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“You know exactly what he did. You’ve suspected me of it for years.”
“He killed her?” My voice cracked on the last word.
“He hated you so much. He always feared you’d take his place. He thought killing her would mean I’d never have another child.”
I swallowed down bile. I had to hold it together until I was done here. I could fall apart later when it was just Matteo and me. “You knew how he felt, and you did nothing to stop him.”
“I knew he resented you both, but I didn’t think he’d go that far. I told him he was my heir and always would be.”
“You knew he’d done it. You knew it wasn’t an accident, but you said it was an accident.”
“I wasn’t going to lose the only child I could claim as my own.”
“You know I’ll kill him for that.”
“No. I’m going to deal with you and your stupid friends, then carry on as if you never existed.”
“You’re in no position to do that. I know far too much, so do my friends, and so does X.”
“What?” My father actually looked unnerved. My gamble had paid off. He obviously did know of X’s reputation for eliminating disgusting men like him. As I’d guessed, even my father doubted he had the power to fight X, whose money and resources made him look almost poor in comparison.
Matteo raised his brows and tilted his head toward my father. “Would you like me to finish him off?”
My father held up his hands, and Matteo leveled the gun at his head. All I had to do was say the word and he’d put a bullet in my father’s brain.
I wanted to end things now, but X had been right. I needed to do this rationally, and now wasn’t the time. “Not now. We’ll give him a chance to be of use to us. We’ve got all the evidence we need to bring him down. Even if he doesn’t realize it yet, we’ve already won. I’d rather let him live knowing he’s nothing.”
The fact that my father didn’t argue let me know he was aware of his position. He was going to try to salvage things, but he was going to fail. Why hadn’t I gotten help to take care of him earlier? I could have ended his reign well before now. I couldn’t have saved my mother, I’d been too young for that, but I could have gotten help from my friends and made my father and brother pay before now.
Could you though? They were young, and there was no guarantee their families would have listened. You didn’t know X until you were deep into this shit.
Matteo raised the angle of the gun slightly and put a bullet into the wall just over my father’s head, making him jump.
I loved seeing him sweat. His fear fed me, the way mine had fed him for so many years. “There’s no way you win in this scenario. You can help us find Landon, or we can torture the information out of you.”
Matteo grinned. “I know of so many things I’d enjoy doing to you.”
“I don’t know where he is,” my father yelled.
“Then you damn well better figure it out.”
“He’s my son. I’m not turning him over to you.”
“No, he’s not. He’s the person you tried to turn into your clone, but it never really worked, did it? Landon is weak, and he’s never been mentally stable. He pushed his own mother down the stairs when he was only ten. That was the child you wanted to form in your image. And as he got older, he chose to get other people to do his dirty work.”
“I’m not just going to roll over for you.”
Now that Matteo’s gun wasn’t pointed at him, my father returned to his normal arrogance. That wouldn’t last long. “No, you’re not. You have twenty-four hours to turn all your business assets over to me. I don’t care about your personal money; keep it, I have enough of my own.”
“And if I don’t?”
I looked at Matteo and smiled. “Then I’ll let my boyfriend do whatever he wants with you.”
His brows went up. “Your boyfriend?”
“How many times have I told you I’m gay, Father?”
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s bad enough, but this….” He waved his hand at Matteo who aimed his gun again.
