Page 89 of The Lair

Any proof you have of parental abuse or neglect would really help our case.

Tom’s words slice through my chest and refuse to let me breathe.

Because I do.

I have more than enough proof of the hell my parents put me through, but I will never be brave enough to show it to the world.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Age 19

The plan was simple—packthe essentials, grab some cash I knew my parents kept in their joint home office, and get the hell out of there.

I had cleared everything else with Jada’s sister, who’d kindly offered to rent me one of her empty bedrooms in Dallas for a fraction of the average rent cost in the area. And with the mechanic giving my car the green light for the long trip, I was only left with one last task. Arguably, the toughest of all.

The “get the hell out of here” part of the plan had been murky from the start, something I always seemed to have enough time to figure out later. Only thatlaternever came around.

It was inconvenient, given that I’d be leaving this house the following day, and I still had no clue how. There was noRunning Away from Home 101: The Ultimate Guideto help me through it, exactly. Playing it by ear had always been the idea—until I realized it wouldn’t be as easy as walking out of the door and never coming back.

My parents, as much as they’d never had my best interest at heart, would’ve panicked if I’d disappeared into thin air again. And when trying to run away from home, having the police called on me—and potentially finding me—was never the goal.I didn’t need a social media circus with my name at the front either.

While Johnny was off at school, my father was at the golf club, and my mother was meeting some friends for one of her long brunches after dropping Cindy at day care, I lugged my suitcase all the way to my car in the garage. Then I sprinted back up to my parents’ home office, entered the passcode to my mom’s safe—her birthday—and took ten thousand dollars in cash.

As I stashed the money in the pocket of my hoodie, I told myself this was my only option. I couldn’t afford to be tracked through my credit card—which my parents still had access to—and that money…

I’dearnedit.

My parents had used my image without my consent for years—to advertise overpriced toys, fancy child-friendly cruises, tacky clothing brands, and everything else under the sun that gave them a fat paycheck in return. As far as I knew, none of that money was stored away for my future. Not a single penny. I’d recently turned nineteen, and neither of my parents had revealed they kept an overflowing, supersecret savings account for me.

So was it reallystealingif I’d helped earn it against my will? Arguable.

Yet I still felt like I’d go into cardiac arrest during the minute it took me to grab the money.

The house was still empty when I finished, the only noise being thethump, thump, thumpof my frantic heartbeat. I didn’t get caught. No alarms went off, and no rabid dogs whose existence I never knew of chased me down.

Gripping the money tightly in my pocket because I couldn’t believe I’d had the audacity to dothat, I allowed myself a moment to regain my breathing.

“Okay,” I muttered out loud before I recited my mental to-do list for good measure. “I have gas, my things are in the car, Jada printed out the reservations for the hotel I’ll be sleeping at tomorrow…”

I was forgetting something. That blank space in my list was nagging me like a pebble in a shoe, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Was it my new ID with the name change? No, that was in my backpack, under my bed.

My credit card, then? No, I’d decided to leave that behind.

I frowned, annoyed. Then what?—

A shiver skidded down my spine when my eyes landed on my mother’s laptop, unassumingly lying on her messy desk.

The one thing I was forgetting wasn’t something I wrote down in the first place. Without it, though, my escape would be for nothing.

My parents had never accepted no for an answer. They lived a privileged life, used to everyone catering to their out-of-touch needs—like that one time they made a point to remind a restaurant hostess how many social media followers they had, so why the hell would they have to pay for dinner?

They thought their fame made them untouchable. I knew better than to assume they’d be okay with me leaving with just a “Goodbye, don’t contact me ever again” note. They would take it to the police and use their money and connections to find me despite me being over eighteen. They would turn to social media and announce my disappearance, hosting their own personal pity party.

I had to be smarter. I needed to make sure there was absolutely no way they could turn to the internet or the authorities.

As I kept glancing at my mother’s laptop, my brain lit up with an insane idea. But what choice did I have?

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