Page 2 of The Penalty

Eddings takes a step back as I’m charging in. At least he looks annoyed with me, or maybe it’s the fact that his stiff white collaris too tight. He pretty much always looks annoyed. Not like Holmes.

I give him a nod and the friendliest smile I can muster up. He returns the nod, but his frown only deepens as he takes in what I can only assume is a wild appearance. Definitely not suitable for the Whitaker family.

“Your father is expecting you in his study,” he says to me in a voice as stiff as his collar.

The big window catches my eye as I’m passing through the large sitting room to get to my father’s study. I could bust out and try to run for it. The manicured back lawn disappears into a wooded park I could hide in for days. But I’m not much of a hunter-gatherer, so I’d be pretty hungry at the end of a day or two. Not to mention the unsuitability of my club-worthy attire for backwoods survival.

Instead, I take a deep breath, pull my shoulders back and reactivate the steel rod in my spine years of debutante training have formed. My father is not one to accept weakness or any kind of defeat. It’ll only make it worse if I show him the fear that’s been swirling around inside since my unpleasant wake-up call this morning.

My three sharp knocks on the door are greeted with... a big fat nothing. Is he even here? Eddings doesn’t lie. I don’t think he’s been programmed for deceit, so he has to be in there. Must be ignoring his wayward daughter.

Finally, he issues an impatient. “Come in.”

I push open the door. If I was uncomfortable before, stepping into my father’s inner sanctum ratchets up the feeling tenfold.This room is all him. Pure wealth and male energy. From the fuck-you heavy antique desk to the shelf of pretentious books behind him that rarely get read. Clothbound classics and rare first editions are the general vibe. Although there are a few shelves dedicated to newer business books, and I know he’s read those.

He doesn’t rise as I step inside, not that I expected him to. Just nods to the chair across from him. It’s shorter than his, so he looms over you. In case his perfectly tailored custom suit and stern expression aren’t intimidating enough.

“Cecelia.”

I dig my teeth into my lower lip to avoid correcting him. I usually tell him to call me Cece like everyone else, but correcting him is not a wise idea at this particular moment in time. “Father.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Straight to the point.

I’ve always thought this was the stupidest of questions. What exactly is he expecting me to say? I fucked up. I was possessed by a demon. Is there any answer that’s going to make a difference to him? No. Why even try?

“It was just a party.” Since I’m still in the dark about what happened after I left my party and the events that led to me ending up in a cell, I’m going with that.

The lines between his eyes deepen. “Cecelia. A party did not get you arrested and splashed across the Internet.”

The cold sweat starts back up again. “Splashed all over the Internet?” That could mean anything. It could be the pictures that got taken earlier this morning while I puked outside thecar. Or maybe it was whatever happened during the gaping black hole in my memory of last night. But since I’m still unaware of my crime, I’m quite concerned.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the pictures.”

Suffocating heat presses in on me, leaving me light-headed. Pictures posted online never cast you in a positive light when your family is as high profile as mine. At least not the ones of me.

I shake my head, struggling to swallow around the lump at the back of my throat.

He swings around the open laptop on his desk to reveal a picture of me. Am I??? Attempting to scale the statue of Ezra Cornell? I flip to the next picture, closing my eyes when I catch a flash of bright pink panties and... oh no... my tits. Holy fuck. My tits are on display on the Internet. And I’m the one lifting my shirt to show them to the world. I have nice tits, I’m not going to deny that, but I don’t exactly want them on display for everyone with access to the world wide web. Especially not while I’m disgracing the statue of my school’s illustrious founder.

My neck goes weak, head falling to my hands.

“Anything to say now?”

“I don’t remember.”

His long pause is designed to make me squirm, and it works.

“You don’t remember.” He enunciates each word like a laser-targeted weapon. “Cecelia. I thought you were over this nonsense. You had your wild spell, but when we sent you offto Cornell, we trusted you to uphold the family name like you have been raised to do since birth.”

“I have been.” Mostly. I haven’t done anything of this magnitude, that’s for sure. Nothing you would hear about if you weren’t on the campus of Cornell. But I guess I let the stress of exams and unrealistic expectations take over. The Ivy League school filled with students who share the same blue blood as I do. Other people who would like nothing more than to bring people like me down. It’s not fair, to be honest. Beau is the golden boy, the favorite twin, but he’s allowed to party and drink, sleep around. Boys will be boys and all that misogynistic nonsense. But not their angel girl child. No, I’m supposed to keep quiet, smile demurely and drink my bottle of wine without a single wobble on my heels.

“No, you haven’t been. Because if you had, this wouldn’t have happened. If you were in control of yourself. Aware of your pedigree and the expectations of someone with our name, you would never have embarrassed us like this.”

Of course. It’s all about control with him. His control of us, and our control of ourselves. As if we’re not college students with our own minds attached to underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t make this go away. I’m pulling you from Cornell.”

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