Page 35 of Take Her
He made a dismissive sound. “No—everyone’s kid is an intern these days. Who else can afford to not get paid?”
Literally every other student I’d ever met in boarding school. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“Would you rather just be picking up an honorary check? What’s next, paying for your own apartment?”
I frowned. I didn’t even know what my rent was—only that I didn’t have to worry about it. “Maybe,” I said. “If you’ll tell me?—”
“If I’d wanted you to struggle, Lia,” he began, sounding terse, before forcing himself to relax. “You know how hard things were for me growing up,” he said in a softer tone, before looking around. “What’s the point of having all this money if I can’t spoil you a little?”
“What if I don’t want to be spoiled?” I protested.
He turned his head toward me and gave me such a look. A look that said he’d paid for every single one of my bills while I’d been off in Europe, every hospitalization, every tuition, every extracurricular I’d ever done.
And while he was right, he had paid for all of those things—so had I, in my own fashion.
I hadn’t wanted to be sent away.
I hadn’t wanted to end up like this.
I knew if I blew up at him though, he wouldn’t take me seriously. “I just want to learn to run Corvo.”
My father shrugged. “There’s plenty of time. Just do what Rhaim says—unless it’s janitorial work,” he said, then rolled his eyes. “He’ll keep things easy for you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Are things easy for Freddie Junior?” I knew my cousin, who was a few years older than I was, was already on Corvo’s board and working at Blackwing, Corvo’s flagship hotel, just blocks from here. I only barely remembered him from my childhood, mostly my mother trying to make sure he didn’t roughhouse with me—and the thought of him being ahead of me in any way chafed.
My father’s lips pulled into a thin line. “He’s different.”
“Because he’s a boy?”
“Lia—”
“It’s not my fault,” I protested. It made me sound like a whiny teen, even though it was the closest I could come to telling him the truth, that it really wasn’t, that the things that had fucked me up were far, far beyond my ability to control.
He reached out and patted my hand gently, giving me a sympathetic look that said he thought he knew everything, which gutted me. “I know, dear. Why don’t you take another bite?”
I filled with all my anger and frustration like a helium balloon—but until I could say the things that’d happened to me out loud, there was nothing to do but pop.
I returned my attention to my dinner and cut into my steak savagely.
After my disappointing dinner with my father, I was excited to get back to my apartment...that he paid for.
I looked around at my walls. I’d lined them with bookshelves and I’d started buying all the books I couldn’t get when I was at boarding school—I never knew how much space I was going to get at a place, so it wasn’t worth it to invest in things—but that whole time I’d read on my phone like a fiend. And now that I could finally buy all the books I wanted, I had.
With his card.
I knew better, I really did.
Money was like a leash in my family—I remember my mother bemoaning the fact that my dad gave her an allowance several times. I could tell even at that young age that she found it humiliating.
I’d been smart enough to buy twice as much furniture as I actually needed to fill my new place—so that I could sell it online for cash to strangers to pay my PI.
But I couldn’t run that scam indefinitely.
There had to be some in-between state where I could make my own way and learn things without everyone in my life being horrible and condescending...I just hadn’t figured out where it was yet.
Luckily, though, I had some friends to console me.
I changed into my pajamas and pulled out One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge, a highlighter, and started to lose myself inside its pages.