Page 13 of Misguided
King simply smiles briefly, rounding his desk to pull out a short bottle of whiskey and two stainless tumblers. My heart sinks as he pours the two drinks, his brow pinched as he concentrates on the task at hand.
He only drinks this way when he doesn’t like what he has to talk about. Why doesn’t he like it? What’s happened?
“Here.”
I accept the offered drop, holding it tight in my quivering fist. “Where’s Daddy?”
The realization strikes me like a red-hot hammer to the heart. Despite the differences between us in the last few years, my father loved us girls without compare. If he knew Hooch was going to collect me, he’d be there to see me home, welcome me back. He wouldn’t sit idle in Fort Worth and wait for me to come to him; he’d bring the party to me.
“King?”
He sucks in a deep breath, licking his lips before downing his tumbler in two hefty gulps. “I really don’t know how to break it to you, baby girl. But I get the feelin’ you already know what I’m going to say.”
My chin crumples and I choke on my next breath, pulling all manner of faces as I try to compose myself enough to keep my grip on the tumbler. Tears streak my cheeks as I toss the drink back, the burn nothing compared to what erupts inside of me.
“Another,” I demand as I hold the tumbler out to King.
He refills the cup, his brow firm.
“Was it him?” I ask with shaky tones. “Carlos? Did he do it?”
I knew when I left that Daddy intended on having a face-to-face sit down with the asshole drug lord. I begged him not to, but when the tyrant had placed a bounty on my head after kidnapping my baby sister, how could I have expected my father to sit idly by and not put up a fight?
King’s eyes close; his forefinger and thumb pinch the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, it was him.”
Fuck. Fucking fuck. That … asshole. That cold-blooded fucking monster. My heart stops, stutters, and restarts with painful determination.
“How?” I whisper before smashing the second drink.
“I won’t tell you that.” King regards me with nothing short of pity, and in that brief yet connected moment I know it was bad.
Really bad.
“It was after I left, wasn’t it? He went there to try and get Dana, didn’t he?” My voice quivers despite the fact I barely speak above a whisper in an effort to control it.
King nods.
All this time …
“Dana?” Another missing face from my impromptu welcome home. “He get her too?”
King swallows, his eyes pained as he holds my unwavering gaze.
I don’t want to believe it. My head literally can’t fathom the fact that while I was holed up like the precious treasure I’m not, both my father and sister were taken—no doubt brutally.
I haven’t heard anything about my family while I’ve been kept off the grid; the only contact I received was a box left at the end of the access road twice a week containing food and provisions. I lived in hope, in futile hope that somehow my father had outsmarted the asshole that placed the bounty on my head, and won.
That good prevailed over evil.
Yet it was never to be. We never stood a chance against a man who held no ounce of remorse for the things he did, the consequences he set into action. How could we? How could innocence and love ever withstand the relentless barrage of pain and suffering men like Carlos inflict in their deluded crusade to reach the top?
“Hey,” King croons as he sets his tumbler down on the desk. “Hey.”
I look into his eyes as he slides to his knees, shuffling until he’s before me, hands over mine. Only when his steady touch grounds me do I realize how badly I shake.
“Don’t hold it in.” He squeezes my hands, imploring me to understand. “Let go of it all: the hate, the anger, the pain. We’re here to catch you.”
I wish I could. I want to, so badly. I’d love nothing more than to fall apart and have the people I love cradle me until I felt strong enough to stand on my own again. And yet, I can’t. I’m afraid that if I do let all those things he mentioned flow in, that I might never find my way back out of the maze of grief they create.