Page 21 of Raging Inferno

“She’s a great kid.”

“That she is. She’s usually reserved around strangers, especially women. We have a new firefighter on the C shift. Rena. She’s tried to be nice to Gia, but she won’t have anything to do with her. I asked her why, and she didn’t have an answer. How did you do it?”

Presley shrugged. “I threatened to feed her liver and onions.”

Dominic choked on a laugh. “You didn’t.”

“So did. I promised her corn dogs if she stayed in the car when I went to Nancy’s fire yesterday. She didn’t.”

“Yeah, she’s headstrong. I don’t know if I’m prepared for her teenage years.”

Presley smiled. He would do just fine, even if Gia had him wrapped around her finger.

“She said her mother was dead.”

Most people wouldn’t have noticed Dominic’s fingers tensing on the steering wheel, but Presley was a trained investigator.

“She did, huh?”

“Yeah, but it’s none of my business.”

He sighed. “It’s not a secret. Lainey decided she didn’t want to be a mom anymore. We had planned on at least three kids, possibly four. Lainey had a hard time getting her figure back after Gia’s birth. She was still a beautiful woman, but she didn’t like what she saw in the mirror. She blamed Gia.”

“It wasn’t Gia’s fault,” Presley defended.

“No, it wasn’t. Lainey was a former beauty queen whose identity was tied to her looks. She had a strict mother who put her on diets starting when she was younger than Gia. I’msure that added to her psychosis. Plus, Lainey hated it here. She wanted to move to a big city with fancy stores and an exciting nightlife. I didn’t realize how much she’d taken out her frustrations on Gia . . . not physically,” he quickly pointed out. “It was mental.” His jaw clenched. “It kills me to know my daughter was hurting, and I didn’t realize it. It got to the point where she wouldn’t eat and was sullen and withdrawn. She was six years old.”

Presley’s heart broke for that little girl.

“It was apparent something was very wrong, but Gia wouldn’t talk. Lainey denied knowing anything. I took Gia to the doctor, and she ran tests, but everything came back fine. The doctor told me she thought it was in her head. I confronted Lainey again, and she finally admitted she’d been critical of Gia.”

“Dominic, that’s horrible.”

“It gets worse. That night, Lainey blew up at Gia, saying that she had never wanted her in the first place, what a disappointment she was, and that it was all her fault Lainey wasn’t happy.”

Presley wasn’t a crier, but tears pricked her eyes.

“Gia cried so hard that she made herself sick. I took her back to the doctor, and while we were gone, Lainey left.”

Presley didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet, letting him tell the story at his pace.

“She didn’t return that evening. The next morning, I called a lawyer to set the ball in motion for a divorce and petition for sole custody. There was no way I could let Gia be around her after that.”

“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t either. What did Lainey say?”

“I didn’t hear from her all day. Had no idea where she was. That night, I got a call from the Minneapolis State Police. Lainey died in a single-car crash outside of St. Paul.”

Presley should probably feel bad about the loss of life, but the woman had tortured her own child. She deserved to rot in hell.

“The last three years have been rough. Gia was messed up at first. I was lucky that the captain’s job came up. It meant I had regular hours to be home with her at night and on the weekends. I took her to therapy to undo whatever Lainey had put into her head. She’s improved so much, but she hates it here.”

“It probably reminds her of her mother,” Presley murmured.

“Yeah. I thought it would improve as time passed, but it’s worsening.”

They arrived at the police station, and as Dominic was parking, Reggie Branch and Jed Flowers came out of the building. Reggie waved when he saw them and headed their way.

“Hey. You mentioned you would be talking to the other three Cheerios,” he said to Dominic.

---