Page 71 of Daddies Dark Desires (Forbidden Fantasies)
26
HARPER
Dad didn’t even trust his best friends and partners with this? How far did it go? How could he believe that Grant, Trent, or Oliver might be working for a cartel undercover? Smuggling people and drugs?
What was he thinking?
When I ask to see it all, they hesitate again, but they promise to show me. I will hold them to that promise. They can be a hundred percent sure about that one. I’ve never let go of something once I get my teeth into it. Not in my entire life.
Not even when I hated every minute of it, like ballet. I broke my fucking toe before I let it beat me.
Now, I’ve sequestered myself away in the library at their place. It’s a decent-sized room made to seem somehow cozier and bigger than any of the other spaces in their house. Or building because these guys can’t do anything normally.
I’m pretty sure this building isn’t even zoned for residential, surrounded by offices and warehouses the way it is. But I bet that’s what they were going for. Out of the way. Out of sight and easy to sneak away from.
It’s the same thinking that had my parents purchasing one of the old manors that the rich used to own when servants lived on the premises. I’ve snuck through more than one secret passageway and old servants’ staircase as a child.
This place is more modern, but the deep browns are accented by brick here, and if I asked I’m sure one of them would light the fire for me. I bet this is the best place to spend a lazy day during the winter.
Setting myself up in a corner by the window, I settle a fresh notebook on the small wooden table. My other notebook has gone missing. My journal. And I have a feeling about whose sticky fingers lifted it.
For a time, I lose myself in the effort to write this out. Process all the information without them and without the bias of my limited personal space. When I’m in my room, I can only think of all the naughty things I’ve done there.
Or how trapped I feel when I’m stuck alone between those four walls.
My pen moves without much conscious thought, working through my first ideas. The bad ones. Until I come up with ideas on how to dig deeper. Which direction to look.
Until I let myself go down the same paths my father must have.
Dad always told me not to trust anyone. I’d been nine, and I got home from an intense fight with one of my best friends, Lindsay. She stole my Barbie and wouldn’t give it back. Told her mom I’d been trying to steal it.
So I tried to yank her ponytail out.
Lindsay’s mom lectured me the entire time we waited for Dad to pick me up. I shone in the short-lived moment when he told them both to retrieve the Barbie because he’d bought it himself. Marked it with a symbol on her foot.
The way he quietly dressed down Lindsay’s mom and my former best friend was the highlight of my young life.
Until he did the same to me on the drive home. “Never give all your trust to anyone, bug. Not even your best friend. Not unless you’ve got eyes on their six and the detonator in your back pocket.”
I didn’t get it then. I pictured blowing up all her toys in revenge, but it became much clearer when I grew into a teen. Lots of fake friends and backstabbing in a wealthy high school.
I got good at having my secret markings and symbols in place from the get-go.
The only time it hasn’t worked is with Oliver, Grant, and Trent.
An echo of that lesson lands in my chest like a brick.
What kind of clues did he leave for me to find? That only I would know to look for? I need my hands on those files. On everything they’ve uncovered. He had to leave something that would put these pieces together. Lead me down his train of thought.
It’s aggravating to wait. To have waited this whole time without access.
Still, I try to put everything I can remember down. The words left over on the redacted files. The details of the photo I found in the original file.
His last words to me: Don’t trust anyone. Not even his best friends, the three men taking care of me. Keeping me safe.
My instincts say they would never hurt me. But that might be my undeniable attraction to them. It wouldn’t be the first time my hormones got the better of me.
Is this why they haven’t actually found anything? Because they don’t want to?
