Page 82 of Her Protector Daddies

“Dad?”

“Hey, pumpkin.” Marcus’ drawn face pulled into a toothy smile in greeting.

I clenched my jaw and moved to put myself between Selena and Marcus until we had the full story.

Selena acted first.

Instead of greeting her father, she lifted her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

Deserved.

31

SELENA

The Captain’s office was as clean and as proper as she was. Not one single thing seemed out of place, giving an air of coldness that I had to respect. Being a woman in this kind of work couldn’t be easy, never mind carrying the title of Captain. Femininity didn’t have a place in law and order, or so it seemed.

The crisp cleanliness of her office made my father, Marcus Hartley, look all the more grubby and unkempt, and the duffel bag that had started all of this appeared exceptionally dirty on her desk.

Captain Aubrey stood nearby with red and white cubes in her hand. The magnets lacked lightly back and forth as she watched Tyler snap on a pair of evidence gloves and approach the bag. Jay sat next to me and Bailey hovered behind my father as if he was expecting him to break out of his cuffs at any moment.

I could barely take my eyes off the bag. It was so strange to see it again after so long. So much had changed in my life; I’d changed so much that it was like a different version of me had seen that bag at first and simply passed on the information with a note.

“Marcus…” Aubrey sucked on her teeth slightly and the pace at which she was flicking the magnets back and forth quickened. “Why didn’t you come forward sooner?”

“I’ve been asking him the same thing ever since I snapped those cuffs on him,” Bailey snapped, shifting his weight back and forth onto the balls of his feet.

When Jay opened the door to my father, he hadn’t been that talkative. He was more apologetic than anything else, but I had struggled to believe a word that came out of his mouth—not until I knew the whole story.

“Well.” When my father started to speak, his voice was scratchy. “I was high when I robbed Andrés. It was not my smartest moment and I think, with the drugs and the alcohol, I was able to concoct this amazing plan where I could steal a few things to secure my safety. Then I could run and take Selena with me, and we’d have a fresh start.”

Tension flashed down my arms as he croaked out my name. For a moment, it sounded sane—a desperate guy seeking a way out. I didn’t believe it for a second, though. Too often, a similar excuse had come my way when he was coming down from a bender and sought the sympathy card.

“That won’t fly here,” I said tightly. “You have to tell the truth.”

“That is the truth.” My father twisted to look at me, rattling the cuffs slightly behind his back. “I wanted an out for both of us.”

“An out would have been to turn your back on the drugs, Dad. Not resort to more crime.”

His thin, weathered face crumpled slightly, and he nodded.

“Alright. I was high, and while I stand by what I said, there was some addict logic in there too. Part of me was hoping to extort Andrés in some way because I was tired of scraping by on what he was putting out on the streets. I knew he kept the good stuff for elite parties at his casinos.”

That sounded more like my father. Jay’s hand came to rest on my thigh and squeezed lightly, becoming a grounding point of comfort as my father continued.

“It took me days to come down. I lost count of how long. Didn’t know where I was, didn’t know where Selena was. By the time I got my bearings, so much time had passed and I had that.” My father dipped his head toward the duffel bag.

Tyler carefully photographed everything he pulled out of the bag and laid it on the Captain’s desk. So far, it was large chunks of cash and nothing else.

“Then some guy was in the crack house I’d ended up in, trying to kill me because of some hit that had been placed out on me and my daughter. It wasn’t until I escaped that I realized Andrés had put the hit out on me and Selena.” He took a deep breath, and his bony shoulders drifted underneath his shirt. In the few months we had been apart, my father had definitely wasted away more than usual.

“You didn’t think to come to us?” Aubrey asked sharply. “Hand yourself in to gain protection for you and your daughter?”

“The drugs came first.”

That was probably the most honest sentence my father had ever uttered. My sluggish heart skittered slightly in my chest, shifting to pump loud and hard in the center. Jay’s hand tightened around my thigh.

“I knew with what I had stolen would get me away from Andrés for good. How could it not? The little psychopath had a bad habit of keeping trophies for bragging rights, bringing them out at parties to remind everyone of how dangerous he was and how far he was willing to go.” my father scoffed slightly. “I wasn’t thinking about the law. Just self-preservation.”

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