Page 42 of Suspicion

She imagined he might expect her to bolt for the door again, but the truth was far simpler. Evidently, she’d been wrong. There were good numbers, after all. One hundred and fifty million, for example. That sounded like a better normal to be worth. Or maybe a billion? But four million? That was nothing to a family like the Bennetts.

“Four million?” She buried her head in her bound hands, trying to fathom what he’d said. Alexander could have raised that paltry sum from his gambling mates. Hell, he could have crowd-funded it! Why would he have chosen this outcome and sent his daughter to stay with a brute like Tucker?

There was only one solution, as far as she could tell.

Her father didn’t love her at all.

Pulling in a painful breath, the idea resonated.

He doesn’t love me.

In the end, she was as pathetic as hordes of women before her—just another girl with Daddy issues.

“Yes.”

Concern radiated from Tucker’s voice, and as she snuck a peek at him between her fingers, she noticed how he shifted awkwardly on the chair. He looked palpably uncomfortable at her fresh display of emotion.

Strange. The thought flitted around her head. He never cared when I cried before…

“I thought it would be more.” She glanced at the wall as she lowered her hands. After everything she’d been through the last day and all the years Alexander had let her down, she was surprised how much her father’s rejection stung. She should have been worth more.

“I’m sorry.” He looked stunned, as though he couldn’t believe he was apologizing, but the glimmer of unease in his gaze reassured her that, on some level at least, he was human, and it was possible for him to care.

Perhaps he just couldn’t face her unraveling in front of him. Maybe he was too hungry to deal with her meltdown. Whatever the case, he seemed keen to mollify her, and Ella realized she could use that to her advantage.

“He’s an asshole.” She breathed out slowly, trying to put the man who’d sired her from her head.

“Your father?”

“Yes.” Tugging at the ropes at her wrists, she met his eyes.

“No arguments from me.” His gaze traveled from her wrists to her face as though he’d already figured out what she was thinking.

Maybe he had?

Maybe taking people hostage was normal for Tucker, and he understood the psychology of captivity. How would she know?

“Can you cut these ropes, please?” She pushed her hands out toward him. “I’ve been tied a long time.” By her reckoning, at least twenty-four hours. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever have the use of her four limbs again.

“You know I can’t.” He shrugged. “I can’t trust you, little girl.”

Little girl. There it was again, the odd term he’d used before. It had irritated the hell out of her in the barn, and it sounded no better in the cabin.

“Why are you calling me that?” She recoiled from him, wrestling with her competing emotions of disgust, curiosity, and fatigue.

She still couldn’t accept that any of this was happening to her. She’d lived a perfectly content life before she’d woken up in the woods, but this—being there with him in a hut without running hot water—that was barely even an existence.

But it is happening. Her head ached at the obvious conclusion. It was happening, and she had to toughen up and survive before the weight of the burden pulverized her.

“Because it suits you.” The bastard had the audacity to laugh. “Look at you.” He gestured in her direction. “You’re tiny beside me.”

“Yeah.” Her tone was wry. “I noticed.”

“No offense was intended.” He looked to be trying to suppress his amusement. “You don’t like the term?”

Like it? Why would a grown woman want to be referred to as a child?

“What’s to like?” She attempted to keep her voice even that time, conscious not to piss him off again. Like it or not, Ella needed him in the short term. To feed her and ultimately, free her.

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