So Nick cared about me. He didn’t like my family. He didn’t like me around my family. And he’d long since warned me to stay away from the warehouse so I knew he didn’t like me being here.

He was just being protective.

And I could shake off the weird feeling, get my meet done with Georgia (who probably told Dad about it and he wanted to horn in) and get out of here. Get out of here and get back to my life. My real life, the life I lived without all this and with Nick.

I walked down the hall toward Dad’s door deciding that instead of looking at this in the sense I was back here in this dingy hall possibly about to spend time with my father, I should look at it in the sense that I hadn’t been there in over a week. My life no longer meant I had to come there every day. I only came there occasionally. And I didn’t have to stay for long.

In other words, for the first time since Tommy and I failed in our escape, I looked on the Brightside.

Because of this, my mouth curled up in a small smile as I put my hand on the handle of my father’s door.

I turned it.

I pushed in.

I walked in.

I saw Georgia coming up out of a chair in front of my father’s desk, turning as she did to face me.

I also saw something out of the corner of my eye.

I didn’t get the chance to look that way.

Agony exploded from my cheekbone, coursing a path through my temple and eye.

Having received the backhanded blow from my father, I staggered to the side, hand out to catch my fall however that might happen, eyes blinking in an effort to regain focus taken away by surprise and pain.

I hadn’t succeeded before the next blow came. This one not a backhand but an open-handed slap across my cheek that cracked hideously through the room, the sound exploding in my brain.

I careened from that blow only to sustain the next one, another slap, followed by another. But that one was a closed-fist crushing punch that landed right on my temple.

Fighting to remain conscious but unable to remain standing, I fell to the side. Slamming into my hand on the silk carpet, my wrist taking all my weight, the throb of pain radiating up my arm, my hip hitting next.

My other hand to my face, cowering away from the possibility of another blow, I heard Georgia cry, “Dad! Stop with the face!”

“Fuck, you fucking stupid, goddamned fucking bitch!” my father shouted, on the second “fucking” grabbing hold of my hair in a painful grip and yanking back.

I made a mew of pain, my eyes opening to see his red livid face inches from mine.