Page 30 of Heartless Prince

My lips pulled back, baring my teeth. “You can’t be serious. You can’t own me. And believe me, my friends and parents are going to realize I’m missing soon. They’ll call the police, and—”

Tobias slapped me across the face, hard. I yelped, spittle flying out the side of my mouth as fiery pain raged across my sensitive skin. A metallic flavor filled my mouth, and I realized he’d split my lip open.

“Your friends have already been informed of your decision to drop out of Roden and spend some time backpacking around Europe with no phone or internet. They are upset, of course, especially seeing as you left without saying goodbye, but they’ll get over it. Eventually, they’ll forget all about you.”

I took several deep breaths, my face twisted into a grimace. “You really think my parents are going to believe that? They know how hard I worked to get into Roden. They know I’d never drop out. And even if they did somehow believe that, if I don’t return from this fake backpacking trip at some point, they’ll definitely know something is up.”

A cold smile spread across Tobias’s face. “Your parents, huh? Who do you think sold you to us, little girl?”

All the white noise in my mind immediately shut off as the full weight of his words hit me, smashing into my life broadside and shattering everything I thought I knew.

“No,” I whispered, my body trembling like a leaf.

He was lying.

He had to be lying.

Tobias pulled out a folded sheaf of paperwork from his jacket pocket. “I have the contract right here. You can look at it.”

“My mom and dad wouldn’t do that to me….”

He handed me the papers. “See for yourself.”

Hands trembling, I took the alleged contract and scanned the pages. Shock immediately spiked through my belly, twisting and twirling like a tornado. Tobias was telling the truth. Both my parents’ signatures were on it.

The contract detailed the terms of my bondage to Crown and Dagger, and I could see what my parents had been given in return: their debts paid in full along with three hundred thousand dollars spread out over the months to look like legally-obtained business income.

There was also a stipulation that they would be allowed to live rent-free permanently in one of the King family’s many, many properties in Connecticut. That was their new house… the one I thought they worked so hard for. The one I was so proud to see them living in after spending so many years in a cramped little shoebox of a house in a poor borough of my hometown. All a lie.

As the stark reality hit me, I dropped the documents like they were on fire. My life had been traded by my parents for a few hundred thousand dollars and a free house. That was all I was worth to them in the end. It said it right there in those papers.

“I don’t… I can’t….” I couldn’t form a full sentence. I was too horrified.

With all the shock flooding my system, I felt like my heart might stop and I would collapse right into a coma and never wake up. That might actually be preferable to what was happening right now.

I knew my parents had had a tough time in the last decade or so, but I never thought they would be so willing to give me up in return for some money and a free house. Yet they did exactly that. Why the hell didn’t I see it coming?

My mind drifted back to my childhood. Many times, I’d overheard them arguing about money, arguing about me. Saying they could barely afford to feed me. Sometimes my mom would blame my dad and tell him he should’ve worked harder to get his business going properly. Sometimes he would blame her for not being able to find another job after being laid off from her teaching position. Sometimes I even heard one of them say they shouldn’t have had me.

At the time, I put it down to stress. I knew how badly money—or lack thereof—could affect people’s minds. I figured they didn’t really mean it, and I spent my teens working as many after-school and weekend jobs as I could in order to contribute and lessen their stress.

I guess it wasn’t enough. Not enough to buy their unconditional love, anyway. They sold me down the river the first chance they got. Literally.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked up at Tobias. There was a nasty gleam in his eyes as he watched me. He was enjoying this.

“Is that why you met with my parents in December last year? I saw you with them at Roden,” I said.

The memory had just returned in a flash. When I was invited to do a campus tour after receiving my acceptance, my parents had come with me, and they’d told me they had a business meeting with a potential client in the area. Later that day, I’d seen them talking to Tobias near a marble fountain, looking quite grim and uneasy. At the time, I got a strange vibe from the incident, but I ignored the feeling, figuring it was just an innocent work-related meeting.

I guess I should’ve trusted my gut and realized then and there that something was very wrong.

Tobias chuckled. “No. That was just a quick meeting to discuss some of the payment terms. You first appeared on my radar as far back as March last year, and in the ensuing weeks, I realized you would make the perfect toy for my son, for various reasons. I contacted your parents then.”

My previously shocked frame of mind turned feral and furious as a forest fire, rage blinding me, burning out of control.

“This isn’t legal!” I said, jumping to my feet again. I stamped one foot on the contract. “You cannot own me, no matter what this ridiculous thing says. I know my rights, and I did not give my permission for any of this!”

“Like I said, the contracts were signed a year and a half ago. You’re nineteen now, so that means you were only seventeen when they were signed. Legally-speaking, you were still a child. Your parents could sign for you, and they did.”

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