Page 3 of Black Hearts
Time passed. I didn’t know how much, but it was long enough that I grew hungry. The need to use the bathroom arose too, but I fought it off. I’d trained my bladder enough to know how to stop thinking about it—and when you stopped thinking about your urge to pee, you stopped feeling the need to go. At least for a while.
I didn’t move. I lay there in my bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting. The light that managed to come in through the window dimmed; not sure if there was cloud cover or if it was simply later in the day.
If Daddy thought I’d go to the door and beg for him to let me out, to use the bathroom or eat, he had another thing coming. In the past, I might’ve been a blubbering mess for the first few hours. I might’ve tried to apologize to him for whatever I’d done to make him angry before crawling into my closet and pretending things were different, but now? Now I would never apologize. He did not warrant my guilt.
I wasn’t sorry. I would never be sorry for the things I’d done with the Scotts, and if that was too much for him to handle… I just didn’t care.
I wondered what Markus was doing, what the others were doing. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. The whole thing had happened so fast, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Never before had I felt so powerless—except when Markus had Lincoln force me down. I’d tried to reach out to Markus, to get him to come to me, to take me away from Daddy, but he’d just stared at me.
He’d stared and done nothing.
Was that it, then? Was that supposed to have been my goodbye? Did he care for me at all, or was the whole thing just a lie I’d thrown myself into? It didn’t make sense. He’d never told me that he loved me, but I thought he did. I thought…
Why would you let the girl you love get taken by the one man you were trying to protect her from? It shouldn’t have mattered that his father was there.
Although, I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like for Markus to see his father after all that time. After learning some of the lessons he’d taught Markus growing up, I had come to understand that Markus’s father was not a loving man. Everything, including his family, had been merely business decisions for him; that’s where Markus got it from.
I’d hoped that I’d pulled him out of that mindset, that he’d genuinely started to care for me, but now I wasn’t so sure. What if it was all a lie? What if none of it had been real, and I’d been nothing more than an idiot?
God, I was a fool.
I wanted to cry. I felt the water pricking the edges of my vision as I lay there. What I had with Markus might’ve been a lie, but the others… the others had to have been real. Jaxon loved me. Theo loved me. I knew Will felt the same.
Bennet? I didn’t know if he’d ever reach the point where he felt comfortable sharing his innermost feelings with me, but I hoped he was on the same path, even if he’d never say it out loud.
Those guys loved me, and I’d never said it back to them before being taken away. I’d only told Markus, and he didn’t say it back. At the time, I’d been fine with it, but now? Now everything was different. Now everything in me hurt. I wished I could snap my fingers and make everything okay, rewind time and fight for them, have them fight for me.
What would they do when they learned that Markus had let me go? Would they try to come after me? Would Markus stop them from coming? Would I… would I never see any of them again? The thought stabbed me in the heart, made me cold and clammy and sick. I didn’t think I wanted to live a life that didn’t have them in it.
It was pitch-black in my room, the world outside one of night, when I heard footsteps in the hall. I didn’t sit up, not even when I heard the lock to my door click open. Daddy didn’t poke his head in; he simply pushed open my door, letting the light from the hall flood in, and said, “Dinner’s ready.” He said nothing else, and I heard him pad down the hall.
He sounded a little calmer than he had earlier, and that was the only reason I sat up and got out of bed. I hit the bathroom across the hall first, and then I went downstairs, as cautious as ever. I knew better than to go charging in, all bold and defiant; I’d never get anywhere with Daddy if I acted like he owed me answers—even if he did.
No, I had to play the game his way, pretend to be a good daughter even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. See? He wasn’t the only one who could pretend. I didn’t want to do it, but sometimes you had to make sacrifices, do things you hated, in order to reach the outcome you wanted.
I walked into the kitchen, finding Daddy already sitting down, eating a plate of some kind of meat and potatoes. Another plate sat in my spot across from him, and I wordlessly slid into the chair, staring at him all the while.
He wouldn’t look at me. Daddy wouldn’t look at me at all, like he was either still fuming or so disgusted with me he couldn’t bear to lay his eyes upon me. Knowing Daddy and his temper, it was both.
I picked up a fork, taking a small scoop of mashed potatoes and bringing it to my mouth. Daddy liked to cook when he wasn’t out on a job, and when he was gone, he left me with cereal and other easy things to make in the microwave. When I’d gotten older, I’d graduated to the oven.
We said nothing for a long time. The only sounds filling the air were of our forks scraping against our plates. The air was heavier than it was before; I could feel it weighing down my shoulders, stifling, suffocating. It was almost too much to eat, to swallow the food that, if I was honest, was a little dry.
“Are you not going to talk to me?” I asked, my voice quiet. I didn’t look at him when I said that, instead staring down at the meat as I cut it with my fork.
“There’s nothing to say.” He didn’t sound like he wanted to talk to me at all. So, he was still pissed at the whole thing. I could only imagine what Markus had told him, and the things he’d sent him… of course Daddy was mad. I would be too, if I was in his position.
However, if I was in his position, I wouldn’t have kept my daughter locked up in the first place, nor would I have gone around killing girls like there was no tomorrow.
“But there is,” I said.
He looked up at me, glaring. It struck me then just how tired Daddy looked, how the bags under his eyes seemed to hang a little lower on his face than they had before, how his whole body looked thinner. He was not the same man I remembered, and knowing he’d let himself go like this made me wonder if he did indeed love me in his own way.
“I don’t need to talk to you to know everything that went on in that fucking house,” Daddy hissed out, baring his teeth at me. His fingers curled around the fork tightly, reminding me of how he’d held onto the steering wheel, knuckles white. It was almost like he wanted to stab me with it.
“I’m sorry, but I think we have to.”
He slammed that same hand down on the table so hard it shook on its legs. “I can barely stand to look at you,” he hissed out. “You’re not the daughter I raised. You let that house, those men, turn you against me. You became a little slut for Markus, and I will not listen to a single word you say. Whores don’t get to speak up for themselves in this house.” The venom he carried laced with every single word he spoke, so much so that I flinched under his gaze. I couldn’t help it.
