Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

“Quite enough, thank you!” Raine smiled.

“How did you get the money?”

She looked back down at her fingers and slid her teeth over her bottom lip again.

“I got a settlement when my dad died,” she said.

“Yeah, you said that. Why did you get the settlement?”

“He died in the line of duty,” Raine said softly, “but he was sent somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. The private investigator had some information that one of his superiors sent him there on purpose, knowing he would be in over his head. They ended up giving me the money to avoid the civil suit, but it really came down to him being sent into a situation where he shouldn’t have been. He wasn’t supposed to be there, so he shouldn’t have died.”

“Where did they send him?”

“No one would ever tell me,” Raine said with a shrug. “That was part of the lawsuit. I didn’t care about the money; I just wanted to know what happened to my dad.”

“So what happened to him?”

“Well, from what I could get out of the testimony that was made public, he was executed.”

My stomach muscles tightened up in my gut, and I felt a shiver run down my back.

“Who executed him?”

“It was a crime lord,” Raine said. “Dad was just a small-town cop – he never should have been wherever he was. He had no idea what he was walking into.”

“What did he walk into?”

“They wouldn’t tell me,” Raine said. “There was someone who was there – someone from the organization who offered up his testimony to keep from going to jail, but it was all closed courtroom. They wouldn’t even let me in, and all the transcripts were classified. They said it was all too confidential and the investigation was still going on and all these other lines. I didn’t know what to believe. I think they gave me all the money just to keep the lawyers from making it more public. My lawyer was happy with the money and told me I should just take it. No one else would touch the case, so I did. It wasn’t what I wanted, so I never spent any of the money before this trip.”

I didn’t even hear the last part of what she said. I tried to swallow but I couldn’t get anything through my throat. Various thoughts gathered around in my head like a rugby scrum, and the final conclusion made me want to vomit.

“Raine…” I said softly, finally getting my mouth to form some sort of actual, intelligible word. “Raine Gayle?”

“Yeah, how did you…?”

“Henry Gayle’s daughter,” I interrupted. It wasn’t a question; I knew it was true.

I remembered her name from the trial. One of the lawyers said the daughter of the cop was trying to get access to the courtroom. Landon used his influence to make sure that didn’t happen. I looked down at my hands, waiting for them to start shaking, but I think even my limbs were in too much shock to do anything.

“Daniel, how do you know my father’s name?”

“It’s not Daniel.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it.

“Sorry – I forgot. Bastian…” Raine paused and then repeated my name. “Bastian?”

Ah, shit. I really, really needed a drink now.

“Sebastian?”

She loo

ked up at me, blinked twice, and then looked away. Her head snapped back to me, and her eyes went wide.

“Sebastian Stark.”

My mouth wouldn’t respond to any mental commands, so I went with a nod instead.

“You were there.”