Page 81 of Escalating Alpha

Clayton didn’t say anything for a moment. “I want some changes then and—”

“You will get the treat Zeno promised you only like the good caged fucking animal you are,” Jason bit out. “Or I think you should be infected and brought back to Chicago where Sera is your boss and she candisciplineyou every fucking minute of every fucking day she wants and it’s legal. That’s what I think should happen here.”

I swallowed a sigh when he set off Clayton. I reached deep for patience and thought of how to best handle this. Hoping I was wrong, I switched gears. “I told you this was stupid and it’s not worth anything. I don’t want to hear all the gory details and his excuses. There’s no excuse for any of it. Do it with the siren’s influence or we’re wasting our time.”

That got a reaction out of Clayton. He didn’t want to basically be drugged and his mind not his own. But more than that, he wanted his chance to defend himself and speak.

And hurt me. It was in his eyes. The joy that he thought this would cause me pain after all I’d done tohim.

Yeah, it was really silly for me to ever hope for too much. My birth dad wanted to take any chance to hurt me, seeing me as the villain still after all he’d done to me.

Awesome. Seriously, fucking awesome.

It actually made me appreciate myself for a moment that I wasn’t a complete basket case.

“What do you want to know?” Clayton asked, his tone gruff and grumbly, but I saw it in his eyes.

And it hurt worse than I would have expected, thinking I’d closed myself down from these assholes. Maybe I never could fully. They were my birth parents after all.

Phobie seemed to catch on to what was going on with me and took over. “How did it start? I want to know the beginning and when—Stacey made some claims about how you told her and it all going to shit. I think it’s worth exploring your side and finding some middle with the truth now that it’s all been opened up.”

Oh, she was good. She was really,reallygood and knew how to play Clayton immediately.

He lost his amusement and the anger came back… But it wasn’t at me which would help the situation and make me able to focus.

Hopefully?

“My dad showed up after we were married—crazy as ever, and Stacey flipped out that I didn’t tell her that I had mental illness in my family. I had to tell her the truth which pissed me off because I thought the gene hadn’t gotten me so me and any kids I’d have would be safe. The bitch didn’t even believe me, and it pissed me off that she thoughtIwas crazy.”

It was hard not to snort. No, not crazy but evil. Was that really any better? With how affronted he was acting that anyone could think him mentally ill, he had piles of other issues.

“I told her to go talk to him then. She’d get the truth and I—she did and he convinced her. She was beyond upset and wailed on me, demanding a divorce and—ungrateful bitch. She was nothing when I found her. Nothing but pretty and…” He shookhis head. “I told her that I didn’t have it and it made no sense to think our kids would then either.

“That settled her some, but she was still talking abortion for my disgusting genes. It pissed me off, and I reminded her that her father was a raging alcoholic—a violent abusive one at that and I married her with that in her family.” He snorted and then seemed to get lost for a moment. “But she was right and we should have.”

My eyes went wide as three people had to block Clayton from Zeno. My heart filled with love as he bellowed at Clayton that he would kill him if he ever spoke of his beloved daughter’s death again.

I couldn’t help but smirk at the camera, hoping Clayton saw. The man who told me I was such a problem, freak—all of it—was loved and he was left with nothing and pathetic.

Sometimes the best revenge was truly just leaving others in your dust and living your best life, not even giving them the importance they did.

“She was a freak from birth,” Clayton snapped, standing so he had a better way to defend himself if it came to that.

He would have no chance and be dead if Zeno got him. I wasn’t sure if it was just instincts or if he was too stupid to understand that.

I didn’t really care.

“Wait, explain that,” Phobie cut in. “What did you see that early that makes you say that even after all of these years later?”

Clayton made the mistake of thinking she might be on his side, not understanding who she really was. “She understood things and had that… Intelligence in her eyes a baby shouldn’t.”

“Give me an example,” Phobie pushed, clearly up to something from what I was getting off of her.

Even Jason sensed it because he moved his hand to my knee in support.

“She saw things,” he snapped. “She couldn’t take breast milk—puked it all over the fucking place. And she cried. Cried and cried unlike any newborn the nurses had ever seen. It was—fuck, was it rough. There wasn’t soy formula on every shelf like now. Even the doctors thought—it took days to figure it out and I thought my head was going to explode.

“Stacey wouldn’t even be in the same room as her, yelling that she needed to rest from the rough birth and then her daughter wouldn’t even take her milk.” He sighed. “I couldn’t even hate her for that. She was—now they would have diagnosed her with postpartum probably. The birth was bad. Really bad. She bled and…” He shook his head.

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