Nina grinned, scooting her over to sit beside her. “It means no such fucking thing, Princess.” Clucking her tongue, she asked, “The kid and his mother settled for the night?”
Smiling tiredly, George nodded. “Yep. All tucked in for the night and hopefully on the road to getting what they both need.”
There was a small silence and then Nina tapped her on the shoulder. “So…you tried to fucking kill yourself? Can we talk about that?”
Wow. Talk about direct. Clearly, Nina and her vampire ears had heard her conversation with Justin.
But it was true. Everything she’d told Justin was true. When she’d been hanging by a thread, she’d decided to let go.
Swallowing hard, fighting a new batch of tears, George nodded wordlessly.
Without warning, the tumultuous events of the night rushed her, stealing her breath from her lungs.
But Nina wrapped her arm around George’s shoulder and pulled her close to her lean side. “Why? Why the fuck would you do that, George? I mean, I heard what you said about that fuck you called a father, but killing yourself because he abused your mother? Talk to me. Tell me. I wanna understand why someone as good as you would even think that shit was okay. Please.”
“I—” Her voice cracked, making her clear her throat and fight for composure. She wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about the details.
The vampire turned to look at George. “So check it, I googled your ass and there wasn’t anything about an attempted fucking suicide. If you believe the articles I read, your father died of a heart attack in the hospital when you were much older, and it was after he allegedly killed your mother. So you thought about that shit when they were both gone?”
Looking down at her hands, she nodded her misery. “Yes. That’s mostly true, but it was a long time in the making.”
“Tell me,” Nina ordered softly.
“He’d abused my mother all my life. Day after day, year after year. There was always a bruise she was trying to cover with makeup, a broken bone and some doctor he’d paid off to set it and keep quiet. As I got older, I knew I had to get away from him. I knew my mother had to get away from him, but she wouldn’t listen. She refused to let me help her. I was terrified all the time. And as he got older, he only drank more and things grew worse.”
Thinking about that last year in their house with him before she left for college and moved out for good probably left her with the most guilt. Maybe even more than the night her mother died.
Because back then, there had still been time…
Nina scoffed as she tightened her grip on George. “Was it the fucking money? Was she afraid to leave the money? He was a billionaire, right?”
George shook her head with the memory. “He was, but it wasn’t the money that kept her with him. It was fear. My father was a very powerful man, Nina. I’m sure you read that. He’d have had her killed if she left. There was nowhere to hide, and believe me when I tell you, I knew he wasn’t just spewing platitudes when he said he’d hunt her to the ends of the earth.”
Nina sat silently, but her nostrils flared and her lips thinned.
Sighing, George looked out into the dark night. “Anyway, as I got older, my later teen years, I guess, I started to push back. I got mouthy, but the harder I began to push, the harder he came at me until one night, just before I was due to leave for college, he nearly choked me to death, and then he hit me. It was the first time ever. He’d intimidated, bullied, frightened me into submission for as long as I can remember, but he’d never put a hand on me until that night.”
Nina balled a fist against her thigh. “The motherfucking pissant.”
Her throat tightened and constricted, but the more she talked, the easier it became to speak the words. “My mother took the brunt of that attack when she stopped him and shoved me out the door. Her reward for keeping him from almost certainly killing me? He beat her nearly senseless. I’d never seen her look as bad as she did that night.”
“Jesus fucking hell, Wings.”
Shaking her head at the helplessness of it all, George inhaled. “I was so afraid after that. I went to my counselor at school, who told me only my mother could help herself. She advised me to talk to the police about what my father had done to me, but I knew what would happen if I did. The police, like everyone else, were in his back pocket. So she told me to walk away and do it fast. To remove myself from the stress of trying to get my mother to listen to reason—to hear me. She said I had to lead my own life and it was unhealthy to do anything else.”
“Fuuuck,” Nina muttered. “That’s tough, but she was right.”
A tear fell to George’s lap. “But I couldn’t…I just couldn’t leave, Nina. I couldn’t stand the idea he’d hurt her and I wouldn’t be close by. I couldn’t give up. So I went to community college and worked two jobs. I kept my distance, refused to take anything from him, including his money. Not that he was offering. He eventually, officially cut me off financially, but I didn’t want it anyway. When I’d call, my mother would always say everything was fine in their big ugly mausoleum of a mansion, but he refused to let her see me, and Mom was always too afraid he’d catch her and hurt me if he found us together.”
And that had hurt. It had hurt so much.
Nina obviously sensed how wounded she’d been by that. She took George’s hand and held it to her cheek. “That kind of
