Page 5 of The Alpha King's Curse: Part One

“You’re lucky this beautiful angel is here,” the man said. “I think you know what you can give me if you can’t pay up. I’ll be in touch.”

The man turned back to her with another sinister grin before walking out, and the enormous man standing over her father followed.

She waited until she heard their car drive off before she stormed to her father.

“How much do you owe?” she hissed.

“Not much. Just twenty grand.”

Her eyes almost popped out of her head when she heard that figure. Not much? That amount would go a long way in sending Brit off to college.

“How?! What did you do with such a large amount of money? You haven’t paid bills here or taken care of us in a long time!”

Gerald gingerly sat back in his chair, ignoring the mess the men had made in the living room.

“It was supposed to be a sure bet,” Gerald mumbled. “I would have paid off everything and then had enough to fix things.”

Her blood went cold. Her father’s gambling had landed them in the trailer park to start with.

“You said you would stop. You said you’d never gamble aga—”

“Well, I lied,” Gerald snapped. “And I obviously can’t fix this myself, so you’ll have to think of your sister. I’ll give him what he wants and be done with it.”

She remembered the look in the man’s eyes when he’d looked at her, and her meagre breakfast almost came back up.

“And what’s that, Dad?” she whispered.

“You. I’m going to give him you.”

Chapter 3

“You’re out of your damn mind if you think for one second that I’ll let you pimp me out!”

Somewhere between her mother leaving him with two small girls to raise on his own and now, Gerald Carlisle must have lost his damn mind. Completely.

“You go with him, or we all die. Simple as that,” her father said.

“We don’t have to pay for your mistakes! I’ll take Brit and leave,” she snarled.

“Brit is still seventeen, and I’m her father. You can’t take her anywhere,” Gerald said as he stood up again.

Her father could be intimidating if he wanted to be. He had never been violent towards them, but she knew it wasn’t because he wasn’t capable of it. She had picked him up from the police station after many bar fights often enough to know the damage he could cause. And she could see the desperation in his hazel eyes as he approached her.

“And I don’t see you dragging Brit out of school in her senior year when you want her to graduate,” Gerald continued. “And that’s what I want, too. Britney has a better chance than us to get out of this shit hole. She can make something of herself. But you, Layla... You’re a high school dropout. Scrubbing rich people’s toilets is all you’ll ever be good at. You might as well do this for your sister.”

She sucked in her breath.

His words cut her deep. Gerald had sliced her open and poured salt all over her wounds.

“And whose fault is that?” she whispered.

“Stop blaming me. You’re resourceful. If you’d wanted to stay in school, you would have found a way,” Gerald snarled. “Besides, you look just like your mother. I’m sure you’ll make more money on your back than at that hotel.”

She gasped.

Anger mixed with her pain as she turned away from her father and walked back to her bedroom. Tears fell to her cheeks, but she angrily wiped them away. She wouldn’t let her father ruin their plans. Her sister was the only good thing in her life—she would not let Gerald break her, too.

She would pay the debt off herself if she had to. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d cleaned up Gerald’s messes.

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