Page 2 of The Preachers' Promise
After all, if he couldn’t protect his daughter, how could he protect his men? His workforce? I’m beginning to believe he holds a resentment of sorts toward me. I am the embodiment of his failure.
Gradually, I run out of tears. I find myself staring at the wall, lost in thought. I sigh and chew on the inside of my cheek. I desperately want to contact the Preachers, but my dad took my cell. I’ll be getting a new phone now, but it’s going to be monitored by my parents. They’ll know the code to get into it, and Mom says they will check it. Can they do that? Now that I’m classed as an adult? Maybe I need to contact a damn lawyer and learn my rights. They are treating me as if I’m sixteen.
I know deep down my parents love me, and I understand they’re doing this because they’re scared shitless, but your parents checking your phone when you’re a legal adult is not okay.
Why can’t they see they’re making me a prisoner just as much as the Prophet had?
Once I get the new cell phone, I might be able to contact someone at the university, and see if they can find Cain for me, or at least pass my new number on to him. Whoever I get in touch with might report me to my father, though, or my dad might even put a tracking app on the phone to monitor what I’m doing.
I know Father is capable of those sorts of things. He’s spied on employees before. There have been times when there have been murmurings of people taking bribes and he’s somehow managed to know everything about what they’ve been doing and with whom. I only know that because I overheard him and one of my uncles talking one night.
A darker thought comes to me. What if Cain doesn’t want to hear from me? What if, now I’m gone, the Preachers decide they had their fun with me, and it’s better this way?
“Shit,” I mutter. “This is a mess.”
“A mess we can fix.”
I yelp.
For a horrific moment, I thinkhe’sback, talking in my head again. The Prophet. But I realize the voice coming from behind me is real. My muscles relax with relief, and I turn toward my father standing in the doorway.
“I don’t understand why you’re angry with me,” I say, holding his gaze defiantly. “I know I shouldn’t have given her my address, but Daddy, she’s in trouble.” I use my childhood name for him, wanting to see if it softens him, but it doesn’t.
His jaw sets tighter, and he shakes his head. “We love you, Ophelia, but you need to realize how much danger you are in. What you did was stupid, and so very dangerous.”
Rubbing two fingers across his closed mouth, he watches me, contemplating something.
His face softens as tears fill my eyes, and he walks deeper into my room and sits on the edge of the bed.
I scoot away from him, drawing my legs up and wrapping my arms around my knees. I’m trying so hard to hold myself together, but I’m terrified. Scaredhewill come back. Scared I’ll lose my mind.
I feel as if it’ll only take one strong gust of wind, and I’ll break apart.
“We’re worried about you,” he says finally. “The reason we’re angry is because we’re upset and scared. My God, Ophelia, we lost you once.” He clears his throat, as though dislodging a wedge of emotion, before carrying on. “We can’t lose you again. Your mother would never recover from it. Giving that girl your home address terrified her. She’s not been able to relax for a second since that letter came.” Pain flashes in those blue eyes of his. Eyes like the darker one of my dual-colored irises. “I’ll never get over the moment we realized you were gone. We can’t go through that again. That fucking bastard who took you deserves to die.”
I wince. My father rarely swears in front of me or my mother. With his men? Constantly. But not us.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“We have more men on duty. Armed men patrolling outside right now. I’ve hired the very best in close protection work from a renowned outfit. You’re at home. With your family. Who love you.”
“But you are the ones who sent me away to college.Yousent me there, Father. You and Mom. You said it would be good for me, that I was only getting worse here, and even though at the time I resented it and was terrified, you were right. It has helped me, and now you’ve dragged me away. You’ve ruined everything.”
I wish I could tell him, explain, but he won’t understand the voice, and he’ll do something truly drastic. Probably have mecommitted. Only the Preachers can keep me safe from the ghost that haunts me.
“It’s not forever, Ophelia. And you’re right, we wanted you to go, but your mother found it hard not having you here. She’s not been sleeping. She was struggling to accept that you were safe there, and that wasbeforewe got that letter.” He sighs. “It made me realize that perhaps we were wrong. Perhaps having you under our roof was best all along.” He rubs his eyes. “I need time to think. We got that letter, and it opened all the old wounds like it was the first week you were abducted. Let’s just take it one day at a time. First things first, we’ll let you rest up, recover from the journey. We’ll find a property to rent for a while. I have a shell company we can lease it under, so it won’t be traceable to us. Once we have a suitable place, we can leave, but, until then, you’re safe with all the men we have here. We’ll get the doctor in, too, for a medical exam.”
I jerk back in shock. “What? An exam? Why?”
He sighs and glances away. “We want to make sure you’re well, physically. You’re thin, Ophelia. Even more so than when you left. You have bruises on your arms.”
Gingerly, he touches my upper arm, and I glance down, shocked to see the bruises, though they’re faded now. Crap. The Preachers must have grabbed me harder than I realized during some of the times we had sex.
“Try to see this as a good thing. You can rest up here, until we either find somewhere to stay for a while, or until we know it’s safe for sure.”
How can they know it’s safe? They don’t know where the cult is, and so they can’t exactly go and confront the Prophet. They are going to spend their lives scared and worried the way I am. Father can’t be sure they’ll never find us, even if we move. I’m sick of it all. I’d found a freedom of sorts. I need to get myparents to see my point of view, without giving away that I’ve got three men I’m falling for.
My father softly tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. He leans down and kisses the top of my head, the way he did when I was young.
