Page 107 of I Will Revel in Glory (Death by Daybreak MC 3)
“Oh, that’s rich. And you’re in love with four grown-ass men you have no business being with?” He points at me. “I never should’ve let you marry Beast; you’re getting full of yourself. You think he can protect you from everything? He might be strong, Gidge, but he’s one man. Just one.”
That’s a threat if I’ve ever heard one.
“Which is why I have three other lovers—” I start, and Cat cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, it’s Gidget, not Gidge.”
Cat ignores that last bit, but I had to say it. It’s a part of who I am at this point.
“What are you giving him in exchange, Gidget? Information like that doesn’t come cheap.”
I’m already shaking my head. God, how do I make someone like Leroy Kesselring—a man who could shoot his own son in cold-blood—understand something as impossible as friendship?
How?
“I gave him his life, Cat. I traded mine for his. I don’t tell him anything about DBD. Nothing.” I reach up and scrub at my face with both hands. When I drop them down, I see that Cat is staring at the canopy of the tree, his face a strange mask, one that I thought I understood with perfect clarity.
I see now that it’s all bullshit.
There are so many layers to this man, layers that I may never be able to peel back and see beneath. He’s evil, but there’s good in there, good that manifests in the fact that my heart is still beating, that I’m still standing here.
“You can get more information for me?” he asks, and I hesitate briefly before nodding. “Next time he calls you, record it. I want to see the whole damn thing.” Cat moves over to stand in front of me, and there’s nothing about his pose that’s fatherly or friendly. “If I see any one of the five of you make a move without me, that will be the end of everything. You hear me, girl? We have three more chapters on the way.” He scowls at me, like I’m the biggest pain in the ass that ever lived. “I can’t protect you against a literal army.”
He turns and takes off, and even though this move backfired on me bad back at the house, I can’t stop myself. Told ya I had one more in me. Even after last night. Even after seeing him kill an innocent woman.
Yep. I am fucked-up beyond all reason.
“Daddy, wait,” I say, and my voice cracks in just such a way that he stops walking. He doesn’t turn back to me, but he does pause. The wind whips around me, sending chills skittering down my spine. Now, the air not only tastes like ash, but it’s tainted with the violent, impossible energy of a storm. It’s charged, the wind is, like it’s been electrified, like every molecule carries the possibility of a zing or a zap.
Tonight, even more of the world is going to catch on fire.
“I’ve hated you for as long as I can remember. I mean, really hated you. You were a shitty father; Nellie was a shitty mother. I saw things I never should’ve seen, and I grew up way too fucking fast, so fast that I’ve got whiplash, so fast that I can’t remember anything except being a teenager and then being a woman. There isn’t anything before that.” I swallow hard, and I sort of hate that the guys are listening in on me, and yet I can’t stop myself. Because if I don’t say this now, when am I going to say it? What if, like with Gaz, I never get the chance to say it? So here it goes. Here goes fucking nothing.
I take a deep breath.
“I wondered all this time why you changed so suddenly, why you sat me down that day beside the pool and banned me from this compound. Why you started to control me when you’d never cared before.” I watch his back muscles as I talk, but he was already tense, and that stance doesn’t change, even as the words spill out of me. “Was it because you made a mistake with Queenie?”
I stop talking, realizing only after I go silent that I’m holding my breath. Waiting. Hoping. Why, I’m not sure. I have no idea why I let myself fall into this trap. It’s those goddamn men, tearing me apart, opening up a heart that I thought was dead and shriveled.
It’s open now, open and bleeding, and I’m pouring crimson out of a million emotional wounds, but yet … I’m still standing.
“I made mistakes, sure,” he says, and the revelation shocks me to my core. I feel myself start to tremble, but I don’t move from where I’m standing, leaves whipping around my face as it starts to sprinkle, cool droplets spattering my dry, parted lips. “But I didn’t want you coddled and naïve, Gidge.” Cat finally deigns to look back at me, just once. Just that once. “Seems I did too good of a job on that end. The rest of it … that’s all I’ve got. Don’t expect more. You know better than that.”
