Page 62 of Hate So Deep

She?

What’s his game now?

“We could find her, Dirk. Don’t you want to know?”

Averting my gaze, I glare at the painting on the wall beyond his head. It’s the only item of worth in our home and Dad likes to parade his friends before it any chance he gets.

For him, it’s all about the success he so desperately wants people to see.

He doesn’t care about her, just as he doesn’t care about me.

“No,” I say, meeting his gaze once more. “If you don’t drop this and now, I’m going to expose every dirty secret you’ve ever collected from this town.”

“Like what?” he asks, raising a brow.

“I’ll start with the governor’s daughter, who’s health information you stole to blackmail the family. They, still lining your pockets?”

Although his brows flicker, he doesn’t respond to my accusation beyond asking, “What do you want?”

Yeah, it’s pretty fucking damning for the town physician to be using his power for the sole purpose of blackmailing his patients.

If I didn’t want him to drop his newest scheme, I’d have exposed him already.

However, this is more important. There are innocent lives on the line and it’s a small mercy, but I plan to keep their secrets safe.

“Stop looking for her. Drop it and never bring it up again,” I say.

After a moment in which he drills me with his stare, he says, “Fine. But you fucking leave and never come back.”

I expected nothing less from the man but for once it would be nice if he could accept his part in this sordid story. He thinks he has all the power but me leaving is my choice and moving forward, he will never have control over me again.

That fact must eat at the bastard, my only revenge in an otherwise fucked up situation.

“Gladly,” I mutter and relieved to be free of the cloying stench of his greed and misery, I blow through the door only to pause on the front porch.

As it tends to do when I’m home, Mom’s dark gaze rises in my vision.

It always comes back to this. Would our lives have been any different if she hadn’t walked?

Our father only descended further into his sickness but who’s to say it wouldn’t have happened anyway.

Father pushed her away just like he’s done me and that’s a fact none of us have any control over.

Inexplicably, Lauren’s glittering green gaze supersedes that of my mother’s the last time I saw her and although I try to push it away, it remains.

She’s not mine. She can’t be mine. What truly stings is knowing that I continue to push her away, pretending it’s for my brother, my best friend, the boy turned man who helped me through my darkest days.

Colt, for all intents and purposes, has moved on. He’s getting married. He’s created a new family.

He doesn’t need me and the fact that I fucked Lauren in the past shouldn’t matter.

I need her to stop trying to find something in me that doesn’t exist though. I’m not her savior. I’m not her friend. I sure as shit will never be anything but her enemy.

I do what has to be done. The sooner she understands, the sooner she sees, the better because I need for her to back away.

Chapter 26

NOW

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