Lucy

 

My father answered the door dressed in a business suit. He’d obviously taken time off work to meet with me. As I walked into the house, he peered outside to see who had dropped me off. Luckily, Blade had decided just to drop me at the driveway so his car wasn’t in view. I didn’t know where he had finally parked it, but he hadn’t pulled in.

 

The house felt colder and emptier than normal when I walked in. Of course, every surface was sterile and spotless. I had never seen my parents clean the house. It just sort of repelled dust somehow. I never put much thought in it, but as my world seemed to get dirtier and dirtier the longer I was out of the house, it became obvious that something wasn’t quite right.

 

“Where’s Mom?” I asked him as he closed the front door and locked it.

 

“I sent her out for the afternoon. I wanted to talk to you in private,” my father said shortly.

 

I nodded. Of course he wanted to talk in private. My mother would have been offended if she knew everything that was going on. I was fairly certain she had no idea what all he’d done since our last conversation.

 

He led me to the dining room, the same place where we’d talked before. The blinds in the windows along the outside wall of the dining room were raised so we could see my parents’ beautiful yard. It was as meticulously kept as the inside of the house, and there was still never any color. It was all green all the time. Somehow they managed never to grow any flowers. I would have guessed that one of them would have wanted to see a rose or something at some point, but no.

 

I sat at the wooden table, taking the seat at one end, while my father sat at the other. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and set it on the table. I had called Blade and already put it on speaker phone so he could hear everything. The screen was off so my father couldn’t tell I was on the phone, and Blade had muted his end of the line, as I had requested, so there wasn’t any sound coming through to tip my father off.

 

“So, what did you want to talk about?” he asked, maintaining a stony expression on his face. He was unreadable.

 

“Dylan, Blade, my baby, everything,” I answered. I had to fight my eyes to stay focused on him. I kept wanting to check to make sure Blade was still on the phone, but I didn’t want to give it away.

 

“The father of your bastard child, your pimp, the bastard itself, and what else?” he asked, rephrasing my words back to me.

 

“Just ‘my child’ is fine,” I told him. “You don’t have to refer to it as a bastard.” I had to be careful not to call him a him. He was to remain an it to my father. I didn’t want that asshole knowing I was having a boy. If he really were interested in taking the baby from me, he would have doubled his efforts knowing it was a boy.

 

“You’ve never had much respect for us, have you?” he asked, keeping his tone even and cool.

 

I was dumbfounded. I had no clue what the hell he was even talking about. I didn’t see how bad luck in my own life had anything to do with my respect for him, but, in his delusional mind, I had to accept that he probably thought I had done all of this shit on purpose just to hurt him.

 

“I don’t know what any of this has to do with how much I respect the two of you. You’re the one who kicked me out of your house, not the other way around. Next, you’re going to tell me you’re not behind sending Dylan to threaten to take custody of my child. You’re going to tell me you didn’t set Blade up at his club so he would be in jail and out of your way when you came after me,” I said, challenging my father. I needed to get something out of him, and I didn’t want to take too long to do it.

 

I was starting to feel like the whole thing had been a setup on his part, as well, as if he had invited me to the house for something other than our little talk. If anything happened, Blade already had several guys on call, ready to storm the house.

 

“I’m sorry to hear about your biker boyfriend,” the smug asshole said.

 

“Yeah, I bet you are. You’re probably sorry to hear that he got out of jail, huh?”

 

His eyes faltered. “I’m sorry, he what?” His voice cracked.

 

“You didn’t know.” I laughed. “You didn’t even know.”

 

“I mean, why would I have known? Has it been in the news?” he asked, his voice shaking as he tried to cover up his reaction.

 

“Give it up,” I told him. “You knew about it because you were behind it. I know you used your connections on the department to plant drugs on the premises. Then, you used your connections with the judge to keep him in jail.”

 

At first, he looked like he was going to continue playing the part, but his face dropped all pretense. He tapped the table and stood up. The game was over. I was about to be in trouble, big trouble. I could see it coming even if I didn’t have any idea yet what it was going to be.

 

“I’m impressed, Lucy. You’re very intuitive for someone who has never had to get her hands dirty. I’ve tried to hide you from the dirt of the world, from the trash and the garbage that’s out there. I tried to send you to the best schools so you would have the best opportunities, but you’ve always wanted to see what was on the other side, haven’t you?” He walked to me, slowly, as he continued to talk.

 

“You don’t know how to just simply accept things at face value, do you, Lucy? Like the fact that your boyfriend was arrested for possession, the intent to distribute, and whatever else they could come up with. Or the fact that your ex showed up to tell you he wanted custody of your child so it could grow up in a decent home and have a chance at a decent life. You couldn’t just accept that, could you? You should have come home then instead of hopping a bus and running,” he said.

 

My heart froze. He knew I’d gotten on a bus. But if he knew that, why didn’t he know Blade was out? Surely he knew where I went and that Blade had picked me up. Unless, of course, I had found the limits of his reach. Whoever saw me get on the bus didn’t follow me, so they didn’t see who came to get me.

 

“Oh yeah, I saw all of that. But right now you’re wondering why I didn’t know about your boyfriend.” He shook his head. “I can’t see everything, unfortunately.”

 

“So, you’re saying you are behind the drugs at Blade’s club?” I asked, figuring now that he was indulging in his egotistical bravado, he’d be likely to admit it.

 

“No one found drugs at the club. They had the drugs when they showed up, and they just said they found them,” he admitted. “And while we’re at it, I did track Dylan down and convince him to scare you away. I never planned on letting him have that kid. That kid isn’t going to be born,” he threatened.

 

“I don’t understand.” My heart raced. I didn’t like the way his last statement sounded.

 

“The doctors were supposed to cause you to lose that baby, but the presence of your motorcycle gang friends scared them into not doing anything. You were supposed to lose that baby,” he growled.

 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My father was trying to abort my child. Legally, I couldn’t have an abortion now. There was no way. The doctors would have been forced to give me medications to kill him.

 

My heart pounded in my chest as I remembered the sedatives I was on. Some sedatives were too strong for pregnant women and, most of the time, they weren’t recommended at all unless absolutely necessary. I wondered what else they were trying to give me.

 

“That’s right,” my father said, leaning down to look right in my eyes.

 

There was so much hatred in them, it made me wonder if he’d ever actually loved me. Or was I some trophy he and my mother had used to make them look like they had a happy family? Had I ever actually been happy?

 

It was unreal. The whole thing was just unreal. I glanced at my phone. I wanted to tell Blade to come get me. I felt threatened. I knew whatever he’d had planned was about to unfold, and the results were going to be catastrophic.

 

His eyes followed mine, and he reached down to grab the phone. He hit the button on the side and brought the screen up, revealing the active call with Blade. He smiled at me, a cruel grimace with the corners of his mouth raised in a horrifying parody of a smile.

 

“Blade,” he said in a cold voice as he took the phone off speaker so I couldn’t hear the conversation.

 

I looked on in horror, wondering what Blade was going to say to him, if anything. I wondered what my father was about to say as well. I knew Blade had my back, and I had seen how possessive and protective he was over me. My father was making a grave mistake by addressing him directly the way he was.

 

It was all out of my hands now.

 

“That’s fine, you don’t have to talk,” my father said in a cold voice that even sent chills down my spine.

 

He looked at me. My eyes were frozen on his. I didn’t look when I heard the back door open. I closed my eyes, knowing there was nothing I could do at that point to stop whatever was going to happen. I heard what sounded like two other people coming into the room behind me. I felt their hands on me.

 

“You won’t ever see my daughter again, you simple little thug,” my father said, spitting out each word as I was pulled out of my chair.

 

I didn’t struggle.

 

“Hurry. Take her to the car,” my father said. “We’ve got company coming, and we can’t be here when they arrive, which should be momentarily.”

 

It was always possible he’d been lying about not knowing Blade was out, I figured. He obviously knew the guys weren’t that far from us. He knew I hadn’t come alone as we had agreed. He’d probably known the whole time what the plan was.

 

I walked with the men carrying me. My father placed a hood over my head as we left the house.

 

“Don’t want you to know where we’re going, dear,” he said.

 

I heard the doors open, and I was shoved into an SUV. I had to step up as I got in the back. The person next to me pulled my seatbelt across my chest and buckled me in as the other car doors closed. I tried to grab him, but I realized my hands were restrained. I hadn’t felt them put anything on me, but my wrists were certainly tied together.

 

“You’re not going to get away with this,” I told my father as I felt the car leaving the back driveway.

 

“I already am, dear, but don’t worry. We’re about to fix this situation,” he said to me with cool confidence.

 

I took a deep breath. Blade had found me before. He was going to find me again.