My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Kitchen Table
I stood in the kitchen door in my father's coat and did not say anything.
The ledger lay on the long table under a lamp that had burned down to nothing.
Grey light from the window lay across its green cloth cover.
Ned sat on the bench with his hands between his knees, and he did not look up.
"That's yours to read," he said. "Before anyone's."
"What is it?" I asked.
"My father's household book. The year Beth died."
"The study," I said.
"I opened it at three."
I looked at his face.
It had no color in it at all.
His eyes were red-rimmed, and a day and a half of black beard shadowed his jaw.
He looked like a man who had sat up with the dead.
"You don't have to read it," he said. "I'd rather you didn't have to.
But I'll not keep it from you, and I'll not read it to you.
It's open at the page."
I crossed the kitchen.
It was the first time in my life I had walked toward a thing I was afraid of and meant it.
I put my hand on the book.
The cloth was worn soft at the corners.
I read the entries one at a time with my finger under the line.
*Locked her in.*
I read *TS 11/3* and the words after it, and I read them again.
I thought of a man in a good church coat carrying a girl through the dark.
I thought of a man at a desk the same night, writing a promise to himself while the girl lay on an old woman's table.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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