That second option … isn’t really an option at all, is it?
“What choice have you given me, Justin?” Tess asks, her voice like an icy stalactite that’s just dropped from the ceiling and is plummeting straight at my bio dad’s face. I know that Tess grew up poor, but that she got a scholarship to attend Whitehall Prep when she was in tenth grade. Is that where she met Justin? He said he was born and raised in Medina, so that’d make sense.
No wonder Tess lied about my father, why she tried to keep his story from me. So … how the hell did Saffron know that the guy was bad news? Bad enough that she felt it necessary to warn me … and kidnap me?
Looking at them both now, all I see is the adult versions of the monsters that attend school with me. Guess it’s just endemic in this area. Plotting, scheming, cruelty, power plays, money, sex … control. It all comes right back to that, doesn’t it?
“You’ve been imagining me as the broke, homeless, lunatic you dumped in a facility all those years ago.” Justin just keeps on smiling as he delivers the verbal blows, one after the other, but the longer he holds the expression, the more that it begins to look like a grimace. “But things have changed, Tess. I’m the one with the money and the power, just like I used to be. You’re going to have to get used to being the lucky piece of trailer trash all over again.”
I bite my tongue so hard that it bleeds.
I want to tear this guy down so bad—even if Tess sort of deserves this moment.
Paul takes off down the hall, heading into his office and then slamming the door behind him.
“Dakota, go get dressed,” Tess says quietly, but she isn’t looking at me. She’s staring at Justin instead.
I don’t say a word, slipping past her up the stairs.
Chasm follows after me, and even though Tess actually breaks her stare with Justin to look at him, she doesn’t stop us as we flee into my bedroom.
“Look at me, Little Sister,” he says as I try to yank my arm from his grip. “You cannot go with that man tomorrow. If you do, I’ll …” His voice cracks as he whirls me around and slams me into the wall beside the bathroom door. My breath releases in a rush, and my heart is beating so fast that I feel dizzy. “I’ll never see you again.”
“It’s not his goal to hurt me, Chas,” I start and then pause, adjusting my words so that they actually make sense. “Not physically hurt me, I mean. He isn’t trying to kill me. If he’d wanted to do that, I’d be dead already. I’d be long dead. He wants me to like him. Didn’t you see the way he was looking at me?”
Chasm narrows his eyes and shakes his head, still holding my wrists against the wall—still as cautious as ever about my broken fingers though.
“I love Parrish, but I’m not letting you commit suicide in an attempt to save him. He told me to take care of you.”
“Yes, and he also said I should leave him to die and save myself. Are we taking his instructions literally now? You have to let me do this. Maybe this is part of Justin’s plan. He clearly wants to use Parrish to promote his new app. Maybe we were never actually meant to find him, and Justin was just messing with us. We could … what if we got him back soon?”
“You’re grasping at straws here, Little Sister. That’s not how it’s going to go down. If you let Justin Prior take you away, you’ll never be the same again.” He releases my wrists with a huff, and I rub them together to brush away the ache. His fingers left slight red marks on my flesh, but I actually don’t mind.
I just wish he’d kissed me before he let me go.
“It’s worth the risk,” I tell him yet again, and I mean it. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll find out that Chasm was right. It might not be the first visit or the second, but at some point, I know that I’m going to have to face a trial or two to get out of this on the other side.
Because this isn’t ‘just’ about getting Parrish back. It’s about me. Justin Prior isn’t going to simply let me go. Oh no. Just like before, I’m not simply trying to sidestep his pieces in a drawn-out chess match: I need to checkmate his king.
“I know what I’m doing,” I say aloud, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t just Chasm that needs reassuring.
I can hardly breathe for the duration of the press conference. There are so many people crammed into our house, so many cameras, so many flashing lights and shouting voices. The way everyone talks about Parrish—like he’s already dead—infuriates me.
