Page 155 of Monster

“Why, baby?” I asked quietly.

“My parents asked me not to.”

“And why the fuck would they do that?”

She flinched in my arms, and I squeezed her to me—my apology. I was angry, but never at her.

“My dad was working at his parents’ firm at the time. That’s how we met, at the company’s Christmas party. My dad no longer works there. The money his parents sent to me was hush money—I couldn’t take it. It felt like such an unfair trade. My future for thirty fucking thousand. But my parents didn’t want this to get out. They were afraid it would affect my dad’s job prospects. I gave my parents the money and moved away from home.”

“Did your parents know about your relationship with him when you first started?” I asked slowly, already seeing the fucking picture.

That would explain why she’d never asked me for her phone to call her parents, even when things weren’t so intense between us. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned anyone she would call or hang out with, here or back home.

“They encouraged it,” she said bitterly. “It made my dad’s position at the company a little easier.”

Fuck me.

What kind of shitty parents encouraged their seventeen-year-old daughter to date a fucking man almost in his thirties?

I held her a little closer to me. “I’m sorry, baby, but what happened was not your fault or something you deserved. Understand?” I clasped her chin and lifted it until she was looking at me. “I won’t have you bearing all that shit on your shoulders, you got me? If anyone is to blame, it’s your fucking parents and that fucker.”

A dead fucker.

Her eyes watered, and her lower lip trembled. I didn’t look away from her. I wanted her to understand exactly what I was saying. It felt like someone was fucking stabbing me when her tears fell and soaked the skin on the side of my palm.

Slowly, she nodded and pressed a small kiss on my jawline.

Fuck.

The kiss was a reminder that I didn’t fucking belong to myself. Not anymore. Everything that made me now belonged to this tiny girl with heartbreak in her eyes that I wanted to fucking kill to eradicate.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. “Dominic, no. Just leave this alone. I don’t want you involved.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” I said, ignoring her protest. “It won’t be hard for me to figure out.”

She opened her mouth, but I kissed her, swallowing up any argument she might offer. It wouldn’t matter. I was gonna make sure this fucker felt ten times the pain he had fucking inflicted on my girl.

“Don’t worry about this anymore,” I said when I pulled away. She slowly opened her eyes, the hazel irises soft and clouded from the kiss.

More tears fell, and I realized it would have been a hell of a lot less painful had I been stabbed.

I felt my heart pinch at the sight, and I wondered if there would ever be a time when she didn’t affect me so much.

It didn’t seem likely.

And I didn’t fucking care. Not even a little bit.

23

DOMINIC

Emmy was sleeping soundlybeside me on the bed when my phone dinged with a text notification from Micah.

Quietly, I grabbed it from the nightstand and silenced it so as not to wake her up.

After I fed her and showered her, we had fallen into bed, where more of her tears had soaked my chest, making me wish I had the bastard chained to the wall in one of my fucking warehouses.

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