CHAPTER 24
She had expected Amelia to show up before dawn, to slip into the house as she had done when they were teenagers and grounded for some transgression.
What Cami didn’t expect was to come sharply awake just after dawn to the heavy crack of her bedroom door against the frame.
Before her eyes were open Rafe was moving.
He rolled her from the bed, still naked, moving with a powerful surge of strength as he took her over the side of the bed to the floor, the weapon in his hand trained across the room.
She couldn’t blame him for it. He’d been trained to react and to move at the slightest sign of danger.
After all that had happened in the past weeks, who could have blamed him for leveling that weapon on her father?
Her sperm donor, she liked to call him, because there was nothing fatherly about Mark Flannigan.
“What the hell are you doing here, Flannigan?” Rafe growled, even as he wondered where his cousins were.
“Now then, wouldn’t it just surprise you to know I’m here to see my wife’s daughter.”
His wife’s daughter, not his own. Rafe caught the mocking inference in Mark’s tone, and from the flinch of her body he knew Cami had caught it as well.
“I need my robe,” she whispered almost silently, more than uncomfortable at the thought of being naked in front of her father.
Rafe had no such problems, though.
Rising to his feet as he cast Mark a scowl, Rafe padded across the room to where the silken robe was draped over the lady’s chair that sat in the corner.
Pulling it quickly over her arms, Cami kept her gaze on her father and wondered why he was there. In the time since she had bought the house from her parents, not once had either of them come by to see her home.
“There was no need,” he assured her, his gaze scathing as it flickered over her and Rafe again.
Rafe still hadn’t dressed. He was too busy sitting on the bed and watching her father warningly. She could have told Rafe that no amount of warning could stop whatever her father had in mind to say.
His gaze flicked back to her again.
“How disappointing,” he told her, a sneer pulling at his lips. “I would have never expected such a betrayal of your family, even from you.”
Even from her, as though betrayal were something he had grown to accept as a part of her.
“Your opinion of me or anything I do isn’t anything I lose sleep over, Mark,” she told him casually, knowing that the worst thing she could do was allow him to see how easily he could wound her.
She had learned better than that years before.
“What I’d like to know is how he managed to slip past Logan and Crowe,” Rafe stated.
Mark snorted. “They were out back for some reason.” He shrugged comfortably. “I have a key.”
“I’d like that key back,” she informed him. “Is Mom okay?”
“As if you care,” he accused her. “You’re too busy fucking her daughter’s murderer to even check up on her.”
Cami could only shake her head. She called the facility daily and went to visit whenever she could.
Her mother didn’t even recognize her. Cami doubted her mother even thought of her when she did have the presence of mind to remember her.
“What do you want, Mark?” Cami asked wearily as Rafe rose to his feet, pulled his jeans over his legs, and pulled the zipper up nonchalantly.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard how you were consorting with these bastards.” Mark flicked his fingers to Rafe to indicate not just him but also his cousins, who weren’t in the room at the moment.
“I don’t want to hear this.” Cami lifted her hand, seeing the rage in her father’s face and wishing she had changed the locks to the house when she had the chance.
“You don’t want to hear this,” he sneered back at her. “This is how you repay the love and loyalty Jaymi felt for you, isn’t it? They killed her, Cami—”
“They didn’t kill her, and I won’t deal with you at the moment. Leave, Mark.”
His expression twisted in fury. “Give me the courtesy of calling me Father, you little whore.”
The conversation was over as far as she was concerned. The accusations she could handle; the name-calling was much harder to overlook or to turn the other cheek on.
“Your mother heard what you were doing here, in her home, in the room where she once slept in her bed,” he snarled back at Cami as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and watched her as though she were a foul odor he couldn’t disperse.
“Then you told her,” Cami accused him, feeling her chest tighten in pain and anger at the thought of what Mark would have said or could have done to torment her mother. “Tell me, Mark, don’t you ever get tired of punishing Mother for having me, and me for living when Jaymi didn’t?”
His expression darkened further. “I forgave her for giving birth to you,” he informed her. “But no, Cami, after this.” He nodded toward Rafe. “After this, I’ll never forgive you for living. Jaymi wouldn’t have betrayed you this way. She sure as hell would have never slept with the man who killed you.”
“I would hope not.” Cami shrugged. “You should leave now. If you really believe Rafe and his cousins are murderers, then it’s hard telling how they’ll react if you continue to stand here and throw their crimes in their faces.”
She glanced at Rafe. The smile he gave her father was all teeth. “Yeah, only God knows how much fun we could have with that one,” Rafe snorted.
“Leave the key before you go, Mark.” It should have hurt. It should have broken her heart a thousand times over, but all she felt was regret.
He could have been a father to her.
He had been Jaymi’s father. He had loved Jaymi with a father’s devotion that Cami had envied.
A devotion she’d prayed for just a bit of. An ounce of. Hell, she would have settled for Mark to simply tolerate her.
The smile that curved his lips was one that echoed with relish. She knew that whatever was coming, he expected to cut her to the bone.
“Your mother will never know I told you the truth,” he told Cami confidently. “She’ll never know I finally found the chance to tell you how thankful I am that you’re not my child.”
Shouldn’t she be shocked?
Cami stared back at him as Rafe cursed under his breath and moved to her. His arm went around her as he moved behind her, drawing her against him and providing a warmth, a security, she’d never had before. Facing Mark had never been easy. It had never been comfortable. But he’d never been so deliberately cruel either.
It wasn’t shock that filled her, though, and it wasn’t pain.
“I think I’ve known that for a very long time,” she told him softly. “If you meant to hurt me, Mark, then you haven’t succeeded.”
That was exactly what he had expected.
He glowered back at her and Rafe. “You’ll pay for this,” Mark finally snapped. “You’ll pay, Cami, when he kills you. When he tortures and rapes you—”
“And if you didn’t notice the fact he was in my bed when you so rudely barged in, then you’d realize he didn’t have to rape me,” she retorted. “No more than he would have had to rape Jaymi. Stop walking the Corbins’ line, Mark, and think for yourself for a change. Jaymi tried to tell you he and his cousins weren’t involved in any wrongdoings. But like everyone else, it’s much easier to please James Corbin than it is to think for yourself, isn’t it.”
“Cami,” Rafe said her name softly. “Go get ready, sweetheart. We have things to do today, remember?”
