Semua Bab Stranded: My Step Uncle’s Secret Obsession: Bab 1 - Bab 4

"What the hell were you thinking, Ivy? Why did I just get a call at six o'clock this morning telling me that my daughter has been expelled from a university again?"My father's voice hit me before I had even fully stepped through the door of his office. I shut it behind me, set my bag down, and looked at him—already on his feet, already past the point where reason was going to be his first language, his face carrying the particular shade of red that meant he had been holding this in since the phone call and was done holding it.I lifted my chin. "Hello to you too, Dad.""Don't." He pointed at me across the desk, sharp and certain. "Don't stand there with that face like I am the problem here. Do you have any idea what this morning has been? In the last two years alone, Ivy, you have cost this family over a hundred thousand dollars cleaning up after you—the arrest in Monaco, the incident with the professor's property at your second school, and now this rave that trashed an entire venue

Nobody had warned me about the silence.I pressed my face closer to the car window as the vehicle wound deeper into the island's interior, watching the landscape roll past in shades of green so vivid they looked almost artificial—dense jungle pressing against both sides of the narrow road, interrupted occasionally by flashes of blue ocean between the trees. It was beautiful in the way that places completely indifferent to human presence tend to be beautiful. Untouched. Unbothered. Utterly, oppressively quiet.I had expected remote. I had not expected this specific brand of stillness that made the inside of my own head feel loud.I leaned back against the seat and crossed my arms. This was fine. Six months in paradise with the man I intended to completely dismantle. There were worse assignments.The car pulled up in front of a structure that was less what I'd imagined as a research facility and more a sprawling, low-built complex of connected buildings that managed to look both functio