6. Gerald Carlisle

Layla was fuming when Jax led her through the doors to the hotel's security centre. 

Gerald Carlisle said and did many things that would forever be engraved in her heart and mind, but their last argument kept ringing through her head. It was funny. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her father since the night Costas took them, but she remembered it like it was yesterday. 

‘You’re going to have to think of your sister. I’m going to give him what he wants.’

‘I’m going to give him you.’

‘You’re a high school dropout. Scrubbing rich people’s toilets is all you’ll ever do.’

‘You look just like your mother; I’m sure you’ll make more money on your back.’

He’d cut her up with his words. How could a father ever think that about his child? How could he think that was in any way okay?

She clenched and unclenched her fists to control her anger as a man met them at the door and bowed his head in greeting. She’d forgotten about the hotel rules. When she’d worked there, she thought her employer thought himself superior to his employees, but now she knew it was just to avoid confrontation with werewolf guests. Sometimes a wolf could take certain looks as a challenge. 

Mr Ambrose led them to another set of doors to a room with four doors, two on each side. She never had the clearance to enter any security rooms, so she was surprised to see a room set up like a jail. He unlocked one of the rooms and opened it before standing aside. Immediately, the stench of alcohol and filth filled her nose.

Jax stood aside, too, and what she saw made her angrier. 

Gerald was curled up on the floor, lying in his vomit and other bodily fluids. He was covered in dirt and grime as if he was homeless, and his brunette hair was longer, more tangled and matted than she remembered. His t-shirt was torn, and his sweatpants lowered so she could see part of his ass. Real classy.

“He’s taken my girl... Bring her back to me,” Gerald mumbled.

This was where she had come from. She was the fruit of this man’s loin. Shame filled her as she looked back at her mate. What would he think of her? First, she’d introduced a mother who’d abandoned her and now a father covered in piss. 

“Where’s Britney,” Gerald mumbled again.

Not ‘Where’s Layla?’. She had never been important to Gerald despite being the one who’d taken care of him. 

Gerald rolled to face the door, and his eyes widened when he saw her standing there. Her father gasped and sat up.

“Rebecca?” he whispered.

Right. That was the other reason Gerald stopped caring about her. She looked just like the woman who walked out on them, more so now that she'd visibly changed because of her wolf.

“Becca, is that you? Have you come back to me?”

“It’s Layla. I doubt Rebecca would come anywhere near you right now.”

Her father’s disappointment was crushing, but the man stood and quickly came forward. She stepped back before he could touch her, and Jackson moved quickly to block him. Gerald stopped, and his hazel eyes narrowed on Jackson.

“Where’s Britney? Where’s my little girl?”

She took a deep breath to calm the anger that threatened to spill over before she stepped around Jackson.

“She stopped being your little girl when you stopped taking care of her,” she growled. “Britney doesn’t need you.”

“And is that what she told you?” Gerald snarled. “Or are you once again making decisions for her like she’s still a little girl?”

Did he resent her for that? She couldn’t believe what Gerald implied, even though Brit accused her of the same thing when she tried to stop Rebecca from seeing her. 

“I had to step up and be the responsible one,” she hissed, stepping forward so she was right in front of Gerald. “I made decisions that I would have never made if you had been the parent you were supposed to be. Go back from whatever hole you crawled out from and leave Britney alone.”

“I haven’t seen her in over a year!” Gerald shouted. “That man and his half-brained bodyguards kept me away; you had no right to do that.”

“As opposed to selling her to a mobster?” she asked.

Gerald had the grace to look remorseful, but she’d always known that he only planned for Costas to take one of his girls. 

“Bring her to me; she can tell me herself if she doesn’t want to see me.”

“This is the last time you’ll see me, Gerald. And you will never see Brit again. Consider us dead. I will leave very strict instructions with the security about what they should do to you if you ever step foot in this hotel again.”

She turned to walk away from him, hopefully for the last time in her life, but Gerald grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“You can’t do that to me! I’m her father—”

His shouting was cut off when Jackson grabbed his arm and twisted it behind him. Gerald yelped in pain and immediately shut up when he realised who had him. 

“You said I could see her in a year,” Gerald whispered. 

She could see the tears forming in her father’s eyes and felt the wave of pain that came with them.

“You said she would come back to me. But she just disappeared. I’ve been looking for her everywhere,” Gerald continued. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have taken your money.”

Her eyes snapped up to meet her mate’s gaze.

Her father’s words whirled around in her head as she sensed Jackson’s guilt. How could he have offered that when he knew what this man did? When he was the one to rescue them in the first place?

After the deal, she was supposed to have taken Brit away to start afresh somewhere else. Why the hell would he have made any such deal with Gerald? And why give him any money at all?

“Layla... Your eyes...” Gerald whispered. 

She lowered her gaze and turned to walk out of the room. The Head of Security was still outside; he opened the main doors for her when she approached him. 

“Layla, wait.”

She couldn’t even look at him, much less stop to have a conversation. It had been almost two years since Jackson took her to his home. In all that time, he hadn’t found a moment to tell her what happened?

‘Sorry, Layla. I gave your useless addict father some money to get him off my back until I could give Britney back to him.’ Or ‘Sorry, Layla, I bought you from your father.’

Something. Anything so she wouldn’t find out like this. Jax did many other horrendous things to her before he marked her, so why had he kept that a secret?

“Layla.”

Did he even know what her father would have done with that money? He wouldn’t have paid his debts or his bills. He would have hit up the first bar he saw and found a dealer. Gerald and money didn’t mix well, not since Rebecca left him. He could have ended up dead in a ditch somewhere.

And that was probably the root of her ridiculous anger and contradictory emotions. Her feelings for her parents were always volatile, but she had still been there for Gerald. She’d fed and clothed him, cleaned up his vomit, or dressed his wounds when he’d been in a fight. Despite knowing he didn't like looking at her, she cared for him as if she were the parent. 

With a large amount of money, Gerald could have died, and she would never have known.

She weaved through a group of security personnel and continued walking to the main doors with her head down. Jax’s betrayal felt like a claw dug deep into her heart, twisting and squeezing until it was ready to explode. 

If he had just told her, then she would have...

What would she have done? Asked him to check on the man who’d sold her? The man she washed her hands of?

She walked out of the security rooms to the staff hallway and turned towards the lobby. A couple of cleaners pushed their carts toward the service elevators, but she didn’t lift her head to check if she knew them. She wasn’t in control of herself yet.

“Layla, can we talk about this?”

She pushed open the door into the hotel lobby and only took a few steps forward before she froze. 

There was something in the air that didn’t feel right.

Something dark and twisted. 

Something she hadn’t felt since she came face to face with the Hunters. 

Jackson’s large hand slipped into hers, and he gently pulled her towards the elevator. 

She could hear the way his heart started to pound in his chest. The same way her heart pounded. He didn’t let go of her hand until the elevator opened in the basement, and he led her to their car.

How did he drive away so calmly? How could he resist the urge to speed out of the parking lot and through every red traffic light? 

The day she had been afraid of was here. The Hunters were back.