The Protector (Game of Chance, #1)(95)

June snorted out loud. Stalker. Yeah, right. No one was stalking her stepsister—it was just another made-up story so she could get attention. June had never met a meaner, colder, more self-centered woman in her entire life. All Carla Green was interested in was being famous, like the Kardashians. Everything she did was toward that goal. She wanted to be rich, famous, and adored.

The problem was, Carla was truly awful. She actually enjoyed making people cry. To that end, she certainly did everything she could to make June miserable. She was eight years younger than June and acted more like fifteen than her actual twenty-four.

But Carla was also gorgeous. She was six feet tall and slender, had long blonde hair and big blue eyes, and when she wanted to, could be extremely charming. June assumed that was how and why she was able to sweet-talk the man she’d met online who knew Prince Redmon.

June had accidentally interrupted her stepsister one night when she was FaceTiming with the man, Karl—and had been appalled to find Carla naked from the waist up, holding her DDD boobs aloft for the camera.

Of course, Carla had gone to her mom and accused June of spying on her, and June had to endure an hour of being yelled at and called “ungrateful” and “jealous.” Which was ridiculous, but of course, Elaine didn’t give June a chance to tell her what really happened.

June had thought about leaving more times than she could count. She was thirty-two. She wasn’t chained to the house. She could walk away at any time.

But in years past, every single time she worked up the nerve to leave, she’d look around and see the chair where her dad used to hold her in his lap and read to her. Or see the marks on the wall of her height throughout her childhood. He always made a huge deal when she grew a fraction of an inch, though at five-three, she’d always been the shortest kid in her class.

She’d remember her dad kneeling with her in the garden out back as they pulled weeds and laughed about something or other.

Her dad had adored this house. He’d scrimped and saved in order to be able to buy it, to give his daughter a better life, not the cramped apartment he’d lived in during his youth. Things had been tough, but he’d always managed to pay the mortgage, even if they had to eat hot dogs and ramen noodles for weeks on end.

And throughout all their struggles, they’d had each other. They’d played on the five acres around the house and laughed together, and he’d taught her how to cook. Cleaning never seemed like a chore when he was doing it with her.

Everywhere she looked in the house, she saw her dad. It was all she had left of him.

It was hard to believe he’d died so long ago. Throughout the years, her stepmom had slowly but surely moved the things her dad had loved so much to the basement or the attic. The rooms looked nothing like they had when it had been just June and Dad.

When he’d lain in the hospital dying, he’d told June that he’d left the house to her. That he knew she’d love it and care for it as much as he did. And she’d promised to do just that. To preserve their happy memories.

When he’d died, she’d been devastated. Hadn’t been able to think straight. At first her stepmom had been her rock, had kept June from falling apart. But looking back, June now knew the woman had been grooming her. Building her up, only to tear her down. Somehow, she’d even convinced June that college would be a waste of time and money, because she’d never been academically inclined and her dad would want her here, taking care of the house.

She’d had a moment of clarity when she’d been in her early twenties and started looking into ways to kick Elaine and Carla out of the house as they removed every vestige of her father . . . only to find out that she’d inadvertently signed away her rights to the home her dad had loved and cherished.

One day, right after she’d turned eighteen, Elaine had brought a bunch of papers home and explained they were legal documents June needed to sign for her inheritance, now that she was of age.

She’d stupidly trusted Elaine, had signed page after page without reading . . . and had ended up giving ownership of her beloved house to her stepmom without knowing what she was doing.

Without any options, June had stayed. Partly because she had nowhere to go, had no money to rent her own place, and didn’t have any marketable skills to get a well-paying job. But mostly she stayed because this was where she and her dad had been happy.

He’d met Elaine when June was fourteen and Carla was six, and within a year, he was dead. It wasn’t fair, and every day, June missed her dad terribly.

But now, with each year that passed, June’s stubbornness to stay the course, to not leave the house where she’d lived with her dad, was waning. Carla was a bitch, her two corgis were horrible and just as nasty as their owner, and Elaine had a calculating look in her eye that June didn’t trust.

She’d been squirreling money away, bills she found around the house, change in the washer that Elaine and Carla had left in their pockets, and leftover cash from running errands.

It wasn’t enough, not really, but June had finally reached the point where she knew she had to leave. She didn’t have any friends to help her, because Elaine had skillfully isolated her long ago from the kids she went to middle and high school with. And for years she’d been kept busy working, doing all the cleaning, shopping, cooking, and other errands.

When she was just out of high school and still deeply grieving the loss of her father, and when she still thought Elaine had her best interests at heart, June had been glad to help out. To do her part to help raise Carla and keep the house running as smoothly as possible.