Cruel Beginnings: A Blackmore University Prequel by Cora Kent

Author:Cora Kent [Kent, Cora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Kaye

I hear someone pounding on the front door and jump off the bed. The knocking is quickly followed by the sound of yelling. For a fleeting second, I think that Owen is back. He has returned to beat up my mom for bothering to move on. He’s going to kill her this time. Then he’ll turn his rage on me.

Except that thought disappears when a foreign voice enters my house instead. I hear Malcolm arguing with a younger man, and I peer down the stairs just in time to see a punch thrown. It’s his son; it has to be. Malcolm just said he’d invited his son to move in with us. I didn’t know our new living arrangements would start off with a fist fight.

With a hand clamped over my mouth, I back out of the line of sight. I think the boy saw me. I don’t know why I call him a boy; he looks like a man. Tall and broad-shouldered like his father, with tattoos curling around his wrist. He frightens me, as did the flash of his blue eyes when they met mine.

It only takes a few more seconds for me to piece together that the man that just got punched in the face was disrespecting my mother. And the man doing the punching is about to be my new stepfather.

Fear ripples through every inch of my body as I wonder if he’ll be anything like Owen. Malcolm was nice at first, certainly, and he’s going to marry my mom, just like Owen. Will he put her punch her next? Will I wind up with another broken arm? Or worse?

My fear is eclipsed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The linebacker heads my way, and I’m glued to the spot. The little voice in my head is screaming at me to disappear into my bedroom. Shut the door. Lock it. Put the dresser in front of it. Anything to keep this monster of a man away from me. But my fear response is neither fight nor flight; it is to freeze and wait for the fear to find me.

“What the fuck,” the man says when he reaches the top of the stairs. Xavier’s form takes up the entire hallway, blocking the view of my mother downstairs. “I thought I saw some little bitch staring down at me. You’re Carrie’s kid, huh.”

It isn’t a question. “Y-yes. I’m K-Kaye.”

Xavier snorts. The blood spilling down the front of his face is starting to dry up. “K-k-k-k-kaye,” he mocks. “Where’s the bathroom?”

I point toward the door across the hallway from my bedroom. “There’s some towels under the sink if you need them.”

He approaches me quickly, catching me off guard. My back is already against the wall, and my palms are sweating. But he pins me to the drywall with his hips. He smells like leather and trees, a delicious scent that clings to me as we embrace. “How old are you, princess?”

My breath catches in my throat; I can’t gasp for air, answer his question, or even scream.

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