Read Nightfire for Free Online Page B

deep voice was low, harsh. The skin was tight over his cheekbones. He’d said something and she’d only caught the tail end of it.
    Chloe blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
    “We’ve heard a version of this story a lot of times.” He glanced at his partner without moving his head. “Did your father rape you?”
    Chloe bowed her head. It was that obvious? She looked like a woman who’d been raped by her father? Oh God. She’d worked so very hard not to seem like a victim and yet here was this man, who had only just set eyes on her for the very first time, and he’d pegged her completely.
    “No,” she whispered, looking at her knees. “Though he tried.” Backbone, Chloe . The voice of Sister Mary Michael sounded in her head, calm and strong.
    Calm. Strength.
    She lifted her head. “I fought back. Which was dumb, because he was a really big man. I should have run. But I didn’t.” She remembered every second of it, vividly. Rage had come ravening up, from some completely unsuspected place inside her, black, blinding rage, an emotion she’d never felt before, certainly not like that. It had been as overwhelming as his blow. “It was ridiculous. My, um, my father was six-two, almost three hundred pounds. He backhanded me. To shut me up, I guess, because I was screaming while I was trying to hit him, hurt him.”
    She’d known in an instant what was going on. Though she hadn’t had sex, had never kissed a boy, had never even touched a boy, she’d read enough, and anyway, instinctively, she knew. Knew that his red face, flaring nostrils and wild animal scent meant trouble. It had come from some place deep inside of her. Through her reading, she even knew what the tent in front of his linen trousers meant. An erection.
    She’d gone into overdrive, kicking and screaming, grabbing a brass candlestick and bashing him in the face with it. His look of astonishment would have been comical if she hadn’t been so desperate. Weak, sick Chloe, fighting back. She’d shocked even herself.
    Her rebellion hadn’t lasted long, though.
    “He broke my arm,” she said. “It had been operated on recently and it broke easily.” Cheap at the price, because he’d stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her, cradling her visibly broken arm.
    Harry Bolt suddenly looked sick. Mike Keillor looked furious.
    “My mother walked in and, without a word to my father, took me back to the hospital, told them I fell down, and left me there overnight. The next day, cast and all, I was on a flight to London, where I was enrolled in the Sacred Heart School for Young Girls, where I boarded for the next three years.”
    Chloe smiled. She had no idea if her mother had checked up on the Sacred Heart, if there had been some kind of parents’ site giving ratings of schools for foreign girls, or whether her mother had simply thrown a dart at a page of choices. Whatever, she’d struck pure gold. The years at the Sacred Heart, under the stern and loving care of Sister Mary Michael who had become the mother of her heart, had been the happiest of her life, hands down. The nuns had been warm and welcoming, the other girls from all over the world had provided friendship, and she’d felt at home for the first time in her life.
    “I stayed in England, went to university at University College London. When I graduated, I found a job back at the Sacred Heart, teaching English. I never saw my parents again. My mother and I emailed from time to time, and sometimes she talked about coming over to London, but she never did.”
    She’d sent money, though. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, which Chloe had dutifully banked, spending as little of it as possible. She liked pretty clothes but she didn’t need a huge wardrobe. Her tastes were simple and the account grew and grew.
    She glanced down at her wristwatch. She’d been talking for half an hour.
    “I’m really sorry,” she said, looking up. “I know I’m taking up your time but I needed to say all of