Page 10 of Mad As Hell

I weighed the idea of rushing him and making a break for it… and realized that the odds weren’t in my favor.

“Smart girl,” he remarked, as if seeing the decision I’d made internally. He set down the tray, another bland breakfast of scrambled egg whites and plain yogurt, on the bedside table.

“Would you like to talk or eat first?” He posed the question like he was doing me a favor.

I snorted and crossed my arms. “I want answers.”

His gaze sharpened. “Watch your tone.”

I gritted my teeth and swallowed a retort. “Please.”

He nodded approvingly. “That’s better.” He crossed the room and sat in the armchair. “Have a seat.”

Keeping my expression as neutral as possible, I went and sat at the foot of my unmade bed.

“First, I would like to apologize,” he began, surprising me when I hadn’t thought it was possible for him to do that anymore. He waved a hand in my general direction. “My outburst was reckless, and I know better than to physically assault your face.”

Just my face, huh? So places where bruises were easy to hide were fair game. Good to know.

“I also realize now that you were telling the truth,” he went on conversationally, “and that Lainey was to blame for that unfortunate tape.”

My eyes narrowed, and my nails bit into the flesh of my palms.

“Your sister always was a spiteful little bitch,” he concluded with a shake of his head.

“I thought you said you two were so close.” Disdain dripped from my words.

He smiled benignly at me. “Well, you wouldn’t have agreed to stay if I’d told you the truth, right? If I had told you that your sister was a constant thorn in my side? Or that her untimely death was one of the best things that could have happened to me?”

I flinched at his words. “You’re a fucking monster.”

“And you’re a naive idiot,” he sneered. “I can’t help it if your need to have a daddy overrode common sense. At least your sister had that much. That, and whatever liquid gold between her legs made every male in the vicinity turn into a bumbling fool.”

“That’s your daughter,” I cried, horrified.

“Not by choice,” he replied nonchalantly. He smiled again and exhaled. “It’s so nice not to have these pretenses anymore, isn’t it? We can just be us.”

“You really had me fooled,” I admitted, steeling myself against the sting of tears threatening to break free. “I thought you cared about Madelaine. About me.”

“I cared about my investment, which is all you two ever have been.” He glanced at his nails. “My mother—your grandmother, may she rest in hell—fancied herself an actress. She was always bringing me to auditions. Guess I picked up a few things.”

“Lucky you.” I wondered if my teeth would crack from how hard I was clenching them together.

He snorted. “You bought it, didn’t you? The dad you always wanted, who plucked you from your piss-poor life in the slums? You took it all, Madison. The fancy education, the new clothes… I didn’t see you complaining.”

“You never gave a shit about me. About Lainey.” I swallowed hard around the realization that it had all been a lie. A calculated lie, from the tears in his office when he’d said Lainey was dead, to the gifts and the compliments.

“It’s hard to care about something you never wanted,” he admitted. “Hopefully you can be managed a little bit better than your sister. If you think this place is hell? You have no idea what I can really do. It took your sister a few years to figure that out before she came to heel.”

“She still ran away from you,” I pointed out smugly.

The corner of his mouth hooked up. “And now she’s ashes in a box. So, who really won this game, Madison?”

“Is she?” I challenged. I thought back to the mausoleum and the name inscribed on my twin’s final resting place. “Pretty sure it was my name on that marker.”

He smiled cruelly. “I couldn’t very well have you running back to your former life, now could I? Consider your old life gone, and now you’ve been reborn.”

“All I have to do is go to the police and tell them the truth.” I meant it as a threat, but he laughed like the idea was absurd.

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