Page 58 of Wicked Surrender

I licked my lips then sighed, reaching for the paper.

He held it out of my reach. “What is this, Laura?”

“Just something I was looking into.”

“Why?” he demanded as he skimmed it before tossing the sheet of paper back onto my desk. “What for?” He shook his head, not giving me a chance to answer. “How dare you go behind my back like this.”

He could chastise me all he wanted. I refused to let him see me frown or cry. This was precisely why I never defied him. It was hard enough to live with the fact that he and my mother didn’t love me, but to hear him rant and scold me like this? It was salt in the wound.

“I thought you were just curious and bored when you were researching those drug trials. But now I agree with Mai. You lied that day I saw you with that material. You intended to present about that crap at the symposium. Didn’t you?”

I shook my head, stunned. How could he, the dean of the college that dealt with pre-med students, call cancer drug trialscrap? As though it were frivolous?

“Now I know otherwise. You dare to think about changing majors?”

I opened and closed my mouth.

“How can you ever be so short-minded as to thinkyouknow better than me? That you know what belongs in your future more than I do?”

“I never said that,” I muttered.I just want something else.He made it sound like I was checking out a pole dancing contest with the goal to be a stripper or a hooker.

“This is outrageous, Laura,” he scolded. “I refuse to stand here and let you think you’ve got any right to change your major. This late?” He scoffed. “You think you can throw away all the education you’ve achieved thus far just to switch to some lame bio-engineering hobby?”

“It’s not a hobby,” I protested. I wasn’t brave enough to face him. If I did, I had no control over keeping my expression neutral. He’d see how much he pissed me off, but he wouldn’t care.

“You are expected to graduate and join your sister at my alma mater. You have known your whole life that it is an honor to continue the family tradition of practicing medicine.”

But that’s not what I want. I can do more if I’m challenged and pushed to succeed in my own way.

“Where do you even begin to think this way? Mai never questioned her path. She does as she’s told. She is proud to give her best and stay in medical school. But you have to be such an ungrateful brat and think you need something else?”

Frustrated to the point of boiling over, I sat stiff and rigid. My limbs felt leaden and heavy, locked with my muscles bracing for impact.

Or the need to flee.

I couldn’t run from him. I couldn’t change this situation. I just had to endure it and count down the time until he would leave me alone.

“It goes without saying, Laura,” he dictated, “that you should forget about this. Now.”

I didn’t flinch at the rip of paper. He tore the application in half.

“Don’t bother spending another second thinking about pulling off a sneaky switch like this. I will know. Just like I know that you have wanted to make it a habit to enroll in those organic chemistry courses you don’t need. I can pull you from them all. I can drop you out of them until you focus on what I deem necessary for your graduation.”

I stared at my hand flat on the desktop. If I lifted my fingers, they’d tremble with how this rage coursed through me.

“Because so long as you call yourself my daughter, youwilldo what I say. So long as you live in this house and have your expenses covered, youwillcomplete the education chosen for you.”

Of all the variables in this situation, those were the hardest ones to swallow. I’d never had a job of my own, expected to be a perfect student. I didn’t have an income of my own, too busy trying to be a perfect second-best to Mai.

If they kicked me out of this house, I’d have nowhere else to go. It was only by going to med school that I could move out, and still, as they paid my tuition and board, they’d be in control.

“I will never approve of paying a single penny to a stunt like this. How do you expect to pay for this other program, Laura? Because I won’t.”

I steadied my breaths, inhaling as deeply as I could through my nose before exhaling as carefully as I could. If I opened my mouth, I would shout at him. Blurting out what I thought of his treatment wouldn’t help me.

What could help me was what he’d just ripped up. I could print another form. And I wanted to. Because I knew my parents wouldn’t fund my going into something they didn’t choose. I’d apply for that scholarship, even though I’d already been in college this long. The one program that my instructor had sent me information about was for a research-work situation, all to fund the tuition and then some.

Of course, my father wouldn’t support my dreams. That was why I’d been so excited all night to look into howIcould independently make my dreams come true.

---