Page 4 of Unorthodox
It’s June in North Carolina. Tourist season on the coast. Someone would help me.
I think.
Holding my breath, I try to still my trembling hand, try to get myself together.
I don’t like that I can’t hear anyone moving in the house. Since the glass shattered, it’s just been…nothing. I almost wonder if maybe itwasjust a regular robber and not someone coming to drag me to hell, but…that’s a stupid thought.
I take a deep breath. Press the blade against the window screen.
Then I see him.
A man with a fucking AK slung around his chest, his eyes on mine as he stares up at me from just a couple of feet down below, in the backyard.
My heart nearly beats out of my chest and I have to bite downhard,so I don’t scream. I don’t know if it’shimhim, or if it’s one of his men, but either way…Holy shit.
Max Bennett isn’t fucking around.
I stumble away from the window, my palm sweaty as I clutch the knife tighter in my hand.
The man doesn’t move, and that unnerves me. He just watches me through the window, and I know that means there’s probably at least one other person in this house.
I flatten myself to the floor, army crawl my way toward the door, trying to breathe with every shuffle of my hips and swing of my elbows, knife still tight in one hand.
Even if it is useless.
My father never taught me how to fight.
Fighting was for men.
A lot of things were for men in my house. Including beating women.
“Women were made for men,” my father used to say. “Men were made to take on the world.”
But I’ve always wanted a piece of the world too. Fuck the men.
It’s why I ran, after I overheard my father telling his right-hand man what was going to happen to me.
He wasn’t going to give me a head’s up. He was going to let me be taken.
Fuck the men.
I hold onto that thought as I crawl toward the door, straining my ears. Funny how every night I would yell at Danik to stop getting three a.m. snacks because I could hear him chewing in the house and now, I can’t even hear a man coming to kidnap me.
Kidnap me.
I shove the thought aside. Growing up, I always knew it was a possibility. It’s why I was always so heavily guarded, protected like the Virgin Mary...from things on theoutside.
At first, I thought my protection detail was because my father loved me, but it didn’t take me too long to figure out he doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
No, he protected me for reasons like this: my appeal as a ransom. No wonder he always hated me.
I was a tool to be used against him.
When I reach the door without gunshots flying through my window, I feel a flicker of hope expand in my chest. Danik has cut his surf time in half since I came here two days ago, so he’s reminded me again and again as he mocked me about fearing for my life.
Maybe he just didn’t want to believe it. Maybe he thought our father and his problems wouldn’t follow me, like they didn’t follow Danik.
Either way, it won’t be long before he gets back. And Danik might be a stereotypical stoner-surfer, but he also has a gun in his car and a hot temper when he’s provoked.
