Page 100 of Bred
“Ow. You fucking bitch!” His scream is higher pitched than Ted’s that time Mom convinced him to let her wax his back.
“Open the gate or I call your boss,” I nod my head toward the booth that has the company name painted on it in gold letters.
“Why don’t you just call Silas since he’s youruncle,”Vernon whines and uses two fingers of the hand that isn’t holding his nose to make air quotes.
I roll my eyes and hold up my phone, tapping the screen like I’m googling the security company Vernon has spent the past twenty minutesnotactually working for. I’m absolutely not about to tell him I don’t have Silas’s number.
“What the fuck is going on here?” My eyes snap up to see an angry Silas half out of his car on the opposite side of the gate. “I specifically told Ted to make sure you were punctual. Some of us have businesses to run, Zoey.” Unbelievable. I’m propositioned, ogled, called a stripper by this smarmy little asshole and now I get to deal with Silas.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and step out of the car, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’ve been trying to get past the wackadoodle here for the last twenty minutes, but he insisted on trying to grope me.”
Silas’s eyes narrow on Vernon through the gate, and I’ve never seen anything more chilling. I took him for a cutthroat in the boardroom, but at this moment he looks like he wouldn’t mind cutting some actual throats. He’s really serious about being punctual, I guess.
“Did you touch her?” Silas’s voice is calm, so cool my stomach twists like I might be in trouble for something. Like an idiot, Vernon turns away from me and shows Silas his bloody face and hands. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“I punched him,” I say, jutting my chin out in defiance, because judging how this day has been going, I’m about to get a lecture on using my words instead of my fists.
“For?” Silas says slowly and his eyes appraise me from feet to head so quickly that I almost missed it.
“For telling me to flash him or he wouldn’t let me through the gate and for trying to grab my boob. Self-defense,” I say, raising an eyebrow at my step-uncle, challenging him to reprimand me. The thought stirs something inside me. He’s so tall, and the way he’s barely containing his anger right now has my skin prickling with goosebumps. I take a deep breath because I should not be looking at him in this way. My sex life with Lucas was pretty mundane and never lasted more than a few minutes each time. I bet someone like Silas Barlow has never had a boring time in the bedroom.
“That wasn’t exactly what happened. She’s been flirting with me and I jumped the gun,” Vernon flat out lies.
“Liar,” I snap, and he flinches away from me. That right there gives me more satisfaction than anything.
I hear Silas let out a low “hmmm” like he’s dissatisfied. I wasn’t expecting him to go to bat for me, or protect me, but I thought maybe he’d be able to see through Vernon’s bullshit long enough to overlook the fact that he thinks I’m a screw up. I thought maybe he’d reprimand him, threaten to have him fired if he didn’t stay away from me, but nope, not a word.
“Open the gate and let her through,” Silas barks at Vernon and then levels me with a smoldering stare. “Follow my car, if you think you can handle it.” His tone is dry and demeaning and I’mjustabout to tell him where he can shove his car, but Vernon is leering at me again. If I leave now, my only option is a hotel room, with plenty of gremlins like Vernon lurking around.
I bite my tongue, get in my car, and do as Silas said. I follow him through the community, winding all the way back to the first lot. I know he’s wealthy, but it makes me wonder if he developed this community or at least knows someone who did.
Silas pulls into his garage and I wait for him to get out of his vehicle and guide me into the spot next to his. I don’t want to rock the boat anymore than I already have, so I’m letting him take the reins. He doesn’t say a word to me when I get out of the car, but instead walks toward the door that I assume leads into his house.
“Um. Should I get my stuff now or… ?” I don’t know if he’s going to give me a tour or if I’m on my own to figure things out.
Silas turns to look at me over his shoulder and this time his eyes rake over my body more slowly. I feel way more exposed than when that fuckhead at the gate was trying to cop a feel. This was all a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come. He clearly doesn’t want me here, and my body should not be responding to a simple look the way it is. I’ve never been this turned on, especially without being touched.
“I’m not a fucking babysitter, Zoey. Do what you need to do. I have a call that I’m late for because you were playing footsie with the first guy that gave you attention since you ran away from your problems. What happened? Did your boyfriend forget to plan some elaborate celebration for your birthday? So you threw a fit and came running home to your mother and Ted?” His tone is so harsh, I’m taken aback. I get the whole grumpy persona, but this is personal. He really doesn’t like me. I’m not sure how he knew my birthday just passed because birthdays have never been a big thing for me. Mom wasn’t big on celebrating them, and Lucas wouldn’t have remembered if I had gone to the store with him and helped him pick out flowers and a card. But that’s none of Silas’s business.
“It’s not what you think,” I start to say, but he waves me off before rubbing his hand through his thick, dark hair.
“It’s not my business to be thinking about your personal life. You had a four-year vacation at that fancy school and now you’re struggling to figure out what to do. Your mother and Ted should have taught you to put money away, so you don’t end up in situations like this,” he says coolly, but the anger in him seems to have dissipated.
I feel it on the tip of my tongue. I’m about to cut my nose off to spite myself and tell him that he’s wrong about everything. I stop myself because I realize how sad it is that my own boyfriend took all the money I had saved up and blew it behind my back. I don’t want Silas to have that information. He’ll just use it against me.
“Come on. I don’t have all day. I’ll show you your room,” he says as I follow him through the expansive kitchen and into the living room. “You can wander around and find what you need in the rest of the house,” he says as we make our way to the stairs. I notice that while everything in the house looks expensive, there's barely anything in it. All white walls and bare surfaces. It looks like it was staged to show to potential buyers. It’s not homey at all. I don’t see one photo in any of the rooms that we pass by.
He stops in front of a large bedroom with a bed, dresser and double closet. It has a nice window covered only by sheer white curtains.
I look up at Silas as I enter the room and his eyes are on the bed for a brief moment before he shakes his head and narrows his eyes on me. “I’ll be in my study,” is all he says before he turns and walks out. I bite my lip nervously and flop back on the bed, making sure to keep my shoes off of the bright white comforter. I need to just shake everything off and get my head together. While I was waiting for the call from Mom, I applied for a job at a restaurant not far from here. It’s not what I want to be doing, but at least I know the job and it’ll be easy since everything else in my life isn’t. I close my eyes for a second, trying to prepare myself to get up and go haul my stuff up here. My phone buzzes over and over, and I don’t have to even look at it to know that Lucas must have realized that I wasn’t fucking around, that I was really leaving.
I push off of the bed, pull my hair up into a ponytail and wrap the elastic band I had on my wrist around it. I’m in for a long couple of weeks, so I better make the best of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
SILAS
ZoeyHarrisisdrivingme insane. Her presence, her voice, her scent have invaded my home and my life. I found a strand of her hair on my suit three days ago and I felt the urge to burn the entire thing.
