Owned by My Sinful Guardian novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Clean Break

Randall rages and takes her phone, so Darby takes it back and walks out at midnight in her white dress, and a black truck pulls up beside her.

Randall's hand stayed where it was.

"Excuse me?"

"Your hand," Magnus said. "Off her. Now."

He didn't raise his voice.

Two tables over, a woman put down her wineglass to watch.

Randall let go of my knee and held both palms up, laughing.

"Family. You don't have kids, Mr. Thorley, so you wouldn't know. Sometimes they need a squeeze."

"I'll want thirteen years of statements from you," Magnus said. "My lawyer will call on Monday."

Randall stood up and buttoned his shiny jacket.

"Joanne. Darby. We're leaving."

Magnus stood too.

He was a head taller than my uncle, and the whole dining room noticed.

"Darby can stay," he said. "I'll make sure she gets wherever she wants to go."

Every face at the nearby tables turned to me.

I thought about the washroom.

I thought about the drawer in my bedroom in Penn Hills where my dad's spatula was wrapped in a dish towel.

Everything I owned was in that house.

"I'm going home," I said.

Magnus looked at me for a long second.

Then he nodded once and stepped back from the table.

Randall didn't say a word on the Parkway.

He drove with both hands, and I watched the muscles in his neck work.

Joanne sat in the front seat and turned her rings around and around.

I sat in the back in the white silk dress with my knees together.

The brick ranch house had every light on.

My cousin was in the den with a game on, and he muted it when the front door slammed.

Randall threw his keys on the kitchen counter.

"Phone," he said.

"What?"

"Your phone. On the table. Now."

I didn't move fast enough.

He took the clutch out of my hand, dug out the phone and put it in his own pocket.

"Who did you text? Did you text him?"

"I didn't text anybody."

"You sat there and let that man call me a thief in front of a whole restaurant."

"He didn't call you anything. He asked a question."

My cousin came to the kitchen doorway in his socks and leaned on the frame to watch.

He was twenty-four and worked the lot with his father, and he'd never once taken my side.

"You know what you cost?" Randall jabbed a finger at the floor. "You know what an eight-year-old costs? The crying? The nightmares? The therapist your aunt wanted?"

"I never saw a therapist."

"Because I said we couldn't afford it!"

"With five thousand dollars a month?"

He went purple from the collar up.

"Thirteen years I fed you. Thirteen years under my roof. You owe me thirteen years, kid, and you'll pay it back by keeping your mouth shut."

Joanne was standing by the sink with her arms wrapped around herself.

"Randall," she said. "Please."

"Stay out of it, Jo."

She stayed out of it.

She always had.

I walked down the hall to my room.

Nobody stopped me, because nobody thought I'd do anything.

I pulled the green duffel out from under my bed.

Jeans. T-shirts. Two grill aprons. Underwear. My knife roll.

I opened the nightstand drawer and took out the dish towel.

My dad's spatula was inside it, the wooden handle worn dark where his hand used to go.

I'd taken it from the diner's dish rack the week of the funeral, and no one had ever noticed it was gone.

I zipped it into the duffel's side pocket.

I didn't change out of the white dress.

I wanted them to see me leave in it.

Randall's jacket was hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.

He was at the fridge with his back to me, pouring a beer.

I slid my hand into his jacket pocket and took my phone back.

My cousin saw me do it.

He opened his mouth.

I looked at him, and he closed it again.

"Where do you think you're going?" Randall turned around with the beer foaming over his hand.

"Out."

"It's midnight."

"Then I'm late."

He put the bottle down and came at the doorway to block it.

He'd done it a hundred times when I was a kid, and I'd always stopped.

I didn't stop.

I walked straight at him with the duffel on my shoulder, and at the last second he stepped aside.

"You walk out that door, you don't come back," he said. "You hear me? That's it. No more family."

I opened the front door.

The September air was cool on my bare arms.

"Honey," Joanne said behind me, very small.

I didn't turn around.

The door shut behind me, and the porch light went off.

Randall had flipped the switch.

I walked down the dark street in my heels with the duffel banging against my hip.

There were no sidewalks in this part of Penn Hills, just lawns and mailboxes and dogs that barked behind fences.

I got out my phone to text Gretchen.

It was on two percent.

Headlights came up behind me, slow.

I moved onto the grass to let the car pass.

It didn't pass.

It slowed to walking pace beside me, a big black pickup with the engine running low.

My heart went up into my throat.

The passenger window was already down.

Magnus Thorley leaned across the bench seat and pushed the door open.

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