Page 5 of Reckoning

Conrad Schaf, Meyer’s father, was the kingpin of the Schaf Industries weapons company, a government contractor who developed and built the deadliest war machines on the planet, and the bane of my family’s existence. The last time I saw him, before last night, was six years ago on my sixteenth birthday. He had arrived unannounced with Meyer in tow. My mother had a panic attack that lasted hours after they left.

That was the night my mother told me to watch out for his family. She wouldn’t give me any details, but she made me stare at Conrad’s photo until I had committed his face to memory. Not that I would have been able to forget him after the scene he made at my house. It had been a long time since that day, but I remembered every inch of that despicable man’s face. I remembered the ring on his hand circled around my mom’s throat. I remembered the shoes he had been wearing when he kicked my father to the ground for trying to defend her. Most of all, I remembered the way he looked at me when he promised he would be back for me.

Meyer had his calendar marked when we’d meet again, but so had I. I just hadn’t known the date.

Meyer looked at my toppled chair with distaste, but Conrad laughed. My back hit the wall, leaving me nowhere else to go. Meyer went back to eating his food.

“What do you want?” he asked with feigned disinterest. He gripped his utensils tightly.

Conrad frowned. “Is that any way to speak to your father after he gives you the greatest birthday present you could ever hope to receive?”

Meyer put down his phone and turned to face him, partially blocking my view of his father. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, as you might imagine.”

Conrad snorted. “Fair enough. I just came by to check on our latest acquisition and see if she was settling in all right. The police came by earlier, but I told them to come back with a warrant. They have nothing to go off besides her family’s word. Have you thought about how you want this to play out?”

Meyer leaned back and studied me, cowering behind a bushy potted plant. My heart was racing, but it was hard to breathe in this cramped position with a bruised diaphragm. It felt like my left eye was closing up even more. I touched the cut on my cheek where Conrad’s ring had connected, the same ring that had left a bruise on my mother’s skin so many years before.

Meyer turned back to his father. “I’m leaning toward plan B. What do you think?”

Conrad spread his hands, affecting indifference. “Your present, your call. When do you think we can start?”

Both of them stared at me now, appraising. Meyer licked his lips. “Her face won’t be better for at least a week, but we can probably cover it up with makeup at that point. Next Saturday should do.”

Conrad nodded and smiled. “I’ll deal with the press coverage. Keep me updated until then.”

He turned to me slightly, and after giving me a small, mocking bow, he then spun and left as quickly as he appeared.

Once I heard the door close, my breathing settled a bit. I swallowed the lump in my throat threatening more tears, closed my eyes, and counted to ten. When I opened them, Meyer was crouched in front of me. Without a word, he reached out and gently grasped my biceps, pulling me to a standing position with as little pain as possible. He righted the chair, pointed at it, and went back to his phone.

“What is plan B?” I dared to ask. I didn’t think they were going to kill me—that had probably been plan A—but I wondered if I might have preferred death to what they had planned.

Meyer didn’t look at me. “You’ll find out soon enough.” Pushing away his empty plate, he pointed at mine. He did a lot of pointing. “Finish that, and Joshua will take you back to the room. I’ll come for you later.”

I bristled. There were too many unknowns. Was I supposed to stay in that blood-red room alone all day? How much time did he expect to pass before he saw me again?

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

He stretched his arms over his head, his flannel pants dropping lower on his hips. I jolted my gaze back to his face but not before he noticed.

With his eyes fixed on mine, he rose to his feet. He walked over to me, then wrenched the chair to the side so we were facing each other. He put one finger under my chin and lifted my face closer to his. “Are you afraid you’ll get lonely without me, Mads?”

I resisted the urge to slap his hand away and tried to calm the blood I felt rush to my face.

“Don’t call me that,” I said through gritted teeth. He scowled.

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please, Mads.” He dropped his hand and wiped it on his pants as though I was something sticky. “I don’t care what you do. Be good, and you won’t be punished. I might even give you a gift.”

Before I could ask what kind of gift from Meyer Schaf I could possibly want, he was gone.

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