The Alpha Behind the Mask

2.

I had nowhere left to turn, no more tricks left to try.

Soul-deep panic numbed me and made everything feel eons away as I looked around the office. I had paperwork piled up from years before, and red bills littered my desk. Nausea started a slow roll in my gut.

Powerless. I’d never truly experienced having nothing left before. But this office, The Pour House, was little more than a mirage now. It would be gone soon enough.

And I’d tried so f*****g hard to hang on to all of it.

I’d failed. And that hurt.

I still hadn’t moved when there was a shadow at the doorway and Dad stumbled into view, an oversized shot clutched in one hand. For a moment, I wanted to give in to the old hopefulness I used to have when I saw him—like he might suddenly have realigned his moral compass.

But I knew better than that these days.

“Not content with taking the profits? Drinking them too now?” My voice was hard but without real emotion. There wasn’t a day Dad hadn’t drunk at least part of our profits.

Today was no different simply because he’d stolen the takings, too.

“I had a tip on a Saints game.” His eyes were bleary and unfocused when they met mine, and he slurred his words.

The slurring was bad. He was never a bad tempered drunk. But he was a remorseful one.

And the exaggerated slurring today meant he was particularly remorseful.

I rolled my head toward him, and he watched me warily. Yeah, that was right. He needed to be wary.

“You had a tip?” I kept my voice light as I stood. “Another good tip?”

He shrugged but avoided my gaze. “Turned out not so good.”

“I bet.” I could barely stand to look at him. He wore his weakness like an ID badge these days, and it was a source of my shame that the biggest reason Pierre and Harry spent so much time protecting me was because they knew Dad couldn’t.

They never spoke of it, but we were all aware why they spent so much of their time quietly guarding my business.

“I needed the money. It would have made all of our problems go away.” Dad reached toward me, his eyes pleading for my understanding, but I moved away.

“No, Dad. Just f*****g no.”

His eyes widened.

“What do you think you’ve done to our problems now? How do you think we’ll manage when there’s more alcohol in your piss than there is behind the bar?” I could barely contain my anger behind my clipped words and stiff movements.

Dad slumped into the chair behind my desk and it creaked ominously under the sudden weight. The drawer he pulled open groaned in protest, too.

“What are you doing now?” The last thing I needed was him to start interfering in my paperwork.

“My book of contacts.” He mumbled the words, and the image of his well-thumbed, black leather notepad came to mind.

When I’d been a child and Dad had been full of smiles and reassurances, I’d loved to see that book in his hands because it always heralded the appearance of one fun friend or another. That was when I’d thought Dad ruled the world. Back before Mom died and Dad became something else. Before he became this.

I sighed and shook my head. I never thought about those early childhood days anymore. I could barely remember them and they were as far removed from the present as rainbow unicorns and fairytale castles. I’d taken responsibility for Dad’s descent into ruin for so long that I’d stopped believing my Prince Charming might arrive and rescue me. Or any kind of royalty, come to that. But lower-level noblemen tended to avoid me, too.

Now, though, if I saw even so much as a hint of a crown and a royal monogram, or a knight on any kind of white steed coming, I’d lock the door anyway. I had nothing to offer any man—I hadn’t even finished high school because I’d spent too many days covering for Dad, nursing Dad, being Dad via email to keep the business running.

Plus, I had no experience of any sort to offer any man. Being a twenty-eight-year-old virgin didn’t really bother me. After all, some s**t people just hadn’t time to do yet—and having s*x was vying with cleaning the office for priority on my life’s to-do list. That said, virginity wasn’t exactly a selling point these days. I was practically elderly at this point—and every day that passed made me less confident it was truly a good quality. Society was long past days of purity, after all—experience was definitely where it was at now. At my age, anyway.

Some days—on very rare days, when I had the time to spare—I wished I was like any other woman my age, with the ability to be carefree, maybe even a little sexy. Attractive. Desirable. I hadn’t walked that walk yet, and I missed something I’d never had.

Dad was still fumbling around in the drawer, and I snapped my focus back to him. “Your contacts?” I spat the word. “What the hell good can your bookmaker do for you now? You’ve spent all the money, Dad. What you haven’t gambled, you’ve tipped down your throat. You’re literally pissing it away.”

He flinched but didn’t look at me as he continued to scrabble through the contents of the drawer. I shrugged as I watched him. What the hell did it matter if he ruined my filing system? We were ruined anyway.

He’d already made sure of that.

“I can’t be here with you right now.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and inhaled a shaky breath, trying to contain the tears that suddenly prickled behind my eyelids. Frustration rose through me but I expelled it as despair. “Look what you’ve done to us, Dad! We’ve got nothing left. You’ve taken it all, and I… I can’t fix this.”

The words left me empty, and I dug around in my pocket for my last few dollars and some change. Eight dollars and sixty-three cents. And it was all I had left in the world. I peeled the five-dollar bill off the top and left it on the corner of the desk. Dad looked up from where he was flipping through the pages of the notebook he’d found. He’d been lingering on each page like he needed to wait for his eyes to focus before he read the words.

He met my gaze briefly. “What’s that for?”

“Your ride home, Dad. I can’t do this with you tonight. I have nothing else in me. I can’t take care of anything anymore.” Exhaustion rang in my tone. I was bone tired and so weary.

Dad returned his attention to the finely lined pages. “I’ll take care of it,” he murmured.

I drove home almost in a daze. On autopilot. Not even enjoying the view of the Spanish moss draped over the live oak trees as I neared our home. Instead, tonight, even through the darkness, every flaw and crack in the paintwork of our house screamed out loud and proud. I knew exactly which rotten boards to avoid on the old front porch, and the way the water pipes clanked and rattled as I filled my bath was familiar even as it scraped over each of my nerves.

Dilapidation. Disrepair.

Bordering on f*****g ruin.

“Oh, Mom.” The sigh of regret slipped from my lips as I slid into a bath that was barely warm.

Once we’d had a house full of staff and lush gardens that spread out to the edges of a bayou. The crepe myrtles had been magnificent then, rather than twisted and overgrown as they were now. Try as I might, some of the maintenance work always slipped to the bottom of my list. Yard work was usually at the bottom.

Top of my to-do checklist was always Dad. Keeping him barely functioning was second nature. Then I had to keep The Pour House running to ensure we had a little money coming in as well as upholding Mom’s legacy. Lastly, I cooked and did laundry, and that was pretty much it. Housework, yardwork, repairs. They just didn’t happen. Either the issues resolved themselves or I learned to ignore them.