Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 191(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
“The fact remains, she is expelled for the remainder of the semester. If it happens again, she will not be welcomed back.”
Anton shrugged. “How about this? Go fuck yourself.”
The principle gaped at Anton’s rebuttal.
He didn’t relent. “She isn’t coming back at all. I can think of a million better ways to spend her tuition money, and it isn’t here.”
“Like how, Mr. Avdonin? Another few pounds of drugs in our streets? Or maybe some guns in our children’s hands?”
Anton smirked. Was that the game she wanted to play? “How’s your son doing, Kiesha? It’s Kirk, huh? Yeah, he was good friends with Demyan when he attended, too. Rehab must have been a bitch for a seventeen-year-old alcoholic and a pill user. But oh, I don’t deal in pills or liquor, right?
“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Anton warned darkly. “And yours is starting to crack. Don’t let the shards cut you when they fall. Have a good fucking day.”
Anton tried to hide his fury when he slid into the driver’s seat of his SUV. Ana stayed quiet in the passenger side, an awful bruise marking up her pretty cheek.
“Tell me, did you win?” Anton asked.
“If winning means two teachers had to pull me off her, then yes, I won.”
Good, Anton thought.
He wouldn’t admit it out loud.
“You know—”
“Hitting is not acceptable,” his seventeen-year-old daughter said, not even giving a bit of attitude with it.
“Then why am I here today, dushka?”
Ana looked away. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. When my daughter starts breaking her knuckles on other girl’s faces, it becomes very important. That’s not you, Ana. You know better—I raised you better.”
“Words didn’t work,” Ana whispered.
Anton’s brow furrowed as he leaned over the steering wheel, bowing his head into his arms. Frustration and exhaustion got the better of him. “Your mother would have handed this much better than me. I had a busy day today. This was the last thing I needed to interrupt it.”
“Sorry to be a burden,” Ana replied, bitterly.
“Hey,” Anton barked, sitting straight again. “I didn’t say that and I don’t want to hear nonsense like that coming out of your mouth. You’re one of the most important things in my life and have been ever since you took your first breath. You could never be a burden to me, Ana. Ever.”
“She was running her mouth about you and Ma,” Ana said, glancing down at her knuckles wrapped in ice.
“What, who?”
“Caitlyn Cresha.”
“Your friend?” Anton was so confused he didn’t know what to do.
“Was,” Ana corrected. “I think that ended when I made her swallow her two front teeth.”
Anton didn’t bother to hide his chuckles. “That’s awful, dushka.”
“She deserved it.”
“Weak people hit.”
“Strong people use words. I know, Daddy.”
“What happened?”
“Jeremy.”
That little bastard. Anton should have suffocated that prick with a pillow the first time Ana started bringing him around the house. He hated that kid. And not just because he was trying to get into his daughter’s pants, either.
There was that issue, though. Anton’s gaze narrowed. Fucking teenage boys. It was like they all suffered from the same defect or disease. It didn’t go away until they were a hell of a lot older, too.
“You need to find someone better than Jeremy,” Anton told his daughter seriously. “He’s useless, Ana.”
“He’s not you is what you mean. And he’s not connected”
“No, I mean he’s fucking useless, dushka. I don’t care if you meet someone connected or not. That’s your business. That boy only thinks with this,” Anton said, pointing down at his groin. “And he isn’t the least bit interested in this,” he added, pointing at Ana’s heart. “You deserve to have a boy want to know what’s going on in here before he ever gets there.”
“I’m not having se—”
“I don’t want to know. Just be safe about it.”
“Well, I’m not.”
Good, Anton’s mind repeated.
Sighing, he glanced out the windshield. “What did your friend say about your mother and me?”
“She only did it to try and catch Jeremy’s attention.”
“Not what I asked, nor do I care about that idiot.”
Ana rolled her eyes. “It was nothing.”
“You’re lying to me. If it was nothing, you wouldn’t need to go to the Emergency right now to get your knuckles fixed.”
“She said you and Ma put girls like me on the streets to work, you know.”
“What?” Anton’s head whipped to the side, nearly giving him whiplash. “She said what?”
“She said it in a less nice way, but yeah, that. And that was the only reason why I drove a car like I do, or get to go to my school. Then she said I was nothing more than a well-dressed whore.”
Anton turned rigid, fury burning bright all over again. “You know none of that is true.”
“I don’t know anything,” Ana mumbled.
“First of all, I am not a good man. I deal in drugs and traffic weapons but I don’t touch humans. Neither do my men if they want to live.”