Page 212 of Sinful Desires
My heart shattered into a million tiny, slicing pieces.It hurt so much I thought I might throw up.
Not because of him. But because of what he’d admitted.
Travis Kensley. Luke’s boyfriend. He was the one behindallof it?
I swallowed, but the burn didn’t stop.
How could a father show the world a video of his daughter in such an intimate position?
“You knew about the video,” I said, my voice barely a whisper, barely human. “You knew. And you let him leak it?”
His jaw tightened, eyes shining with cruel certainty.
“For what?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His eyes already told me the truth.
You deserved it, Scarlett.
And he wanted me to believe it too. That I’d asked for this. That every bruise and every comment online was my fault for wanting to be loved. For loving the wrong person.
I took a step back, the gun still pointed at him, but my whole body trembled now. Not with fear, but with grief so ugly and loud I could feel it in my teeth.
“For what, Daddy?”
My voice cracked open at the edges, hoarse and broken, like the little girl inside me had finally realized she was never the problem.
“Scarlett, please,” Kiara cried out, her arms wrapping around our mom. “Stop. Please, stop this.”
They clung to each other in the corner of the room, crying so hard it echoed off the marble and made my ears ring.
But I couldn’t look at them.
I only saw him.
“You want to know why?” he said. “Because you werenevermeant to be a Harper.”
The words knocked the breath out of me.
“You don’t belong here,” he went on, calm and cruel. “You were never strong enough. Never smart enough. Never disciplined enough. A liability from the second you were born.”
He took a step forward.
I raised the barrel until it lined up with his heart.
“You’re not one of us,” he said. “You never were, Scarlett.”
My finger tightened around the trigger. The weight of the gun dragged at my arms.
My breath was loud in the silence.
For one second, it was just me and him.
Then the shot cracked through the air, shattering the silence and exploding through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors behind him. Jagged shards rained down in a violent cascade.
The bullet ripped straight into his shoulder, tearing flesh, and my father dropped with a guttural scream, clutching his arm as blood poured through his fingers.
He fell to his knees.
