Chapter Six

Karina

Gravel crunches beneath my Sketchers as I approach the familiar red brick house where I grew up. Windows line the front of the house, too big to hide so many secrets. The American flag on the porch ripples in a show of patriotism my father only claims to feel. His only real loyalty is to himself.

Nervous energy whispers through me, but I push it down, refusing to let fear chase me away. He's at work and Coda is…well, I'm not entirely sure where he goes when he's not with me. But I drove myself to class today because he had things to do.

I didn't mind. It left me a small window to come here to collect the few things that matter to me. I think he would have preferred me to stay hidden in his condo, but I can't do that. No matter what my father is up to, life has to go on.

I won't be a prisoner to his crimes. He's tried for years to make me one, but I never understood why until recently. So long as I'm under his thumb, he thinks I can't turn on him. He controls me and what I know, what I say…, and what I do. His warnings about not trusting anyone and staying away from men like Coda were never to protect me. He meant only to protect himself and his secrets.

My hand is steady as I punch in the garage code. The quiet click of the lock disengaging sounds like the start of a countdown. To what, I don't know.

Inside, the air smells like motor oil and old memories.

I think we were happy once. But it's been so long ago I barely remember it. Back before my mom left him. I always thought she was tired of being tethered to a cop. Maybe she was just tired of being chained to one who didn't deserve the badge.

I'll never know. She died before my freshman year of high school in a boating accident.

I slip through the door into the kitchen. The space is too silent, too still. Everything is neat and tidy, an extension of my father. Even here in his own home, appearances matter to him.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Except for me. I don't fit here. Even when I tried to fake it, tried to pretend I was the perfect daughter, a storm brewed under the surface. I didn't belong then, and I belong even less now.

I take the stairs two at a time, my heart echoing in my ears. Upstairs, I hesitate on the threshold to my bedroom. It no longer feels like mine.

The girlish pink feels out of place, the innocence of it jarring. The room hasn't changed at all, but I have. In ways so profound I don't know that I'll ever be able to explain. I placed my hand in Coda's and let him carry me into the dark. And somewhere in the pitch blackness of his soul, I found myself.

I'm not the perfect daughter. I'm not innocent laughter. I'm not girlish pink and bright smiles. I'm his. He fucked his way into my soul, claiming it for the night.

I yank a duffel bag from beneath my bed and stride to the closet. Clothes, a few photographs, the journal that holds my darkest secrets—it all gets crammed together in a hasty bid for escape.

"Karina?" My father's voice, thick and slurred, slices through the silence.

I freeze, my heart stopping. My lungs cease to function.

He's here. He isn't supposed to be here.

Yet, his shadow looms behind me like a wraith.

I turn slowly to face him.

I know instantly that he's been drinking. His blond hair hangs dull and lifeless over his bloodshot gray eyes. Those eyes, usually hard and unyielding, struggle to focus on me. His square jaw is shadowed with stubble, and his tall, once intimidating frame seems to waver, as if his legs can't decide whether to support his weight or send him pitching toward the floor. A half-empty bottle dangles from his fingers.

It's barely mid-afternoon, and he's drunk. Lovely.

Something must have happened at work. He always picks up a bottle when it does.

"Where the fuck have you been?" His words are a growl, slurred but sharp enough to cut.

I keep my hands steady, folding a sweater into my duffel bag. "At a friend's," I say, my voice calm.

"Friend," he spits the word like poison. "Is that what you call the men who fuck you?"

Hurt blooms inside me, fast and fierce. It clouds everything else, but I can't let it show. Not to him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Like mother, like daughter," he sneers. There it is, the lowest blow. He always knows just where to land it.

My mother wasn't perfect, but she loved me. And he's never forgiven her for not loving him enough.

Anger bubbles up, hot and fast. "Don't talk about her." My voice trembles, betraying the storm inside me.

He ignores me.

"Whoring yourself out, Kari? Is that how you've been getting by?" We both know he says it, not because he thinks it's true, but because he wants to inflict as much damage as possible. She isn't here to hurt, so he'll hurt me in her place. It's not the first time, though this is the worst it's ever been.

"Stop it!" I shout, my frustration boiling over. "Just stop it! You don't get to talk to me that way."

"Don't raise your voice to me in my own home!" he bellows, and I almost laugh because this hasn't felt like a home in years. It's a prison.

"Your home?" I say, my voice barely above a whisper as I zip my bag. "This stopped being a home the moment she left, and you know it."

I push past him, practically running for the door and freedom. He tries to grab my arm, but he's too drunk and uncoordinated to do anything more than stumble into the wall.

My chest heaves as I try to contain my emotions—not sorrow and pain but fury. This is far from the first fight we've had, but it'll be the last time he speaks to me this way. I'm not his property, and I don't owe him an explanation—especially not when I know what I do about him.

How dare he accuse me of being a whore when he's been fucking his way through half the department?

"Everyone saw you playing the slut at the party, Karina!" His slurred shout chases me down the hall. He's following me, his steps heavy. "They saw you leave with him. You think I don't know you've been staying with him?"

Coda. He knows about Coda.

Bile crawls up my throat as his barb lands exactly as he intended, like a threat aimed at my heart.

The screen door slams behind me as I rush out into the cool air, the unique smell of Chicago replacing the stench of alcohol and anger. I ignore the burning behind my eyes, the threat of tears.

I can't let him drag Coda into this. He can say whatever he wants about me—do what he wants to do to me—but Coda is off-limits.

"Stay out of my life!" I scream over my shoulder, my voice cracking as I jog down the steps.

"Karina!" He stumbles out onto the porch behind me, his form blurred by tears.

My hand shakes as I fumble with the car keys, desperate to get out of here. I never should have come in the first place. Whoever this man is…he isn't the person who raised me. That man was flawed and imperfect, but he wasn't a monster. This one is a monster.

When did he start the slow descent? Or was he always on that path and I just never realized it until now? I don't know. But I know what the dark looks like now.

It isn't the man who kisses me as if I command his soul.

It's my father. That's darkness.

Coda is everything right in this world.

I slide into the driver's seat of my Camry and jam the key into the ignition. The engine growls to life. Gravel crunches beneath the tires as I reverse out of the driveway with too much speed and too little caution, desperate to put this house and my father behind me.

"You didn't deserve her!" I spit out the window, a last act of defiance toward the man whose love comes wrapped in barbed wire.

He's a blurry figure in the rearview mirror as I race away, his head hanging as if regret rests heavy on his shoulders. But it's too late for him and too late for us. I'm done.

He won't ever speak to me like that again.

The streets are a blur, houses streaking by in a kaleidoscope as I race back to Coda's. I need him. I need his arms around me. I need him holding me together. I just need him.

My breaths come in pained gasps, hot tears streaming down my face.

I see the flash of blue dart into the intersection ahead a second too late. My light is green, and I'm going too fast to stop.

Time stretches. For an instant, everything is painfully clear—the bright sky, the horrified look on the face of the other driver, the realization that there's no stopping this.

I slam into his car.

Metal screeches.

Glass shatters.

The world spins.

My body lurches forward, held back by the seatbelt biting painfully into my chest. Pain explodes in my head, bright and fierce, and then there's nothing but darkness clawing its way in, threatening to swallow me whole.

"Coda…" His name is a whisper on my lips, a plea for salvation as the dark takes hold, pulling me under.