My estranged, ex-con father died and left me exactly one thing in his will: a massive, severely scarred rescue dog scheduled to be euthanized in forty-eight hours.
“Just leave the beast there to die, Sarah,” my fiancé scoffed, adjusting his expensive silk tie. “It’s exactly the kind of violent trash a criminal would leave behind.”
I stared at the legal notice on my pristine glass desk. For eighteen years, I had hidden my father’s existence from my wealthy friends and my high-society fiancé.
I told everyone he died when I was little, rather than admit he went to prison for aggravated assault. But a heavy knot formed in my stomach. I couldn’t just let an animal die.
I grabbed my keys, ignoring my fiancé’s shouting, and drove three hours to the rural county shelter. The noise inside the concrete building was deafening.
The warden led me to the very last cage and handed me a heavy, studded leather collar. The dog inside was massive. His dull gray coat was covered in jagged pink scars, and half his left ear was missing.
He looked like an absolute nightmare. In my mind, he looked exactly like the life I had run away from.
“Your dad called him Tank,” the warden grunted. I signed the release papers with shaking hands, secretly planning to drop Tank off at a no-kill rescue on my way back to the city.
