“I know,” he mouths while taking in the redness on my face from holding in my screams. The pain is excruciating, but I’ll never let him know that. “That’s why I had plans in place to fix that.” When his finger reaches the top of my spine, he adds another three fingers into the mix before dragging his hand back down to my tail bone. “But you took care of matters for me.”
I’m lost as to what he means until I see the smugness in his eyes. “I-I wasn’t driving. The a-accident wasn’t my fault.”
“I know,” he repeats again, still smirking. “But with the rag used to light the wreck covered with your DNA from the fight and the gasoline tin having your prints on it, as far as everyone around here is concerned, you killed your sister. Yourbabysister.”
“W-why would anyone believe that? I had n-no reason to kill her.”
My last word comes out in a roar from him ripping my ear out from beneath the bandage curled around my head. Although the words he growls into my ear have me grateful I’m not fully deaf, they’re devastating enough for me to wish I were. “Isaac was meant to kill you, then during a heated argument with the sister of the man he murdered, he’d lash out violently, resulting in the death of two of my beloved children in the one night.” He inches back, his facial expression less than impressed. “Instead, he left you to live the life of a coward. One that saw your only sister so frantic to save you, she was murdered in the process.”
“I-It was a traffic accident. An a-accident isn’t murder.”
“Some jurors may believe that.” He exhales sharply. “But a handful will clutch onto the DA’s belief that you instigated the accident after finding out she’d siphoned your bank account of millions of dollars. Their wish to watch you fry will soon convince the masses.”
“You’re insane! Ophelia couldn’t h-have taken my money. I don’t even have a-access to the funds yet.”
Your life expectancy in this industry is already low, but mine lowers even more when my father thrusts a sheet of paper my way. It shows multiple transactions under ten thousand dollars being wired from the account the Feds set up on my behalf to Ophelia’s personal bank account.
Every penny is obliterated, leaving me broke.
The document looks so authentic, for half a nanosecond, I remember how badly Ophelia wanted out of our family.
Mercifully, just as fast, I remember she’s more like me than Roberto and Dimitri.
“She w-wouldn’t have done that. S-She wanted out, but she wouldn’t have h-hurt me like this.”
“She did hurt you,” my father disagrees. “And it created the perfect motive for you to kill her.” His snicker belongs to an evil, vile man. “If you hadn’t been so greedy, this all could have been avoided. All you had to do was share your wealth, then your sister wouldn’t have stolen from you, and you wouldn’t have killed her in retaliation—”
“I didn’t kill her! You…”
Before all my confession leaves my mouth, he silences me like he did when I was a child. He rams the barrel of his gun into my good ear before snarling that he won’t miss this time around.
“You’re alive because of me,” he mouths while glaring at me as if I’m his lowest-ranked foot soldier instead of his son. “Remember that when you’re defending the Petretti name in a maximum-security prison.” Droplets of blood pool into my ear when he digs his gun in even deeper before muttering, “You’re not supposed to enjoy being railed by a lifer, but knowing you, you probably will.”
Once he’s confident he has me as angry as I am scared, he returns his gun to the holster around his waist, ruffles my hair like you’d expect a father to do when they see their child after months of no contact, then he joins two police officers in the corridor.
The instant he hands them a fat-waded envelope, I know my choices are limited. I either stay and get locked away for Ophelia’s ‘murder’ or run.
When my hand finally slips free out of the cuff compliments to the excessive amount of gel on my back, you can guess which direction I take.
I bolt, my flee only ending when I realize the devil isn’t the only one venturing into uncharted waters tonight. An angel is also tiptoeing over the fine line.
ChapterTwenty-Two
JR
It takes me blinking several times in a row to clear the heart-clogging vision in front of me. My head is so woozy, even with my ears not being able to hear a single fucking thing, I can imagine every word ripping from Jae’s mouth as she tussles with a blond man outside the window of the holding cell I’m detained inside.
She’s warning him in no uncertain terms that if I am to die in custody, she will have every single member of his crew permanently ostracized from their positions.
“And don’t think I’m joking, Alex. Regan is on her way here, and if I can’t make you see sense through the madness, I’m sure there’s a way I can convince her to twist your arm for me.” Alex shits bricks when she gets up close to him to keep their conversation between them and other lip-reading individuals. “Especially if I tell her about those vitamins you asked about last year to make sure your swimmers are extra strong to improve your chances of a mini Alex running around within the next year.”
Alex scrubs a hand across his scruffy beard. “You can’t tell her that. That’s doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Jae folds her arms under her chest before arching a brow. It was that spitfire stubbornness that kept her alive the three days following her accident. Even while unconscious, she fought with everything she had. It made my obsession with her even greater.
“That privilege is only when the patientpaysfor the consultation. You’re too cheap for that.”
Her take-no-shit attitude exposes why it was stupid of me to ever believe she was taken out by one of my father’s goons…
