CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The explosion
Phoenix
The last time I'd brought my father crap news he'd pulled a gun on me. This time I was more prepared. Nixon said he wasn't cooperating, and I was going to force him.
I knocked on the door to his office. Nothing.
I knocked again.
Finally, he jerked the door open. "What the hell do you want?"
"And hello to you too." I pushed and tried to get in, but he held it firm.
"I'm busy."
"The hell you are." I pushed harder, he stumbled back, and that was when I saw how busy he really was.
With two girls.
Two of the ones I'd broken in the week before.
I almost vomited right there. What type of person kept underage girls in his office, the office of a university, then screwed them during coffee break? And what type of person did it make me, that I'd been first, my own father second.
Shit, I hated myself.
I hated him.
I hated everything.
Hands shaking, I reached for the cigarette pack on his desk, I hadn't ever been much of a smoker, but I needed something to do and puking was out of the question, along with shooting him between the eyes.
"Should you be playing with the merchandise?" I asked.
"Deal fell through." He shrugged. "Thought it a waste to let them go."
A waste?
"What do you mean the deal fell through?"
"Guy backed out," my dad sneered. "We didn't get the money, and it's your fault. He said they were too pure, so clearly you didn't do a good-enough job making them dirty for him. Which reminds me, Nixon owes me money."
"Nixon owes you shit. You talk, he pays, that's the deal."
"Yeah, well, what if I'm done talking?"
"Then he shoots you."
My dad rolled his eyes and barked out a laugh. "Can't kill a boss without signing your own death sentence."
I hated that he was right.
"Wanna join?" My father's eyes were challenging me to say no. "I have two… only used one. The other's still good."
He pulled out a knife and ran it down the first girl's cheek. She was brunette, maybe seventeen, high as an effing kite, and apparently, under the impression the knife was a lollipop, she opened her mouth. He touched the blade to her lips.
"Stop," I growled.
"What?" My father shrugged. "She won't feel a thing." Glaring at me, he shoved the knife past her lips. Blood spurted from her mouth, and I lost my shit.
I lunged at him, slamming him against the wall. His punch collided with the left side of my body — a kidney blow, nice. I kneed him in the balls just as he landed another deadly blow to my ribs.
When he fell to the floor, I looked at the mess around me — the mess I'd helped create. It was only natural I cleaned it up.
The girl was sobbing as blood continued to come out of her mouth.
And I was numb.
Completely numb.
Because, in that moment, I couldn't see her as a person anymore, only an object. If I had seen her as a person, I would have had an honest-to-God mental breakdown. I threw a towel in her face and dropped a few hundreds onto the floor then sauntered out of the room, head high.
It wasn't until I was making my way across the campus that the shaking started.
And it wasn't until I saw the SUVs parked out in front of the girls' dorms that images of every single face came back full-force.
They'd ranged in ages, shapes, sizes — it hadn't mattered. The number was in the hundreds. Nobody had forced my hand.
That was all on me.
I wanted to die.
But I wanted to prove myself more than that… if it was the last thing I did. I would prove myself to Nixon.
I would come out on top.
Because I… was all I had left.