Page 56 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

Y ou are my sunshine…

He didn’t deserve this.

My only sunshine…

Life shouldn’t be this hard.

You make me happy…

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

When skies are gray…

Why did Rebecca do it?

You’ll never know, dear…

She ruined everything.

How much I love you…

And now he was in hell.

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

Sprawled in the sailboat’s hammock, Charlie’s eyes fluttered open, and, for a moment, he thought he’d gone blind. “What the fuck?”

His mind slowly woke from its drunken slumber, and he realized he wasn’t blind. The inability to see was the moon’s fault, annoyingly hiding from the night sky as if it couldn’t be bothered to do its job.

“Goddammit.”

He tried to sit up, but his surroundings spun in a whirl of stars and the inky blue-black water of the Caribbean Sea. Landing on his hands and knees, Charlie hissed when he connected with the hard deck.

“Cecilia!”

In the distance, the lights of St. Thomas twinkled brighter than any star in the sky, and he cursed each one. He cursed his mother, the hag. He cursed his brother, the son of a bitch. He cursed Viv, the heartless woman who stole the best years of his life.

“Cecilia!”

Wherever she was, she better not be crying. He couldn’t stand it when she cried. She looked like Rebecca when she did, pouty and covered in crocodile tears. It fucking annoyed him.

“Cecilia, come here.”

He winced at the loudness of his voice, throwing a curse at Bryan Carroll for good measure.

He’d learned long ago not to run with that man, let alone drink with him.

But when Bryan sauntered into Latitude 18 as if he owned the place, Charlie didn’t argue when his former friend sat at the bar next to him.

And he didn’t stop Bryan from inquiring about how life was going, as if he hadn’t been the one to ruin it.

Everything they ever said about the man was true. Bryan Carroll was a thief. There was the whole drug thing, too, but at his core, the guy was nothing but a common thief who stole from everyone.

And Charlie was one of his favorite targets.

His money. His home. His son. His daughter.

Bryan held them all in the palm of his hand.

Charlie was preparing for a fight, first to break the man's influence over his kids, and then he was going after his villa. He would call Trevor—hell, he would call Ben if he had to—and they would fight with him. A common enemy. That’s what he and his brothers needed, and Bryan Carroll was about to fit the bill.

Feeling like he might vomit when a larger wave struck the sailboat and sent it pitching sharply to one side, Charlie roared for his daughter a final time.

She was likely hiding below deck, sulking because he hadn’t allowed her to stay the night in their old villa.

The villa Bryan now owned, thanks to one stupid round of poker.

Brandy had invited her for a sleepover, doing so out of spite, since that was the only way the Carroll family knew how to operate. Oh, wait. They couldn’t call her Brandy anymore. No, the brat wouldn’t allow it, and neither did Bryan, because whatever his little girl wanted, she got.

People could call her what she liked; she was still a whore. Charlie couldn’t even begin to count the times he had caught the slut with his son. The two of them went at it like rabbits, fucking each other all over this cursed island.

Bryan was tired of his daughter's whoring behavior, too, and brought it up while they drank together. “I swear, I’m going to get her fixed. It’s a sorry thing to say, but she’s not just fucking your son. She’s fucking everyone’s son.”

Toby was an idiot. That kid was perfectly fine with his girlfriend spreading her legs for whoever she wanted.

There were rumors on the island that he liked to watch, and at first, Charlie refused to believe it.

Fairweather men didn’t share. It was ingrained in their DNA.

No one could touch what belonged to them.

But then he caught a glimpse of it himself.

A week—maybe two—ago, he’d spotted his son and Bryan's daughter in the back of a club he frequented. The place was mainly for tourists, and while he might be older, Charlie knew he was still attractive, and that night he’d been on the hunt for a warm body to fuck.

Right from the get-go, he packed himself with tequila shots while wedging between a couple of college girls at the bar.

The pair had sized him up like they had daddy issues for days, and it wasn’t long before he was licking salt off their perfect tits.

Until he went to take a piss.

The rear of the club was always kept dark, allowing for private moments if couples should need them. Charlie never hung out there much, not caring for the thick cigarette smoke clinging to the air or the heavy vibration of the bass brought on by the massive speakers near the bathroom.

And that night, he came across Bryan Carroll’s daughter riding some college boy who was most definitely not Tobias.

Even worse, Tobias was there. Standing right next to the guy getting ridden to holy hell, his teenage son had been aggressively fucking the face of some poor girl who appeared to be unable to breathe, thanks to the dick in her throat.

Charlie had never left a building so fast. He hardly saw his kids anymore since they spent so much time with Bryan. But whatever was happening had to stop, and he immediately called for CeCe to come home to their sailboat .

Toby refused to return, but eventually showed up to check in with CeCe. He stayed for a day or two and then disappeared again, jetting off on one of Bryan's many luxury speedboats.

“CeCe!”

Forcing himself to stand, Charlie squinted into the night.

He could tell they were off the Buck Island lagoon, and why the hell he had anchored them so far out was lost in the haze of booze occupying his brain.

Lapses in memory were an unfortunate side effect of drinking, but as every level in his life seemed to want to drop him deeper and deeper into hell, alcohol had turned into a necessity for him to function.

Stumbling over to the entrance leading below, he tripped but caught himself on something soft before hitting the ground. Whatever it was groaned, and as his eyesight adjusted, Charlie dropped to his knees when he realized it was a body.

“Toby? That you, boy?”

With his back against a wall, Toby lay slouched and moaning as if in pain. His skin had dark splotches, like bruises mixed with dried blood. Crouching lower for a closer look, Charlie could see the kid’s lip was busted and his left eye swollen nearly shut.

“What the hell did that little bitch drag you into?”

No other boat was tied to theirs, which meant Brandy must have gotten them into trouble and dumped Toby out here for him to deal with. It wouldn’t be the first damn time and probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Stay here,” he ordered, as if Toby could hear him. Half falling down the short set of stairs to their living quarters, Charlie felt around for the light switch. “CeCe, where the hell are you?”

He clicked on the low lights, hissing as his pupils dilated. She wasn’t in her normal chair, the one she virtually lived in while watching TV. CeCe loved movies. The big sweeping romances that drove him insane. He hated that she watched them. They built unrealistic expectations and ideas about men.

Unsteady on his feet, he lumbered to the aft bedrooms. They had two, with CeCe getting one all to herself. Sliding open the cabin door, he snapped on her light and found her in bed, curled into a ball and crying quietly.

“Come help me with your brother. ”

She didn’t move, her trembling only increasing the closer he came.

Lying on one of the quilts he’d had made for her, he figured she must be in the middle of a nightmare again.

CeCe often dreamed of the night her mother died.

She didn’t see it happen since she was upstairs with SiSi, but she had run right into the aftermath.

Slipping and sliding on the blood and gore, Charlie had been told she tried to wake Livy, sitting with her sister’s body until they forced her to leave.

“Cecilia, can you hear me?” He didn’t shout this time. It wouldn’t do any good pulling her out of the nightmare too fast. “I said, come help me with your brother.”

His brain was slow to catch up, but standing at the foot of her mattress, it felt as if he were watching an abstract painting pull together to create a new and terrifying truth.

CeCe was hurt. Like Tobias, blood splotches covered her clothes.

There were bruises on her arms, and the shorts she wore showed even more on her legs.

“Oh my God, baby.” He reached for her, dying a little at seeing her hurt. “What happened? Did Toby do this?”

CeCe hadn’t left the boat. He might not remember how he got back from the bar or why he had brought them out to Buck Island, but he knew CeCe was his obedient one. If he had told her to stay, she would have stayed.

The sound of a speedboat approaching carried through the air, and he recognized the whine of the craft’s engine immediately. It was one of Bryan’s. “Did Brandy do this to you?”

He laid a hand on her shoulder, and it was like she was electrocuted. CeCe screeched in terror and, scurrying away from him, cowered at the top of the mattress.

“Cecilia, tell me right now who did this.” A sick thought hit him. It was possible. James Fairweather had once gotten off on the pain of others, and Toby was turning into a sadist, just like him. “Was it Tobias?”

She shook harder, covering her head with her skinny arms. “Don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you.” He placed a knee on the mattress and tried to crawl over to her. “Let me see your face.”

CeCe lowered her arms. Broken. His little girl was broken. Bruises littered her tear-stained face, her bottom lip was split open, and there were gashes covered with dried blood near her temple .

“I’m going to kill him.”