Page 95 of Quiet
Isa smiled ruefully. Apparently, he and his father had something in common after all. Hiding contraband.
He snapped off a shot of every page in the book before putting it back where he found it. If he left the room looking untouched, he could be miles away before anyone knew he was gone.
Isa didn’t stop to grab food or water, even though he was dying of thirst. He didn’t even stop to look for his shoes. He could live without shoes. He wasn’t sure he’d live if he was caught while trying to leave.
He was in such a hurry to leave, that he’d missed one tiny, but important, detail. Unlike last night, tonight he’d forgotten to check the front room for hidden sleepers.
“What are you doing, son?”
Isa froze in his tracks.
The door was only a handful of steps away.
His father was infinitely closer.
There was no way he would make it to the door in time. He knew that. Thomas certainly did. In terms of size and strength, Isa was the clear loser. And while he was younger, and therefore quicker than his father, one of them had been tortured, sleep-deprived, and horribly dehydrated while the other was healthy, well cared for, and still in the prime of his life.
Isa knew all of this and still bolted for the door anyway.
There was a dozen different things Thomas could have done. He could have reached out from the armchair he was in and snagged Isa by the arm. He could have raced him to the door. He could have walked leisurely because Isa still would have had to unlatch the bolt and the chain before he could escape.
He did none of these.
Instead, he lashed out with the fire poker he held in his hand—the reason Isa had chosen to run in the first place—and took Isa’s feet right out from under him.
Isa hit the ground heavily. If his ribs hadn’t been broken before, there was a good chance they were now.
Thomas loomed over him, taller than Isa ever remembered him to be. His eyes were cold, black coals. Lifeless. Heartless.
This man had nothing of fatherhood in him. No parent should ever look upon their child with such disdain. Isa knew this now that he’d seen what Briar’s parents were like.
Isa swallowed hard. He didn’t deserve this. And he didn’t deserve to go out this way. He deserved to be happy. There was nothing wrong with him. He jerked up his chin and glared into Thomas’s eyes. He didn’t have to take any more beatings. He had his trump card now.
It was time to use it.
“Don’t touch me.” Isa’s voice surprised him. It was steadier than he felt inside. Almost as if his body had been waiting for the day when he would finally stand up for himself.
Something in Thomas’s coal black eyes sparked at Isa’s open defiance. “What did you say to me, boy?”
Isa pulled himself to sitting, ignoring the sharp stab of pain from his ribs. “I said, don’t touch me. I don’t belong to you anymore. I never should have in the first place.”
The spark burned brighter, and Thomas put the poker to Isa’s chest. “You think a few months on your own has made you into a man? After I wasn’t able to make you into one?” He jabbed the poker cruelly into Isa’s chest.
“It takes a man to make one,” Isa said through gritted teeth. He grabbed the poker, trying to push it aside, but it continued to dig into him. Thomas’s point was clear. If Isa didn’t back down, his father was going to drive it right through his ribcage.
“I’m glad to see you have a spine in there somewhere. I’m just sad it took sucking cock to bring it out of you.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “You should try it, it does wonders for your skin.” But he hadn’t completely lost his mind. Will would have said it. Isa let out a small laugh at the thought of his friend.
That tiny little laugh must have tipped the scales between sanity and crazy town because Thomas went from cocky and controlled to full-on fruit loops at the sound.
The spark in his eyes caught fire, and Isa was brought back to the moment in the closet when he wanted everything to burn. He kicked Isa, sending him sprawling to the floor, pinning the boy with his foot and putting the poker to his throat. All he had to do was put his weight into it, and Isa would be done.
All of that would be enough to send panic racing through Isa’s already overtaxed system, but that wasn’t what caught his attention the most.
All the pent-up rage and insanity Isa had felt earlier didn’t belong to him at all. It belonged to his father. For a brief moment, Isa could read Thomas as clearly as he could Briar. He knew Isa had been digging in his office. He had allowed his son to go through the farce of thinking there was something he could do to get free of his family. But in the end, it didn’t matter what Isa thought he had over him. Thomas ManfieldhatedIsa. He was never going to let him go. He was determined to personally snuff out every last bit of his existence. He considered it a penance he owed God.
He actually believed every hateful word he preached to his congregation. And he believed he had the right to his congregation’s funds. He barely even tried to cover it up.
