On My Knees (Stark International Trilogy 2)

I stand there like an idiot as his words register with me. We have never talked about this—never—and this new reality has completely flummoxed me.

“Time to stop?” I repeat. “What? Are we baking cookies and now they’re done? Has the clock finally run down in the final quarter of the game? Honestly, Dad, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to talk with you. I’m trying to get past this.”

“Now? We’re really going to talk about this now?” My voice is so full of bile and vitriol it doesn’t even sound like my own.

“Those years were hard on all of us, Elle—”

“Sylvia.”

He pauses, takes a breath, and begins again. “Ethan was sick. Your mother and I were frantic with worry. We all sacrificed, Sylvia. We all did everything we could to help.”

“Oh, you sacrificed, all right.” I want to shout the words. Instead, they come out low. Powerful. And remarkably steady. “You fucking sacrificed me.”

His face turns bright red and he opens his mouth, sputtering as if trying to form words. He says nothing, though, and after a moment, I fear that he is actually having a heart attack.

“Dad? Dad?” I’m not even aware that I have moved, but somehow I have ended up at his side. I reach for his shoulder to steady him, trying to decide if I should scream for my mother or get him off his feet or what.

I’m about to do both when he violently jerks his arm away from my touch. “It. Is. Over.” Each word is pronounced slowly, carefully, and with the utmost precision. “That chapter in our lives is over. Done. The door is closed, Sylvia. And it is closed tight.” He takes a deep breath, his shoulders rising, then falling.

“Over?” My temper has been rising with every word. How dare he. How fucking dare he. And though I know that it is a mistake to get into this now, I cannot stop the words that spew out. “Are you insane? It’s not over. It’s never over, Dad. It will never, ever be over.”

I suck in a breath, afraid that it might be me who has the heart attack. “It haunts me every goddamn day. Do you have any idea of what I went through? The hell I’ve gone through since then? Of what you let me go through—no, of what you demanded I go through? So don’t you dare tell me that the door is closed. I wish to hell it were. But it’s not. And it’s never going to be. That son of a bitch used me, Daddy. He used me. And even after all this time it hasn’t ended. He’s still fucking using me. I still can’t get away. And I still—shit.”

I cut myself off, then turn around and pound my fist into the nearest thing I find, which happens to be a wine rack. It rattles, but thankfully doesn’t fall. I don’t even try to steady it. I’m bent over, my hands on my knees, and I’m breathing hard.

“What? What are you talking about?”

Just tell him.

Like Jackson said, tell him, and then let him dig you out from this mess. That’s what fathers do, right? Protect their daughters?

Except I know better. Because my father had a thousand chances and then some to protect me before. He didn’t. I was a child, and he didn’t lift a finger.

So why the hell would I believe that he would do anything to help me now?

“Sylvia?” His voice is soft, and his hand on my shoulder is even softer. It doesn’t matter; to me the contact burns, and I flinch away. He takes a step back, his hands up. “Tell me.”

I stand there, my mind churning and my heart hurting. I want to run, but I feel bolted to the floor. I want to scream, but I have no power inside me to push the sound out.

I am simply frozen in time, at least until Ethan calls down, cheerful and loud and asking what the hell is taking so long.

It feels as though he has broken a spell. I race up the stairs to my brother. “Sorry. Distracted. Sorry.” I follow him back to the dining room, needing to see Jackson, but Jackson isn’t there.

“I think he went to the restroom,” my mother says when I ask. “Coffee?”

She starts to stand, but I shake my head. “I’ll get it.”

I leave her with Ethan and then head back to the kitchen. I consider going back down to the wine cellar and telling my dad everything. Just getting it all out. Just having it done.

But I can’t do it. I can’t stand the thought of him seeing those photos. Of actually talking to him about the fact that I came second. That he was willing to toss me to the wolves because he had to save his son even at the expense of his daughter.

My hand stalls over the canister of coffee and I squeeze back tears—and as I do, I hear my father’s sharp curse rise up from the wine cellar.