Page 97 of Reckless Seduction
“I think you have the wrong?—”
“I’m talking,” she roars, her hand whipping across my face.
The crack echoes.
My head snaps to the side, pain blooming sharp and hot across my cheek. For a second, all I hear is ringing.
That careful façade she always has around me shatters completely.
I grit my teeth against the pain, tasting copper where my teeth cut into my lip. After three days, I’ve grown used to expecting blows. My body flinches before my brain even catches up.
Pain is nothing new. I have been on the receiving end of it for as long as I can remember. Not because I did anything wrong, but because Crowe wanted to keep my biological father in line.
Fixing herself, she leans back in the chair, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her clothes like she didn’t just hit me.
“Where was I? Oh, yes.” She smiles thinly. “Your mother ruined my chances at happiness. You see, I was promised to him. We were supposed to be married. He was my chance to get out of the hell I was born into.”
Her fingers tap against the tablet, a restless, agitated rhythm.
“But no. Instead, he met your mother. My old college bestie. Worked out a better deal with my father, and I was right back to where I started.”
There is something feral in her eyes now. Something cracked and bleeding through the surface.
“Sarah wanted to just let you rot right next to your mother in your own little grave for everything she did to her,” she continues, voice almost dreamy. “But I thought of a better idea.”
There it is.
The Cheshire grin that never bodes well for me. The one that promises pain. The one that promises something worse than death.
It is the same grin Sarah used to give me before locking me in the cellar without food for days at a time.
“I convinced her to have you work in the brothel instead. Crowe can still control your father while I implement my plans for expansion, and you get to earn us some good money.”
Her gaze drags over me, slow and assessing, like she is already calculating my worth.
“God knows how many of your father’s enemies out there will be willing to pay top dollar to fuck his long-lost daughter.”
My stomach lurches violently.
“Plus,” she adds with a shrug, “I doubt you will last all that long anyway.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss as I stand, the stool scraping loudly behind me. “You put me in one of those rooms, and your clients will come out with their dicks stapled to their foreheads.”
The words come out sharp, reckless.
Stupid.
Lina laughs like this is fun for her. Maybe it is. There is no mistaking that the woman clearly belongs in a mental institution, with the word psychopath tattooed on her broad, Botoxed forehead.
“If you do anything more than lie down and spread your legs like the whore you are,” she says, voice dropping into something cold and lethal, “I will make sure every single one of the Kavanaughs winds up with a bullet in their heads.”
The words hit harder than the slap.
“They are the ones who put me here,” I scoff, forcing the lie past the tightness in my throat. “Do you honestly think I care what happens to them?”
There is that grin again.
Knowing.
