Page 1 of Burn It Down

1

~Jonah~

A shitload of muscle closed in around me.

I counted ten as I rapidly assessed the situation the way I’d been trained to do.

The way he’d trained me to do.

The shithead now standing there looking on as he ordered these big motherfuckers to subdue me.

My fucking father.

“I’m sorry, Jo. You’ve left me no other goddamn option with your sickening fixation with Asher.”

“Sickening?”

“You know I never liked it.”

Bigoted bastard.

“It stopped mattering to me what you liked a long time ago.” I seethed at him. “The day I lost all respect for you.”

“When you found out about the dungeon?”

I nodded. “I heard you on that call with Carson. Asher had kept it from me and Kill, pretending that he’d been away for days on end to train under his father to take on Monroe Enterprises after he graduated. It was all bullshit. He kept up the ruse, hiding it all to protect us, knowing we wouldn’t have stood for it.”

Well, knowing Asher, it had been more than that.

He’d been ashamed. He couldn’t bear being thought of as a victim, as the abused.

He thought it was weakness.

The only weakness was Carson and the Head Infidels. They should’ve been bearing all that shame, not Asher. None of it was his fault.

He’d been born into brutality.

Into the company of monsters.

“It was training,” my father argued. “To make him strong.”

“He’s always been strong. Stronger than any of us.”

“Perhaps. His recent activities would seem to support that.” He shook his head to himself. “Coming at Carson… it takes balls of steel.”

“If only you’d exhibited the same. Maybe then things could be different.”

“They can. All you have to do is stand down and let me help you.”

“I don’t need it,” I ground out.

“Jo, I can get you out. You can be free. Don’t pass that up because of your infatuation with a big cock. I’ll find you another. I’m willing to accept that about you, that you can’t be satisfied just with some wet cunt. Fine. I’ll work with that for you.”

“What?” I choked. He’d really accept it? After all these years? After pushing me for so long before I’d managed to relocate to Hexwood away from him.

No. It wasn’t about what it needed to be, he was just fucking desperate to bring me with him, to push me into coming with him. He’d say anything, offer anything.

All except the one thing I needed, the one thing I couldn’t live without.

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