Page 28 of Burn It Down

All his intel had been obtained from afar and second-hand.

And through all that, he hadn’t heard anything from me.

He hadn’t even tried to since I’d been here either.

We’d been in the same house for days and he’d stayed away.

I was like a fucking thing to him, a precious commodity that needed locking away so nobody tried to take it or hurt it.

It was as upsetting as it was infuriating.

All of that was amplified by the fact that I now knew Asher had been taken and that he was very likely being tortured by those psychopaths. I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head since I’d woken up a few hours ago after my dad had put me out with a freaking sleeper hold. Seriously?

The whole thing was unbelievably insulting.

He was basically grounding a twenty-one year old woman.

Disapproving of her boyfriends, and actually going out of his way and using despicable methods and underhandedness to forbid the relationship.

My pacing came to an abrupt halt as I picked up on the sound of the basement door at the top of the stairs opening.

I started forward to lay into my dad, when it wasn’t him who came into view.

It was her.

Olivia Warling.

The woman who’d been made to look a whole lot like my mom.

As she made it to the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the basement, she looked me over quickly. It looked more like genuine concern than checking to see if I was armed with another homemade weapon.

She winced at the slight red ring around my throat from the sleeper hold, skimming over my black tank, to my black jeans, then focusing on my knuckles, the lot of them bloodied on each hand.

“My dad sent you in here to fix me up?” I asked.

She nodded. “He asked me to see to you in his place, believing it would only agitate you more if it was him.”

“Agitate?” I shook my head. “Unbelievable.”

“I agree.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You do?”

“Yes,” she said, stepping forward.

I held up my hand. “If this is an attempt to lull me into a false sense of security, so you can take another, friendlier angle to convince me I need to stay locked up here until all this is over, I’m telling you right now that you’re wasting your time.” My eyes narrowed on her. “And it won’t play out well for you either.”

“I know you’re not a damsel in distress.”

I merely glared at her.

“But I do agree with Lan that the situation is insanely dangerous and volatile. If you leave this house, you absolutely will not be safe. But I’ve gotten Lan to agree to a compromise. You can make a call to Killian to let him know you’re well, to ensure he and Jonah are too. With that weight off your mind, I’m hoping you’ll agree to stay here away from it all, to remain safe. Then we can get you out of this basement and focus on you rebuilding your relationship with your father and enjoying your long-awaited reunion.”

I took her words in.

The fact that a compromise was being offered meant I’d managed to make a dent in my dad’s stubbornness.

Interesting.

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