Page 125 of Sold to Her Enemy

“Yeah, what?”

“Mckenna…” my mother says. She reaches out and squeezes my arm.

“I knew the competition was breathing down MM Industries’ neck. We had been approached by offers from the underbelly—”

“The underbelly? You mean criminals?”

She shakes her head as if she can’t believe I’m saying the word. “Yes. I didn’t want to go through another media circus. I asked your father to work somewhere quieter for years, especially as you’re all grown up and about to start a new life of your own—the one you’ve always wanted.”

“That you wrecked!”

“Mckenna, we’re sorry. We really are.” My father puts his hand on my shoulder, and I want to shake off his touch, but I stay there, taking in deep breaths, remembering all the time I spent studying in his library. All the time I spent watching him in the labs.

He always encouraged me.

If my mom isn’t the warm and fuzzy person Grace or Jackie McIntyre is, that’s not her fault. stood in my way until that one time.

“What happened?” I take my dad’s hand in mine and turn to face him.

“Dad didn’t do anything, not what they said he did,” Mom’s voice sounds as if it’s from far away. “It was me. I went and met with those interested people…those criminals. I’m the one who started sloughing off money here and there.”

I stare at my mother, my insides jumping around. “But why?”

“Because she wanted another life and didn’t know how to get out. Because she wanted to force other people into making a move.”

A memory of Adrian’s dad, placing his palm on the small of my mother’s back when our parents were going out to a charity event, races through my mind.

“This is so fucked up.”

“Mckenna!”

“Really, Mom? You’re going to take issue with my language? You intentionally sabotaged MM Industries because you weren’t getting your way quick enough? To think that I sold.--”

The words die on my lips. Grief crashes over me, making me gasp for breath.

I sold myself for money I desperately needed because I couldn’t stand living in a one-bedroom with my practically comatose mother. I couldn’t take it for another day.

Not because I missed the trappings of the life my parents built. Okay, I did, but because more than anything, I was determined to create my own life.

I was all set to take the exam that’d launch my career, one that I had worked eight years for, and it was taken from me because my mother wanted something different.

“You didn’t sell Penelope?” my dad asks.

I close my eyes and shake my head. “I don’t know where Penelope is, but I didn’t sell her. Forget what I said. I don’t know what to do right now, what to say, or how to be around you. Can you go, please? I love you, and I’m glad you’re okay, Dad, but I can’t talk this out right now. This is too much.”

“I understand you don’t want to talk to us right now. We can call Grace. I don’t want you to be alone.”

“You didn’t seem to care that I was alone for the past year, Dad.” I hate that tears are in my eyes. I want to scream at him, to let the anger I feel tumble out at both of them, but that’s not my nature.

The only person who makes me red-hot angry is Adrian.

None of my old friends or my classmates called me when the headlines dragged my family through the mud.

The employers who praised my skill and dedication pretended not to know me. The employees of MM Industries, whom I grew up being doted on by and who treated me like royalty, all gave me the cold shoulder.

My mother ignored me for months, trapped in her own agenda.

And my father, who loves me but who has always loved my mother more, left me hanging in the wild.

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