Page 32 of Abduction
I didn’t bother to knock, knowing I didn’t need to. My father would be waiting there inside for me. He would be ready to show me just what he thought of me. I felt a panic start to stir in my stomach, and I did everything I could to push it down. Soon, though, it became overwhelming, and I pushed the door open and walked inside. Whatever was coming to me, I could take it. I would take it.
He was waiting there for me already, standing over by his office door. He jerked his head inside without saying a word to me, and I followed him in. I knew better than to try and argue with him. When he had made his mind up about something, nothing would have shifted him from his resolve, and I didn’t want to piss him off more.
I stepped into his office, and he closed the door behind me, neither of us saying anything. The silence hung between us, louder than anything he could have actually said out loud to me. He eyed me for a long moment, clear disgust on his face. I had seen him mad plenty of times before, but this—this felt like something else.
“You didn’t help Tommy today,” he told me evenly. I nodded, wincing.
“I know,” I agreed. “I—I got distracted.”
“Seems like you’ve been getting distracted a lot lately,” he continued as he reached for his belt. My eyes darted down to the thick leather around his waist, and a flashback to my childhood played in front of my eyes. He’d never held back when it came to disciplining us, and it seemed like I hadn’t aged out of it quite yet.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked him, loathing how small my voice sounded in that moment. I wanted to show him I was stronger than he had ever given me credit for, but I didn’t know how to handle the fear pulsing through me right now.
“You’re acting like a child,” he told me as he pulled the belt taut in his hand. “So I’ll treat you like one.”
He raised the belt and brought it crashing down on my arm, leaving a smarting pain beneath my shirt. I cried out in shock, unable to hold it back in. I wanted to lunge at him, but I knew it would only make things worse. The best thing I could do right now was take what he was giving me and hope it didn’t last too long.
“Turn,” he told me. I turned my back on him, gritting my teeth and closing my eyes as I waited for the next blow to hit me, and I felt it strike my back. The pain was instant and scorching, and I groaned, trying to hold back the agony. I didn’t want him to know how much this was hurting me. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction.
As he landed another couple of blows on my back, I tried to work out if this could really have been happening. I was an adult. A grown fucking adult, and he was hitting me like an errant child. How dare he? I clenched my fists at my sides, the pain starting to boil over into something else entirely inside of me.
I stepped away and turned to face him. I could feel the anger getting the better of me. I wasn’t going to let him treat me like this. I couldn’t. I couldn’t just sit back and let him beat me like I was a child he wanted to control. I didn’t know how to get him to stop, but the fury within me told me to take a swing myself. If he could dish it out, he could take it, couldn’t he?
The pain was radiating all over my back, and I could feel the cold wetness of blood starting to leak from some of the marks he had left on me. I would be in pain for days after this, and for what? Just because he had decided I needed to be taught a lesson? I wasn’t going to let something like that pass. I refused. I deserved better. I deserved to be treated like a grown adult, even if my father thought I wasn’t acting like one.
He was breathing hard when I met his gaze, and his eyes darted down to the clenched fists at my sides.
“You going to hit me?” he asked me. It sounded like a challenge. I could have. I could have taken him out right then and there if I wanted to. He was older than me, not in the best shape of his life, and it wouldn’t have taken much for me to just take a swing and put him on his knees. He was relying on my fear of him as my father not to do it, and I didn’t know how much longer I wanted to put up with that.
I thought about it. Really, really thought about it. Really considered what the outcome might be, as best as I could through the haze of fury and anger still burning in my system. The belt was still hanging from his hand. One lash of that from me, and he would be out. I could bring him down right then and there on the spot, and there was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to make him pay, make him beg for forgiveness for what he had done to me.
I took a deep breath and loosened my fists. There was no point. Tommy was probably hovering somewhere nearby right now ready to jump in and help if something went wrong, and I didn’t feel like fighting him off, too.
“No.”
I gritted the word out, forcing myself to say it. I wasn’t going to escalate this. He wanted me to respond, to act like a child so he could feel all the more justified in the way he had been treating me, and I refused to give him the pleasure of knowing he had managed to get me right where he wanted me. I was smarter than that. Better than that. I wasn’t about to just let my anger get the better of me. I might have been acting up lately, but I wasn’t going to hit my own father.
But I wasn’t going to stand here and let him hurt me, either. I stormed for the door before he could say or do anything else, slamming it behind me to make a point—and trying to ignore the burning pain in my back.
