Page 42 of Safe and Sound

“There you go again,” he half-heartedly joked.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. And you’re right. This casino is a very glamorous way of giving my father a posthumous fuck you.”

“Did he not want you to build it?”

Dare took a long gulp of his whiskey. “No. He didn’t. He didn’t like any of his sons to succeed with anything he didn’t have his corrupt fingers in.”

“He was a businessman too?”

A haunted look entered Dare’s eyes. “Aye. We followed in his footsteps.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“Two glorious years.”

As I stared at Dare’s profile, some of the pieces of his puzzle fell into place. My heart ached for him. “Yeah, I have daddy issues,” he remarked without looking at me.

“I didn’t say anything.”

He turned to me with a wry smile. “I could hear you thinking it.”

“If you say so,” I huffed.

“It’s okay, Ava. I’ll be the first one to admit it. My brothers would agree. Our father was a narcissistic psychopath. Not one of his six kids has a fucking decent thing to say about him. He physically and mentally abused our mother who was chained to him because she wouldn’t leave him without her kids.”

“Couldn’t the police do anything?”

A humorless laugh escaped Dare’s lips. “He had the cops in his pocket. He was like a king who was above the law.”

“That’s horrible.”

“He was.”

“Did he abuse you, too?”

“Aye. My older brothers and I got the brunt of it.”

Tears stung my eyes at his anguished expression. “I’m so sorry.”

He stared intently at me. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I’m sorry for you, but I’m also sorry for your mother. It’s unfathomable she had to live like that. That all of you had to live like that.” I placed my hand on his cheek. “No one should have to endure so much pain.”

“What about you? Does your family have any skeletons in their closet?”

“Thankfully, no. They came to America desperate for a way to escape their grief.”

“What happened?”

“My older sister, Thea, was killed in a car accident. The shock of her loss sent my mother into labor, and I was born.”

“That’s tragic.”

“It really is. Her loss broke my parents. They never really talked about the accident. But this one time when my father was really drunk on the anniversary of her death, he let it slip that she was running away with her boyfriend who was also killed.”

“Why was she running?”

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