Page 53 of Escape From Me

My face burned and Rylee just giggled.

“Anyway. Clothes. Then the boys can talk shop. I can practically see the steam coming from Zeiden’s ideas. He’s always the idea guy,” Rylee said and pulled me over to a small setup of sofas. A bit further into the warehouse I saw workbenches and stuff I couldn’t identify. This was an art studio though. Nothing like what I’d expected.

Nothing was distracting me enough from the sting in my eyes though. The burn of my feelings trying to turn into something real.

The word family. It wasn’t used as a swear word or a threat. It wasn’t used as a horrible reminder that family was all you had, and if you betrayed them, then you had nothing. The word didn’t mean safety to me. It meant threats and what you were expected to do to ensure they looked good. Here though? Here it was different.

“Family,” I said the word under my breath, not meaning to.

Cali and Rylee were holding out an iPad to me and they both stopped and smiled. No pity. No judgment. Just small, knowing smiles.

“A family you got to choose. Now choose some clothes so you can stop wearing ours,” Rylee said and quickly amended, “Not that we mind, but I’m sure you’d like that. Right?”

TWENTY-THREE

zeiden

“There’s enough here.We can call it an elite show. Invite repeat customers and a few strategic names.”

Rylee sat on Cass’s lap.

“Fine, fine. But what’s the plan? A show will get whoever we want here. Always does. The snag is, once it gets out customers go missing, I don’t see that being great.”

I sat down, pulling my Daisy into my own lap. The plan made sense. However, I didn’t like it much. But logic and feelings shouldn’t be mixed.

Probably.

“Well, the goal is to make sure the good senator won’t turn down the invitation. Dove, I’ll need your help with that. Rarely do we offer handwritten notes, but as you are his daughter…”

Daisy sat a bit straighter.

“Whatever you think will help. But what will you do with him?”

The plan in my head had been for his death all along. The reality was that Daisy might have something to say about it. That just hadn’t occurred to me until now.

I sucked on my bottom lip, playing at the shadow of hair growing.

“You see, Daisy, there’s a lot of reason behind this, but your father needs to die,” X filled in for me.

Daisy was quiet, and that in and of itself should have been worrisome. Maybe not. But the way her eyes swept over the room, flicking over me and X and Cas, it was hard to read her. Hard to understand all her looks still. But the read I’d gotten since I’d stolen her out of her little tower was that she was tired of blindly following. And here she would never blindly make another choice. I studied her as she continued to study everything around her, including Rylee and Cali. Either way, she was hard to read.

“So the plan is to get him, my dad, to this show and kill him?”

I blew out a breath.

“In a nutshell.”

I waited for a scream or a no. I felt like I had a good handle on how a normal person might respond to knowing someone they knew would be dying. But she didn’t do much. In fact, she snuggled into me, pulling her feet up next to us on the couch.

“And I really get to keep you?”

She pulled my arm into her, hugging it.

“Yes…”

And now we were back to unreadable territory. Mostly because when the hell had I ever been here before? The answer was never.

“Okay. Any chance you could get me a ring or something that would really piss off my dad, assuming I get to see him before his great and terrible demise?”

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