Orange jumpsuit, red hair, blue eyes, a rugged beard hiding his reaction. Standing there, staring at me as if he’s seeing a ghost is the man who saved me all those years ago. It’s my father.

Logan asked me once how Daddy knew I was his child for sure and I basically answered I didn’t care. I don’t care, but I know and so does Daddy. I’m not his. Not when my mother was fair-haired with a light complexion. Not when I don’t physically resemble him in the least.

I overheard him once speaking to Grams after they tucked me into bed. I crept down the stairs, just needing to hear the sound of his voice again, when she had asked him if she should be concerned about whether my real mother or father would ever come hunting for me. He told her no, that he would protect us both, and I always believed him.

It’s hard not to run to him, difficult to will my feet to move at a normal pace. The urge is to rush him, wrap my arms around him, beg him to break free of this place and take care of me again. But he can’t break free. There’s a good chance he’ll never be free. My father is paying for his sins.

Less than two feet away, my father holds out his arms and I don’t hesitate to fall into him. He hugs me tight, his hand petting my head, and he kisses my hair then says in my ear, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I whisper. “I’m healing.”

“In danger?”

“Yes.”

There’s a clearing of a throat and my father and I break apart. Inmates and visitors are only allowed a brief embrace, even if it is a father welcoming a daughter. We both sit, him on one side of the corner table, me on the other.

Dad glances around and I track where he’s looking. Everyone seems lost in their own conversations, but I don’t pretend to understand his world, just know that for every action there is a reaction.

“The whole world is exploding right now and it’s over you.” Dad leans in to make this conversation private. “Last I heard, Linus thinks Eric has you.”

I search Dad’s face and while he’s always worn cool and collected, even when he’s on the verge of a murderous rage, I don’t spot what I had expected—a masked anger over the kidnapping.

“I’m not with Eric.”

“Didn’t think you were. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Eric told me to tell you that he saved me.”

Dad doesn’t flinch. “Anything else?”

“And he told me to tell you thank you.”

Dad’s lips twitch up.

It’s a disgusting sensation as part of me swims in confusion and dips in betrayal. “You knew Eric was going to kidnap me.”

“I told him to get you out of town.”

My fingers draw in for a fist and then I force flex them out. “He blindfolded me and hog-tied me then threw me in the back of a car.”

That flash of craziness I originally expected finally appears, but Dad retains his cool. “But he got the job done, and you’re sitting here safe.”

“And Eric’s your enemy,” I whisper-shout.

Dad edges forward to give us more privacy. “And boundaries are shifting. You’re smart, Abby, and I expect you to keep up.”

“They have TV’s in here, right? I mean, when you aren’t sitting around plotting out the world outside these walls, you must watch it. Does it ever sink in when watching the Disney Channel that people don’t normally have their daughters kidnapped? That instead of working through coded messages through other people that you do something crazy like talk to me directly? Normal fathers talk to their daughters.”

“I’m not normal and neither are you.”

“No shit. And here I thought my father sold cosmetics door-to-door. You know, someday, I’m going to have a job where I can come home and sip lemonade on the front porch and watch people mow their yards and I’m going to have goldfish and bunnies and I will no longer have to have conversations about me being saved by a kidnapping. But for now, this is where we are at so how about you fucking humor me and tell me what the hell is going on?”

Dad cracks a grin, and I hate that amusing him causes a high within me. “I miss how you view the world, Abigail. You always make the serious moments have less of an edge.”

“Tommy shot me,” I blurt because I don’t have time to play, not even with him. “I don’t have proof, but if I really needed it, I can get it. Eric saving me, my own side taking a shot at me, Ricky wants me to start moving up into management, and Linus is getting a position watching my back with this promotion—I’ll admit to being overwhelmed. Then the last real conversation I had with Linus, he informed me that if I wanted out, there is no out. That I’m safer in than I ever will be out. Now I’m discovering you’re working with Eric. I’m lost and I’m in danger and I need out.”

Dad gestures up with his hand. “You are out.”

“I’m not out. I’m hiding. My home is in Louisville. My life is in Louisville. Grams is in Louisville.”

Dad narrows his eyes on me and I sit back, knowing I’m about to get schooled. “You have broken nearly every rule I gave you to stay alive. You made attachments.”

I shrug. “They weren’t friends within the streets. They were out.”

“You fell in love.”

My eyes snap to his, wondering how he knows about Logan. “He’s a good guy.”

“You trusted when I told you not to trust.”

I blink. Then blink again. A coldness crystalizes the blood in my veins. “My friends, those attachments you’re worried about, they won’t betray me.”

Dad raises his eyebrows. “It’s not them I’m referring to.”

“I never trusted Ricky. I never trusted any of them.”

He just keeps staring, waiting for me to catch up, and when the answer strikes me the blood rushes out of my face and I bend over with the impact. Linus.

“He ordered Tommy to go after you,” Dad says under his breath. “Not to kill, just to scare you. It went further than he had intended.”

My hand presses against my stomach as if that can keep me from vomiting. “How do you know this?”

Dad’s blue eyes become ice. “Because he confessed to me. Linus saw how you were pulling away and didn’t like it. Felt like his meal ticket was too strongly tied to you and he needed to keep you in and figured he could use fear to do it. You aren’t safe with him anymore. You aren’t safe working for Ricky.”

My heart jumps to my throat. “Ricky was in on this?”

“Linus says he wasn’t, but I don’t know. I don’t believe in coincidence and Ricky’s push to move you up, Linus’s promotion associated with it, and you being shot all work too closely together for my taste.”

“The alley couldn’t have been a setup. Ricky warned me off from selling that night. Linus had no idea I’d be there.”

“Them going after Eric’s crew was a setup, but by you not paying attention, you stumbled into it.” His murderous glare and firm reprimand cause me to internally shrink. “Linus told me that he had been talking to Tommy about possible ways to scare you into submission for a few weeks, but he swears none of it was supposed to hurt you. After they did their business in the alley, Linus decided to take advantage of your stupidity and scare you into going deeper.”

“Why did he confess?”

Dad briefly glances away as his eyes soften and that causes my heart to warm. “Linus knows what you mean to me and part of his job was to protect you. He lost you with Eric’s kidnapping. Thought he had lost you for good. He came to tell me and then...” Dad returns his typical hard stare on me. “I told him I already knew and that if he valued his life, he better tell me the truth real fucking quick.”

I shiver and my stomach bottoms out. Death is in my father’s eyes. The type that’s either already been done or is in the works. Either way, Dad has played the reaper, I just don’t know who he’s been toying with. “How did you know about Eric? Why are you working with him?”

My father merely holds up his hand and I fall silent. “Do you want out, Abby?”

“But—”

“Do you want out? Because if you do, you don’t get to know any of this business anymore. If you want to stay in, tell me, but the stakes of the game have been raised. You will have to accept that promotion, and I can no longer guarantee your safety.”

It’s hard to recover from the pain ripping me up on the inside. Linus...my God, Linus. The ache in my chest is too hard to ignore. He, at the heart of it, was like a mentor to me. And Dad was right, I trusted him. Not in the way I trusted Logan or Isaiah. But I thought he was an ally among wolves. “I want out. It’s going to be tough to figure out how to take care of Grams, but I think I can swing it.”

“You can’t go back to Louisville,” Dad says. “Retired dealers are a liability. Especially you. You know too much. On both sides. Ricky can be dangerous, but so can some of your clients. Any of them thinking you’re making a deal with police could cause you problems. And by the cards I’ve been playing lately, I can’t trust that someone won’t take their aggressions for my choices out on you. In here, I don’t have the reaction time needed to keep you safe.”