Chapter 4

By the time I'd gotten my hand bandaged at the hospital, night had already fallen. I walked to the bridge over the river with no destination in mind, and Faith crossed my mind out of nowhere.

I pulled out my phone and called her, wanting to check on the injury to her face.

"Sorry, the number you have dialed is switched off."

Once. Twice. Three times. No one ever picked up.

A bad feeling crept over me, and I called Cassidy's assistant right away.

"Sir..." The assistant's voice came out hesitant.

"Where's Faith?" I got straight to the point.

"It's... Ms. Solen had people... rough her up this morning. She cut off all of Faith's funding too, and pressured the school into expelling her. I heard... Faith caught a bus back to her hometown this afternoon."

My knuckles went white around the phone.

'Cassidy, you're really something. You were the one who pushed her into my path in the first place, just to catch me in a mistake. Now, just to vent your own spite, you've wrecked a girl's entire future.'

"Send me Faith's home address."

"Sir, that's..."

"Send it to me!"

Three minutes later, the address came through. I called a car that same night. Five hours of bumping down back roads later, I finally reached Faith's village just as the sky was starting to lighten.

Her family's home was more run-down than I could have imagined. Two crumbling mudbrick houses, a yard piled with junk, the air thick with mildew.

I pushed open the gate and found a middle-aged man with a hard, brutal face standing over Faith with a wooden stick, beating her while she knelt on the ground.

"You're a waste of money! What good has all that schooling done, huh? I told you to go work off the debt and you wouldn't listen, and now you've gone and pissed off someone rich!"

Faith knelt in the mud without a sound, her eyes stubborn, biting down on her lip to keep from crying. Her back was covered in welts.

"Stop it!"

I ran forward and put myself between them, shielding her.

Faith looked up, and the moment she saw it was me, her eyes lit with a flash of relief, immediately followed by deep panic.

"Mr. Kempton... why are you here? It's filthy here, you should go..."

She tried to push me away, but the movement pulled at her wounds, and she sucked in a sharp breath of pain.

"Oh, so this is the rich woman's husband?"

Faith's father spat on the ground, his eyes crawling over the designer coat I was wearing.

I took a slow breath and pulled a bank card out of my bag.

"There's ten thousand dollars on this. Take the money. I'm taking Faith with me. From now on, whether she lives or dies is none of your business. If you ever come after her again, I'll have you arrested."

The man's eyes lit up. He snatched the card and cackled.

"Sure, sure, take her, take her! I didn't want that money-losing brat around anyway!"

I turned and helped Faith up. Battered as she was, she still tried to stand up straight, her eyes rimmed red as she looked at me.

"Mr. Kempton... why?"

I wiped the dirt from her face and said quietly, "Cassidy destroyed your future, so I'll give you a new one. Faith, from now on, I'll cover your tuition and your living expenses. All you have to do is study. Leave everything else to me."