Vincent flexed his jaw. “Because you don’t eat when you’re upset, and you would have only eaten a few bites. Do you even remember the last time you sat down for a fucking meal you actually ate?”
Shit, someone just save me…
Chapter Thirty-Five
You Don’t Have To Worry; I Wouldn’t Fuck You In Your Dad’s House
…from this psychopath.
“I just ate, didn’t I?”
Vincent shook his head. “You wouldn’t have if I didn’t make you.”
Lake bobbed her head back at him.
He was about to lose his mind. “Why does everything have to be so hard with you? In one day”—he holds one finger up—“I find out about you working for Dante by me having to watch you fucking work down there.” Another finger goes up. “The numerous times you have almost gotten yourself killed in the span of a week.” Another finger. “Then to top the whole damn thing off, I go to your mom’s to find out she’s a piece of shit who’s letting an even bigger piece of shit hurt you. So, if you don’t fucking mind, could you please just put yourself in my shoes at the moment and quit being so damn difficult?”
She took a deep breath, realizing he was a little right. “He never hurt me.”
“What?”
Lake had to avert her eyes down to the table while she talked. “He never hurt me, because he was too scared to. He knew he would have crossed a line if he touched me. If a mark was left, then my dad would have killed him.”
“Lake, you can hurt people without laying a hand on them. Don’t sit there and tell me he never hurt you.” He kept his voice between calm and strong. “What did he do to you?”
There’s no out.
Picking at the paint on the table, she bit her lip. She really didn’t want to tell him, but she was sure he pretty much had everything figured out and only wanted to hear it from her.
“Ever since he met me, I knew he didn’t like me. He would always ignore me or give me dirty looks behind my mom’s back, so I started to spend more days with my dad and less with my mom. I remember her being depressed and crying before she met him, and she finally seemed really happy, so I was happy. I didn’t think it was important if John liked me or not because I only had to see him on the weekends, and he had mostly ignored me till one day my mom went out.
“It was as if he had waited for that day. Finally, he was free to call me what he wanted and make me do what he wanted. He would send her out to do something more and more while I stayed there to clean, cook, and wait on him hand and foot. I did everything he ordered and never said anything to my father because John told me if I did, Dad would not only kill him and Ashley, but my mom, too. I was young and terrified enough to listen to him yet old enough to understand what my dad did for a living. The more I cleaned and heard him call me names, the more I knew John was right; he would kill them.”
Vincent flexed his jaw. “How has your dad not figured it out? You’re telling me he doesn’t know?”
“No, never.” She looked at him like he was crazy.
“How am I supposed to believe that, Lake?”
She was not going to let him think about her father that way. He could say what he wanted about her mom because God knew she wasn’t perfect, but Lake wasn’t going to let him blame her father when he had always done the best he could for her despite his weakness. My father is all I have left. And she wasn’t going to let Vincent take that away from her.
Lake stared into his blue depths, knowing what she said next was going to hurt him. “The same way Adalyn and you didn’t know. There was no way to know unless you were there to experience it, just how you did tonight. My father could never stomach to go over there in that huge house and face why my mother left him—for money. When I asked to spend only the weekends with my mom, I told him it was because she wasn’t alone and I didn’t want him to be. The same thing I told you months ago, and you thought nothing of it.
“My mother was a good mother before John, regardless whether you believe me or not. I never would have believed John and his money would have changed her, but it did. I knew it would be hard for my father to believe, as well, which was why I never gave him any reason to think otherwise.”
Seeing the rage behind his eyes as he began squeezing the table, she felt bad for saying what she had, but she hadn’t been left with a choice—she had seen him considering killing her father. Still, she needed to make it better. She didn’t want him to blame himself.
“Vincent, you couldn’t have known what happened, just how Adalyn and my father didn’t. There is no one to blame—”