, I’m sure he grabbed the first flight he could get and headed over.”

She looked at him sideways. “Grabbed a flight? He has his own plane, remember?”

“Right,” he muttered, shaking his head, forgetting how the uber-rich lived. “Do you really think you’ll hide from him?”

“I’ve managed to for the last few years, but, every once in a while, he catches up with me. Then I have to escape again.”

“Are we talking about the need to escape now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she snapped, frowning at him. “I get that, for you guys, this is just over-the-top BS, but, for me, who has no tools and no support, trying to fight him off and to get away from him isn’t fun,” she explained, “particularly when he has all the resources, and somehow cancels my credit cards and seizes my bank accounts.”

Trevor frowned. “Without your permission?”

“Absolutely,” she muttered.

“You think that’s legal?”

“No, it sure as hell isn’t, but it’s not as if I can fight him myself, and it’s not as if anybody will help me fight him.”

At that, Trevor’s own temper rippled through him. “Are these bank accounts that you opened on your own?”

“Absolutely, but he somehow managed to get power of attorney over me, and that is how he manages to make my life miserable. All of that began when I was still a child, so he had complete parental control. He had power of attorney over my sister too, until she agreed to marry who he wanted her to.”

“But that’s archaic,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well, that’s my father,” she stated, “and he’s just gotten worse. Now that my sister has dutifully produced twin boys, she is essentially the golden girl again—or still, I guess,” she shared, with a hard laugh. “Maybe she’s happy. I hope she’s happy, but I don’t know that she really knows what happiness is. Arranged marriages produce that series of babies, and maybe that was her condition for getting free. I don’t know. But the reality is, dear old Dad is not to be trusted when it comes down to it anyway,” she grumbled. “I’ll just get caught up in all that nonsense of his again, but the reality is that I’m even more unprotected here.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t have anybody here to help me,” she said, facing him now. “It’s not exactly a country that you want to be left stranded in.”

“Right, but that won’t happen, not while I’m here.”

She laughed. “You came to help Bullard, so you need to do that.”

“Maybe so, but I also came to help you, and I’ll do that as well. Not to mention the fact that, besides all that, Bullard still owes you one.”

“I don’t give a crap what Bullard thinks. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

Trevor hesitated. “I don’t think that’s fair to Bullard.”

“I don’t give a crap about that either,” she declared. “You seem to think that he owes me something, but I don’t, and I’m not sticking around where I’m not wanted. I sure as hell won’t give him a second chance to play patriarch and to threaten to imprison me again. For all I know, he’s the one who contacted my father.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Trevor said, “and the police already told you that it was them. So you’re really not being fair. Honestly, Bullard would be one of your best bets for fighting your father, not to mention Terk, plus Levi for that matter.”

She shrugged. “I’ve already tried to get help, and, in the end, everybody always ends up buckling under dear old Dad’s threats.”

“Sounds like a challenge to me, and I can guarantee they would be all in on a dear old dad needs to be put in his place mission.”

“Yeah, well, that ain’t happening.” She snorted.

“What about your mom?’

“What about her?” she asked, shaking her head at him. “She produced two daughters, no sons, and then lost the ability to reproduce. For all I know, half-a-dozen illegitimate ones are out there in his attempt to secure more male heirs. I know my mother was always a disappointment to him when she couldn’t give him the sons he needed.”

“Even though it’s the father who determines the gender of the baby via either an X or Y chromosome?”

“Yeah, well, my father is never one to let the facts get in the way. And honestly, if he could do a test-tube baby—and for all I know he has—it’s not as if I’ve been around much for the last several years. But, if there’s a chance at having a male heir somewhere along the line, believe me that Dad wouldn’t have hesitated to get a surrogate to carry it.”

“Maybe he did,” Trevor acknowledged. “How would you feel about that?”

“Grateful, unless it’ll be yet another heavy-handed male trying to determine what my life should be,” she snapped.

“Okay, so do you have a plan right now?” he asked, considering they were still storming down the main street, but one block over where not so much traffic converged.

“I’ll find a place to hole up in for a while. I’ll need some sleep and some food, but more than that I need safety, and safety when my father is around… just doesn’t happen.”

Trevor could see just how traumatized she was by the arrival of her father, and he felt awful for her. It didn’t make sense that her father had such a long reach, and that was also bothering him. He needed somebody to step up and to give him a hand in terms of what the father could and could not do legally, plus how to get all those controls away from him because that was the next issue. As long as he had any legal power over Reeni, then her life would always be like this. He pointed to a small place up ahead. “Let’s go in there.”

She looked at it and shrugged. “I don’t know why you think that place is any better than another.”

“The energy seems easier.”

She contemplated that for a moment and nodded. “Fine, but nobody says I’m staying.”

That reply half explained the prickly personality that he was seeing way more of than he had expected. She hid it well, until something went wrong, and then it all blew up, which was what happened when Bullard threatened to keep her on his premises. He’d set off a firestorm that nobody had been prepared for. “What if the cops still want to talk to you?” Trevor asked her.

“I’ll probably end up stealing a car and driving out of the country, so I hope I can get a long way away from here before anybody can stop me,” she muttered. He sucked in his breath, and she glared at him. “If you think I’m staying around to let my father be the same controlling asshole I know he is, you’re wrong.”

“I get that, and I can see that he really terrifies you, but there has to be some way to get your freedom.”

“I don’t think that’s even possible because he doesn’t hand over control well. Hell, he just doesn’t want to hand over control period .”

“Do you have any contact with your sister?”

She shook her head. “No, I sure don’t, not since she dutifully married the man our father chose for her.”

“Did she tell you that she didn’t want to get married?”

“Yeah, she did. She bawled the whole day before her wedding. It was one of those huge, over-the-top, half-million-dollar type weddings,” she told him. “And all she could do was bawl because she couldn’t stand who she was marrying. After that, she popped out two kids in quick succession. Maybe she’s been carted off to a mental institution by now. She wouldn’t talk to me back then, so it’s not likely she’ll talk to me now. I’m pretty damn sure that she doesn’t give a crap anymore, as long as she’s done her job in Dad’s eyes. Maybe that will get her free from her husband’s unwanted attentions, or who knows? Maybe she’s fallen in love with him. I have no way of knowing.”

It was such a foreign concept to Trevor that he didn’t really know how to respond, since this was out of the Dark Ages, in his opinion. What bothered him more than anything was Reeni literally running away, one step away from a flat-out sprint, as she sought a place to hide. It was all he could do to keep up with her. When he finally managed to get her inside the one hotel he’d picked out, she stopped at the registration desk and asked how much it was for a room. When she heard the amount, she just nodded, pulled cash out of her pocket, and paid.

He wanted to step in, but she wouldn’t even let him get close. He realized once again that it was all about control. If she paid, then she felt as if she could pick up and leave as soon as she needed to. The fact that she automatically assumed she would need to wounded him in a way that he had no idea he could even be hurt. He was alternately cursing Bullard, cursing her father, and cursing life in general when she turned and glared at him.

“Fine, I have a place to stay now. So you can go away.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

She fisted her hands on her hips in the elevator, as they went up to the room that she’d been given on the sixth floor. “Maybe you just need to go off and get a life, instead of trying to play Sir Galahad,” she snapped, with a half laugh, but absolutely no humor was in it.

He shook his head. “No. I have to think about this. I’m not sure what the best plan of action is at the moment,” he shared, “but it won’t involve your going back into a mental hospital.”

“Yeah, well, unless you can make miracles in your world, absolutely no way you’ll stop it. I’m the one who’s very aware of what I have to do, and I will do it. So don’t expect me to stick around if things get ugly.”

“I can understand that,” he agreed, “but you can’t run forever.”

She stared at him and asked, “Wanna bet?” And, with that, she turned and headed into the bathroom and slammed the door in his face.