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The one I knew my father had been stealing from.
He said nothing to me, merely barking orders at his men to keep an eye on me.
He didn’t come back for what felt like hours, striding in, glancing at me curled into myself on the floor between the two men.
“It’s about to get fun,” the man declared just moments before my father burst into the building.
“Where is she?” he’d yelled, charging at the man who clearly had all the power in that particular situation. “Where—“
“Dad,” I’d called out, not wanting him to get hurt.
His head had whipped over, a mix of relief at seeing me unharmed, then tension at the fact that I was there, at these men’s mercy.
“Millie.”
“I figured this might get your attention,” the man said.
“Neeley, you don’t need to do this,” my father had insisted.
“No, you’re right,” Neeley had agreed. “I wouldn’t have to do this if you haven’t been stealing from me,” he’d said, voice getting more and more lethal as he kept talking, his words dripping with venom. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out, you fucking idiot?” he’d raged. “Where is it?”
“Let my daughter go,” my father had demanded, voice surprisingly firm. “We can talk then.”
“She’s here to motivate you to make the right decision,” Neeley had told him, then turned to nod at the man at my side, who’d reached down, grabbing a handful of my hair, and then dragged me to my feet by it, the pain screaming across my scalp.
“Leave her alone,” my father had demanded, voice getting more desperate. “Deal with me.”
“I can’t trust you enough to deal with you,” Neeley said. “But if you tell me where the money is, you won’t have to worry about your daughter anymore.”
At the time, I hadn’t noticed just how careful Neeley was speaking. The things he wasn’t saying.
“Just tell him,” I’d pleaded with my father.
“You heard your daughter,” Neeley said, jerking his chin toward the men who walked in behind my father, grabbing my father by each arm, and dragging him deeper into the space, right in front of Neeley.
I’d watched as they’d forced my father onto his knees.
Then, in horror, as Neeley started to try to beat the information out of my father.
“Stop!” I’d screamed, tears flooding my eyes as my father’s body flew backward, then as he rolled up onto his hands and knees, and spat out a tooth, the blood streaming down his face.
“He knows how he can stop this,” Neeley had said as he heartlessly wiped my father’s blood onto a white handkerchief.
“Just tell him!” I’d pleaded with my father.
My father simply shook his head at me.
“I didn’t understand at the time,” I told Silvano. God, I wished I’d been less emotional, more rational, that I would have been quick enough to read between the lines.
But I hadn’t.
And that mistake would haunt me forever.
Seeming to know where the story was going now that we were near the conclusion, Silvano’s arm went around me, pulling me close to his side.
I couldn’t even savor that feeling, not with the next part of the story right there at the edge of my mind.
“No one could expect you to understand all those dynamics, Mills,” Silvano assured me. “That wasn’t your world.”
