Page 26 of Pay the Price

Daisy

“Idon’t believe you.”

I nodded, not at all surprised by Ruth’s reaction. The only person Ruth adored more than our dad had been Blake, and he was gone. “I understand.”

She glared at me from across the table. All around us, people ordered coffee, stirred sugar and cream into their paper cups, shifted on their feet while they waited in line, all of them oblivious to the fact that I’d just torn the sun out of Ruth’s sky.

“Why would Dad do that?” she asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

I shook my head. “He was mad that I was living with Wolf, Otis, and Jace. He cut off my credit cards, sent Calvin to the house with all my stuff.”

“I knew about your stuff,” Ruth said. “I didn’t know about the cards.”

“He was punishing me, but it didn’t work. I didn’t come home.”

“So you think hekidnappedyou?” she asked. “To get you to come home?”

It sounded crazy because it was. I knew it was, which was something that had been bothering me in the days since my rescue. Little by little, my head had started to clear from the trauma, and as it did, I was finding the pieces harder to put together. What had been my dad’s endgame? Had he really thought I’d come home after he’d held me prisoner? But no matter how many times I catalogued the details, I always came back to the same thing.

“How else do you explain Calvin drugging me and forcing me into Dad’s car?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” I said.

She folded her arms over her chest and glared at me accusingly. “You’ve always hated him.”

“What?” The words shocked me. “Why would you say that? I don’thateDad.”

“You don’t like him either.”

That one was harder to argue. I admired my dad’s ambition, his determination. Did Ilikehim? It felt like a trick question.

“I don’t thinkhelikesmevery much.” I turned my coffee mug on the table. “We’re just different.”

I didn’t know how other families worked, but mine had always felt like it was made up of two teams: my mom and I on one side and Blake, Ruth, and my dad on the other. It wasn’t something that had ever been said out loud, and I hadn’t even been able to articulate it for myself until after my mom died, when I’d felt like the last remaining member of a dodgeball team facing down an opposing team of three.

Then Blake had died and it had felt like Ruth and our dad were a club of two.

And it wasn’t like he’d made any secret of the fact that I was a disappointment. While Ruth shored up her extracurriculars soshe could apply to the Ivies, I went to community college and spent my time fixing up a decrepit old house.

Not exactly something to brag about to your buddies at the country club.

“And you think he’dkidnapyou because you’re different?” Ruth asked.

“No,” I sighed. It sounded crazy now that Ruth was saying it out loud. “I don’t know.”

“Well I do,” Ruth said, glaring at me. “Dad’s not a psychopath. Have you even talked to him since those assholes rescued you?”

She put the wordsrescued youin air quotes but I didn’t bother pointing out that they weren’t necessary since the Beasts had, in fact, rescued me.

I rubbed an invisible stain on the marble tabletop. “Not yet.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Ruth asked. “Just ask him.”

I looked at her and frowned. “I’ve been a little busy recovering from the trauma of being kidnapped and held prisoner.”

It wasn’t untrue, but it wasn’t the whole story either. I was mad at my dad, but I was hurt too. He never in a million years would have locked up Ruth if she’d disappointed him.

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