Page 1 of Toxic Attraction
Prologue
Valerie
"Please."
My father's voice cracks on that single word, and I freeze in the doorway with my suitcase still in hand.
What I see next makes my insides turn, and bile threatens to rise from my throat.
He's on his knees in our living room, and that's wrong—my father doesn't kneel for anyone. No matter who you are, not even Mom when she caught him cheating.
But he's kneeling now.
The man standing over him is dressed in a suit that likely costs more than a quarter of our house's value, perfectly tailored with no wrinkles. His hair is styled in a casually expensive way that screams wealth, and when he tilts his head slightly to look at me, his eyes are the color of dirty ice.
Empty. Completely empty, it irks me.
"Please, Patrick, I can explain—" My father's hands are clasped together like he's praying, and there's something in his voice I've never heard before. Fear. Raw terror.
What's happening?
My feet still can’t move as I take in my environment.
My mother sits frozen on the couch, her face pale and devoid of color. Ethan sits beside her, seventeen and desperately trying not to cry, but his entire body trembles with fear. His hand grips hers tightly, knuckles turning white.
"Explain what, Viktor?" The man sounds almost bored. "That you fed me false intelligence about Lev Volkov's supply routes? That your incompetence cost me six men and two million in product?"
The words don't make sense. Lev Volkov. Intelligence. Product.
What is Dad involved in?
"Patrick, I didn't know it was wrong, I swear—" My father's voice breaks. "The information came from a reliable source, I thought—"
"You thought." The man, Patrick’s hand moves inside his jacket, and suddenly there's a gun. Black metal, casual in his grip like it belongs there. "You've been feeding me intelligence for three years, Viktor. Three. And tonight, you nearly got me killed."
Three years.
Three years?
My father scrambles backward, hands up, and the sound that comes out of him is barely human. "No—no, please, I have a family, I can fix this—"
"You can't."
The gunshot is so loud it doesn't sound real. Like something broke in the air itself, splitting the world in half, before and after.
My father's head snaps back in a spray of red, and then he's falling, crumpling, and there's so much blood, too much, spreading across the carpet in a pool that grows too fast, and I can't—
No.
No. No no no no no!
"DAD!" The scream tears out of my throat before I can stop it, and I'm moving, dropping my suitcase, lunging forward, but hands grab me from behind—when did anyone get behind me?—and I'm yanked backward so hard my feet leave the ground.
"Let go! Let GO!" I'm thrashing, kicking, trying to break free, but whoever's holding me is too strong, and my father's on the floor with half his head gone and Mom's making this sound, this horrible broken wheezing sound, and Ethan's screaming now too—
"DAD! DADDY, GET UP!"
But he's not getting up.
