Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

I’d been seventeen when he’d told me this and after I realized that it was unlikely that he had this power, my father was too aggressive for me to change things. He never left me alone with Madix either.

I knew he had a gun because he held it against my head regularly, so what if he’d shot my brother under the table? Fear does strange things, but so does love. I loved my brother more than life, and the possibility of anything happening to the big giant with a soft heart… it was too much to even think about.

I couldn’t go to him now though because it would be the first place that Dad would have looked. Levi would be the second place he went, but I knew that the Townsends would be able to hide me. Plus, he was scared of them, always had been since Levi’s dad, Jer, went to him after they saw the bruises on my arms and threatened him.

I’d hidden the abuse for years from them, but Dad had come into money somehow and was feeling invincible because of it, so he hadn’t paid attention to where he was hitting.

Not long after it, I’d been woken up in the middle of the night with my arms tied behind my back and my legs tied together and was then dumped in the back of the car. I’d thought it was because of the Townsends and had felt smug at the thought, but it quickly became apparent that he’d fucked up with the money he’d been throwing around the place. The true owners of it had come calling wanting every last penny back.

It had never been clear why he’d dragged me along with him, keeping me tied up or cuffed to a solid piece of furniture for almost four years. Why not just leave me behind and run? I was another mouth to feed (when he felt like it) and another body to consider (again, when he felt like it).

I wish I’d never wondered why. When I found out tonight exactly why, I also wish he had left me behind or that I’d suffocated on one of the many occasions that he’d gagged me and shoved me in a tiny closet.

I was his insurance. On one hand, he was trying to pacify the many people he owed money to and that he’d fucked over by saying he had a daughter that he looked after on his own. On the other hand, he was looking for a permanent buyer for me.

He’d found a buyer and when I’d begged him to let me go, he’d hit me hard enough to knock me out. Assuming that I would stay unconscious, he’d then left the motel room for a celebratory drink leaving me behind and for once unbound.

I’d stolen the money that I knew he kept in a duffle bag. He never was the most inventive or clever man so he’d just kept it on him, arrogant in his belief that nothing would ever touch him or happen to it.

The almighty Rick Cleaver.

He’d picked up a woman when we’d arrived, his typical type of junky skank. She’d left her car keys on the bed, so I’d taken those, gone to Dad’s car and cut as many cables and pipes as I could, and had left without looking back.

Where I’d stopped to call Levi would give me a good smoke screen for a while. It was three hours away from my brother, and six hours away from where I’d told my father that Levi had gone to college. I’d known that if something like this came up that I’d need to buy myself some extra time, so that lie had been a well thought out one. I also doubted that the skank owned this car legally, so the chances of them calling it into the police were slim. Rick also had a severe allergy to them and the law, so he definitely would not want to be involved in anything to do with law enforcement officers. This fact bought me even more time.

He would catch up with me though. He would. And it would be a painful catch.

I just prayed that Levi got here before he did.

Levi“Yeah,” my brother Noah’s tired voice mumbled through the speakers in my car at me.

“I need you to get everyone together. I’m bringing Luna home.”

I knew that the name would have him jumping out of bed. I felt like shit seeing as how I’d warned him not to go near her a million times over the years, and now I was almost dangling the carrot in front of him. If I could have hidden her from him, I would have, but I knew that everyone had to be involved in this. I also knew that if anyone would keep her as safe as I was going to, it would be Noah.