Page 105 of Intrepid

His brows pinch together as he lets me go, and he shakes his head.

The slam against the door skates down my spine, and my whole body trembles at the rattle of the lock.

“Sera! Sera, open this door immediately!” The anger in my father’s voice explodes through like a crack of a whip.

“Promise me you won’t ever say a word about this, Sera. It’ll ruin everything, if you tell.”

Another thundering pound at the door sends a rush of adrenaline through my body, and I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I promise.”

* * *

The memory fizzled away and I stared at my white knuckles, my fingers curled tight around the steering wheel in front of me, as I’d confessed secrets I’d held for too long. The needling guilt and remorse I’d carried for so many years.

“I had no idea.” Up until that point, Ty had remained silent through every word of it. “Eli never mentioned any of that in the letter. Only that you knew about it. It killed him to know you’d seen it all. That you thought he was weak.”

“I never once thought he was weak. If he was weak, then I was …” I clutched the wheel tighter, while shame gnawed at my gut.

My father had always been careful about his advancements toward me, not wanting to rouse suspicion. Curious touches teetering on the fine line between doting father and predator. He’d always been paranoid about me saying something at school, or to someone who wasn’t on his payroll, but it was clear that, if not for the tether of his publicity, he might’ve been more forceful. He might’ve taken the opportunity to ruin my innocence, the way he had with Eli.

As I grew older, I learned to stifle his interest by keeping busy with after-school activities and locking my bedroom door at night. After the incident with the man who’d kidnapped me, my school counselors had become more attentive to my emotional state, and his curiosity toward me eventually waned.

“There’s something else, Sera. Something you should know.” Ty unraveled the paper still clutched in his hand, and flipped it over to show a list of four names, three of which were crossed out. Only The John remained. “Your father is the one who had Eli kidnapped. He’s the one who arranged to have Gideon pick him up from where we’d hang out at the Packard Plant. He violated him, Sera. Your father is the reason he’s dead.”

The heavy blow of his words pressed down on me, crushing me into a million tiny pieces. I rested my head against the steering wheel and breathed deep in an effort keep the dizzying blackness at bay. Guilt hung like an anchor from my throat, his words suffocating me, killing me from the inside out. I thought about that day, and the fury in my father’s eyes, as if Eli’s insolence had slapped his pride. How he’d warned him to stay away from me, once we’d opened that door, and Eli’s refusal to follow my father’s demands, sneaking away with me at every chance.

“If I’d told someone …” My words choked on a sob, and I wiped the tears from my cheek. “I should’ve told someone.”

“It’s not your fault. Hey, it’s not your fault.” Ty’s hand slid beneath my cheek, and he guided me round, capturing my face in his palm. “Look at me, Sera. You were just a kid. You didn’t do this.”

“You don’t believe that, Ty. That’s why you came after me. Why you … pursued me. You hated me. You wanted to hurt my father, so you came after me.” I wiped my cheeks again and stared out the window, unable to look at him. “How could you sleep with me and hate me at the same time?”

“I’ve struggled with that same question. Every minute of every day. Because the truth is, I wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t fucking hate you, and at the time, it made no sense, but I get it now.” He pulled me against his chest, and I clutched onto him, my whole body succumbing to the shame and misery of what a part of me had suspected all along. “I get it. I get why Eli cared about you. You’re nothing like your dad. You act tough on the outside, but you’ve got a lot of heart on the inside.”

“My father used to say the most horrible things to me. About how easily he could have someone killed and get away with it. He’d say how simple it would be, with his connections, to eliminate anyone he considered an enemy. And that if I ever spoke to anyone outside of that house about anything, he would consider me one of his enemies.” My body turned sickly cold at the memories of his threats, and how I’d felt trapped inside that house. I slid from Ty’s embrace, catching sight of the paper with the scratched names in his lap. “You plan to kill him. Don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

I should’ve been more terrified than I was. After all, he undoubtedly planned to murder my father in some vomit-worthy act of justice. The only urgency I felt in that moment, though, was the real possibility that Ty’s plan would backfire on him.

Ty had been the trigger my father had mentioned. The reason he made me stop going to Jo’s.

“He knows you’re coming for him. He’s waiting for it. And when you do, he’s going to strike. He’s going to use all his power, and all his connections. You have to leave.”

He shook his head, the conviction in his eyes piercing my heart. “I’m not afraid of him, Sera.”

“You should be.” I willed myself not to think about a world where Ty no longer existed, because it’d crush me, and I needed him to listen. To trust what I was telling him, without my emotions speaking for me. “Lawyers, judges, police, criminals …. It’s too big for one person, Ty. He won’t let you destroy what he’s spent his whole life constructing.”

“And I won’t let him destroy what I’ve spent my whole life searching for.” He leaned forward and kissed me, but something felt off—as if I was kissing him for the last time. “I want you to go back home and pretend that everything is normal. You go back to school, and you forget about me and all of this. And don’t come back here.”

I frowned at that, the stubborn girl inside of me refusing to give in so easily, to let him go as if nothing had ever happened between us. To let my father rob me of one more thing. “No. I’m not letting you do this. I’m not letting you get yourself killed. You and I can leave. We’ll both go somewhere safe.”

He shook his head, and goddamn it, I wanted to smack some reason into him. “The police will be looking for me. And when I hand that ledger over, a whole slew of fucking criminals will be looking for the snitch. I won’t put you in harm’s way. I’m not going to tell you where I go from here, and you promise me you won’t come looking for me.”

I squeezed my eyes and mouth shut, shaking my head, and felt the tight grip of his arms give one hard jerk.

“Don’t be so fucking stubborn!”

My eyelids flipped open to him, the anger stiffening my jaw. “The last time I made a promise to someone, I regretted it. I’m not making any promises to you.” The pause of quiet in between failed to calm my resentment. “You never intended to stay, did you? That’s why you left the money.”