Page 47 of Toy

I leaned forward. “No, really. Did you ever genuinely believe any of the lies you made up? Or was it just your way of seizing control and power over women?”

My father smiled thinly. “I believed I had the power to get what I want, and I did,” he said, his voice soft yet deadly.

I sat back. “I guess that answers that, then.”

He was quiet for a moment, eyes focused on the wall behind me. “I noticed you didn’t end up having that child with Mason,” he finally said, voice chillingly calm. “Probably a good thing. The baby would’ve been an abomination considering its parentage.”

Blood pounded in my ears. “How dare you,” I seethed. “The only abomination here is you.”

He sighed. “You behave like this, and then you wonder why you must be punished. Incredible.”

I narrowed my eyes again. “I never said I was wondering about that. I’m pretty sure I already know what you’re going to do to me and why you want to do it.” I paused and licked my dry lips. “There is one thing I am wondering, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Does it matter that I’m your daughter?” I asked. “Does that fact ever give you the slightest pause when you think about murdering me?”

His expression turned blank. “Once upon a time it mattered, certainly.”

“So that’s a no.”

He let out another heavy sigh and stood up. “I had such high hopes for you, Jolie,” he said. He began to slowly pace back and forth between his chair and the wall. “You were my special girl. A miracle. Your mother and I had a lot of trouble conceiving. The doctor told me I was at fault, and there was very little chance. But then you came along. So I think the problem was actually with your mother. Her womb must have been very inhospitable.”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. Surprise, surprise. My father was a virtually-sterile man who’d turned into a power-hungry asshole to compensate for what he perceived as a lack of masculinity, a dire failing on his part, and he’d unleashed all that internal rage and turned it against women instead of himself. It was a story as old as time, one which was bound to be repeated again and again.

“I was overjoyed at your birth, even though you were just a girl. I thought you would be my faithful little disciple. But you disappointed me. You turned out to be just like your mother. A stupid, treacherous little witch.” He shook his head slightly. “What sort of daughter would send her own father to the grave?”

“What?”

He rounded on me and grabbed the collar of my dress, dragging me out of my chair. “You betrayed me. You betrayed all of us,” he hissed. “It was bad enough that Masonwould choose to do such a thing, given that I genuinely liked him and grew to regard him as the son I never had. But it was even worse that you chose to do it too. My only child.”

He let go of my dress and threw me back toward the chair. “You know what they would’ve done to us if we were actually caught that day when the FBI raided us. I would’ve been handed the death penalty. You would’ve let your own father die.”

“They wouldn’t have killed you,” I muttered, regaining my balance on shaky legs. “Louisiana hasn’t had any executions since 2010. Last I checked, the courts barred the state from doing it.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, eyes ablaze with fury. “I’m sure you know perfectly well that they didn’t pass that bill until 2014, and you decided to betray us in early 2011. You couldn’t possibly have known that they’d bar them from carrying out any executions at the time. So try again.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms. “Yes, after Mason explained it to me, I knew what might happen to you and the other men. I was glad. You all deserved it.”

“And there it is. The cold, hard truth.” He shook his head. “Imagine having a child that you strive to provide a good life for. You do everything for him or her. Then that child throws it all in your face and wishes death upon you. Can you imagine anything so hurtful? So terrible?”

I rolled my eyes. “Here’s another scenario for you. Imagine you’re a child, and your mother gets murdered right in front of you because of your abusive, psychopathic father. Then he forces you underground into a torturous sex cult for over a decade. That seems far worse to me.”

He snorted. “You always were a little drama queen, weren’t you?” he said. “You were safe at the old New Eden, as long as you followed the rules. You were always clean and fed.”

“Barely.” My lips pulled back in a scowl. “We weren’t safe or protected. We were hurt all the time, just because we were girls.”

“Stop it.” My father turned away, shaking his head. “I didn’t come here to argue with you tonight.”

“Then why did you say we needed to talk?”

He looked back over at me. “I wanted to tell you what will happen to you now that you’ve submitted to the wrong man. The wrong path.”

“Mason isn’t the wrong man. You are. Everything you’ve ever said or done is wrong,” I spat. “If you have to deceive and torture little kids to make them believe your religion, then you know it’s all bullshit. You basically said as much earlier. Everything you’ve ever done was just to get what you wanted. Power.”

He rubbed his right temple. “I said I didn’t want to argue about this.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms. “Say what you wanted to say, then.”

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