Page 23 of Down Knot Out
The floor tilts beneath my feet. “My real father?” His identity has been the empty space in my life, a blank Vivian refused to fill no matter how many times I asked. “You said you didn’t remember who he was.”
“I said a lot of things.” Loathing fills the look she pins on me. “He threw you away before you were a bump in my belly. I’m the only one who hasever stood by you and tried to reclaim what we deserve. Iprotectedyou.”
“Protected me?” The words taste like acid. “You’ve never protected me from anything. Not even yourself.”
Her head snaps up. “You ungrateful little?—”
She catches herself, breathing deeply through her nose. The pregnant Beta openly watches us now, one hand over her belly in a protective gesture.
She lowers her voice to a hiss. “I kept you fed. I kept a roof over your head.”
“When it was convenient.” The words rip from all the pain built up over the years. So many times, I ranted at her in my mind, but never to her face, too afraid to lose the only family I had left. But I have my Alphas, now. “You were always chasing the next jackpot or crawling into a bottle.”
Vivian leans closer, her floral pheromones so much like mine, but bitter with hate. “I did my best to put us back on top.”
“Your best?” The laugh that bursts from me sounds nothing like my own. “Your best was leaving me with neighbors for days or alone with nothing to eat? Your best was forgetting to pay the electric bill because you were on a winning streak at the casino?”
Her lips press into a thin line, pink lipstick creasing at the corners. “I came back, didn’t I? I always came back.”
The simple truth of this statement hits harder than her anger. She did always come back, disheveled, often drunk, sometimes with gifts bought with winnings, sometimes with nothing but excuses. But she returned when others might have disappeared. Because I still held value in what she could get from me. But not out of love. Never out of love.
I turn my head away. “If all you did was come here to convince me to join your scheme, you should leave. I want nothing to do with whatever hate-filled vendetta you have against my real father. I refuse to be your pawn.”
“Youoweme,” she snarls. “With the Santaro pack cutting me off, I’m going to need a bigger allowance from you.”
“No.” Disappointment burns in me for everything she should have been. “I’m done giving you anything.”
“Chloe Richardson?” A nurse calls from the doorway. When I stand, she turns to me. “You’re here with Dominic Sterling?”
“Yes.” I pause to give my mother a final warning, “If you’re still here when we come out, I’llcall the police and report you for breaking the restraining order. You won’t need money in prison.”
Striding toward the nurse, I refuse to look back. I’m done with my mother. I refuse to allow her to have power over me again.
Chapter Eight
Dominic
The lights of the doctor’s office needle into my skull, but I refuse to put my sunglasses back on while we’re still inside the building.
The nurse had led me here from the x-ray room, and I now wait for the doctor’s arrival, my back protesting yet another uncomfortable chair. The high-end hospital we usually go to had a much nicer facility, but I’d taken what I could get to see my doctor faster. The clinic where he meets patients on Tuesdays is much lower on the economic level.
When the door opens and Chloe’s sweet lilies-and-lilacs scent sweeps into the room, my muscles relax, soothed by her presence.
She slips into the chair beside me, tuckingstrands of pink hair behind her ear. “How was the x-ray?”
“Fine.” I keep my voice down, the sound of my own words reverberating inside my skull. “Kept my eyes shut the entire time.”
Her fingers twist in her lap, and her leg bounces with a nervous jitter. “That’s good.”
A thread of tension in her tone sets off alarm bells, but before I can probe further, the door swings open again.
Dr. Matthews strides in, white coat flapping around his knees. The bright lights reflect off his baldpate, with hair the color of wet sand clinging to the sides of his head, and wire-framed glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
“Mr. Sterling, good news.” He settles into his chair, the wheels squeaking on the linoleum as he pulls his wheeled computer closer. “Your x-rays show no fractures or abnormalities in the skull or cervical spine.”
The tension in my shoulders eases. “So there’s nothing wrong with my brain?”
“Nothing structural, no.” He pulls up images on his computer screen, turning it for us to see. “These light areas here would indicate bleeding or swelling if present, but everything appears normal.”
