Page 57 of Breaker

“Cora,” Clyde says, tapping my arm. “What happened?”

“He told me I had no choice,” I say, keeping our eyes locked, praying the stinging in my eyes doesn’t betray me. “And that was that.”

His nod tells me he understands. His next few words confirm what I already know. He really has no idea that the man who raised me, hurts me. “Rune hated your mother. But he loves you.”

“He has a funny way of showing it,” I mumble.

His frown makes me regret my snark. Logically I know none of this is Clyde’s fault. He’s protected me as best he could. It’s not his fault I never told him about Rune. It’s not his fault my mother was who she was. I never told anyone about her either.

Even though I hated her, I admired my mother’s courage. Caroline Julian may have been the worst kind of person, but she was a savvy business woman. Intelligent and knew how to coerce people to do her bidding.

My father was merely her puppet. At a young age I knew that. She would smile sweetly, shower him with kisses and praise and the next thing I knew, we were on a trip a country I only vaguely remember, or out on a new yacht, her male yoga instructor in tow.

I wonder sometimes if my father feared her more than he loved her and that’s why she always got what she wanted. And what my mother wanted was power. She craved it like demons crave blood. She sucked it out from anyone who came near her, absorbing any power they possessed and used it as her own.

That’s the mistake Rune made. He trusted the wife of his partner like he did his own family. He trusted she had his best interest in mind.

The only concern my mother had was for herself. I remember vividly just how that felt when she nearly killed me inthat closet and her only worry was what would happen to her if someone found out.

That cuts a person in half. That gut wrenching feeling, the mind shattering knowing, that the one person who’s supposed to love and protect you doesn’t care at all.

I remember that heartbreak all too well because I experienced it over and over with Rune.

The worst part about remembering are how the bad parts never leave you, and the good seems to fade all too quickly.

Some people remember just shadowy bits from their childhood. Just fragments of time, captured like photographs, torn at the edges, faces cut off, or parts scratched out.

My memory is just fine. Because I remember every detail. The wood door against my nails. The smell of my dried piss. The throaty moans of people in far off rooms. I remember their faces too. The men. How their teeth showed, like rabid animals when they smiled at my mother.

“Prissy, come sit on my lap.”

“Are you okay?”

My vision snaps to focus, the room returning to bright clarity as Clyde moves to a crouch in front of me.

“You’re starting to worry me.” The skin around his mouth creases as he frowns. There’s salt and pepper stubble on his cheeks and for the first time I really look at Clyde.

His dark eyes framed with dark lashes. His deep skin, lined with the wrinkles of a man in his fifties, now furrowed between his brows, as he watches me with so much concern, I don’t know why I want Rune’s love so much when I obviously have Clyde’s.

His eyes dart back and forth between mine, like he’s trying to determine my mental state. “Did Rune hurt you, Cora?”

With a deep breath, I shake my head.

“Stand up.” I tell him. “Your knee is bad.”

With a lingering look, like he’s trying to determine if I’m lying, he stands and looms over me, quirking a brow.

Gunshot. That’s what his knee injury is from. Not an accident.

“I want you to learn to defend yourself.” Clyde says. “I know a guy.”

I nod absently. It doesn’t matter if I can defend myself. What good will it do against men hellbent on breaking me? I’m still powerless against powerful men.

Men who take and consume. Devouring anything and everything simply because their greed outgrew their humanity. If they even had any to begin with. When you grow up being told you’re the best, you think you are. When you grow up knowing nothing can touch you, when there’s no consequences for your actions, you learn you live not just above the law but that the laws of common men don’t apply to you.

And people, wives, children, they become nothing. They are trophies or a bother. They are of little importance beyond how they can serve you. And it’s amazing what men will say when they are in the company of a woman they think holds no value.

Or what people will say in front of a little girl who’s nothing but an inconvenience

---