Page 5 of Priest

“You ain’t got no business messing with that Viva account, September. You know that,” he declared through clenched teeth.

“I had to, Daddy. The numbers didn’t align, and something wasn’t right. And you know how I get when things don’t balance.”

“Which is why I asked you to leave that to me,” he replied.

“Did you order this shipment?”

I prayed he said that he wasn’t familiar with it when I set the fulfillment order on his desk.

“Mind ya business, little girl,” he warned.

“Daddy. Did. You. Order?—”

“You’re stepping over the line, September.”

“Answer me!” Rage was a tightly coiled snake lying in wait within me. It wanted to strike out and bite its prey with a venomous attack.

“You don’t speak to me in that tone, September Chrishelle Morgan!” my father exclaimed.

“Tell me, Daddy,” I hissed.

He glared at me and refused to look at the condemning file.

“Where did you get this?”

“I printed it off along with the inventory list you requested. It was a part of the same file.”

“Avangaline forgot to remove it,” he muttered.

“Is it true, Daddy?”

His eyes shuttered as he replied, “Stay in your lane, princess. You don’t question how I run my operation.”

“I handle all administrative aspects of it.”

“You think that entitles you to question what the fuck I do? How do you think your entitled ass has that BMW 740i parked in the garage? Or how about that AMEX Black card, spa days, lunches at Baldwins, and those expensive vacations to the tropics you and your friends take every spring and summer. Who’s paying for those,princess?” he asked in a condescending tone and a glacial look in his eyes.

“Daddy, that shipment was not for guns or software parts. Those were people, women in that shipment container, Daddy.”

The way that he stared right through me and then looked away, I knew he was aware. It chilled me to the bone that my father could be so callous and menacing.

“Daddy, you can’t do that to them. They’re people, somebody’s daughter. Just like me. They’re someone’s mommy. Just like Mommy!” I shouted.

“Snooping in shit that didn’t have anything to do with her, that’s what got her killed. You’d better be careful about following in your mother’s footsteps, little girl.”

“Daddy!” The shrill gasp that leaped from my lungs didn’t sound like me at all. “Daddy, please tell me that you didn’t know,” I begged, sobbing.

I watched my once tall, handsome father transform before my eyes. His warm brown eyes were soulless, his mouth a hardened line, and his face a caricature of the handsome man he was before his stunning revelation.

“You were supposed to spend the weekend with Shan. I swear I had no idea you stayed home.”

My mouth dropped, and I gripped the edge of his desk to keep myself upright. His ass was not standing there about to say the shit that I thought he was going to say. I backed away from his desk. I was going to be sick. My world had turned upside down before my eyes. My father stepped from behind his desk.

“Don’t you fucking judge me. You accept that I sell drugs, trade guns, and all the other shit to keep your bank account healthy and keep us in this big ass house, but you want to judge me about some bitches who no one gave a shit about? They’re just collateral damage in a man’s war. They’re useless and have nothing to offer no one except for what’s between their legs. Same as your mother.”

“Don’t you speak about her like that,” I hissed.

“Why? Because you thought that she was a saint. That same judgmental look that’s in your eyes now is the same one that she had for me when she learned about my business. How fucking dare she judge me when she was whoring herself out to my business partner.”

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