Page 53 of Don't Hate Me
15
Landen estate
Ashleigh
Tap,tap... Tap.
I glanced up from the book I was trying to read but was mostly just staring at. The soft double tap at my door, followed by a pause and another tap, meant it was George. He didn’t have the key to open the door, but he’d been checking on me regularly.
He’d also been providing me with updates on what was happening with my father, Evan and Marc.
I knew the wedding had been moved up. I was to be re-married in a few weeks. Plans were being made. My father had brought in a dress and told me to put it on to see if it fit. I’d found a pair of scissors in my drawer and had cut it up into tiny pieces, shoving each piece individually under my door.
That had been the last contact I’d had with him.
“What’s happening?”
“Marc’s out on bail,” George said, through the door.
“What? How?” It had been my greatest frustration. Being trapped in this house, not having access to the money that could have freed him. The guilt felt like pressure wrapped around my chest.
But there was also a small part of me that thought maybe it was for the best. Maybe he was safer in a place where Evan and my father couldn’t touch him. It wasn’t permanent. I had to believe it.
These days, my father wasn’t all that clever. His brain being perpetually soaked in booze. I had to hope any phony evidence he’d planted would be easily ripped apart by a decent defense attorney.
My only struggle was how Marc would find that attorney, and I’d spent days searching the internet for a decent one I could afford. Now, it seemed there was another player in the game. A player I didn’t know, and I didn’t like that. Marc and I had George, and that was it. That was the sum total of people we could trust right now.
“He called me from Long Island. He’s staying at a house out there. Some former employee of your father’s who has a grudge against him. He’s helping Marc.
“The enemy of my enemy,” I muttered. But was he a friend?
“He told me to tell you not to be worried. To do whatever your father wants so as not to antagonize him, and that as soon as all this is behind him, he will come for you.”
“He doesn’t know the wedding has been pushed up,” I said, resting my forehead against the door.
There was a pause before George finally said, “No. I didn’t know what to tell him. What you wanted me to tell him. I wanted him to focus on his own problem instead.”
I nodded, even though George couldn’t see me. “That’s probably best. He can’t stop it, and I don’t want him thinking about me when he needs to be thinking about his case.”
I hated to ask it. I hated I was so weak I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Did he say anything else? Was he mad? Is he angry at me for causing all this?”
Does he hate me now?
“You didn’t cause this. Your father did. Sanderson did. Peanut, tell me what to do. I can get you out of this room if you need me to. Take you some place and hide you.”
“No. It can’t be like that. They’re too powerful. It would be too easy to track our movements, and we don’t know what they’ll try to do to Marc if that happens. It has to…”
It has to be done right.
It’s what I’d concluded after weeks of being trapped in this room. Weeks to think and plan. Weeks to realize how restricted and limited my choices were—if there were, indeed, any choices to be made. Weeks to realize exactly how much of Marc’s future they were holding hostage.
We were connected, and, as long as we were, they could use each of us to hurt the other. George, too, for that matter. He had to act like everyone else was acting, like this was all totally normal. Because that was the only way we were going to beat them at their own game.
“If you speak to Marc, tell him to have faith. In me. I know what I’m doing. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix all of this.”
“I don’t know what that means, Peanut. How are you going to fix this? What are you going to do?”
