My vision fractures, black spots dancing at the edges. He’s lying. He has to be lying. But my mother’s glassy eyes, her whispered apologies every time I went to Florence, slam back into my memory, shoving doubt into my chest like a knife.
John snarls through the blood coating his lips. “I am the Chief of the FBI! You think you can scare me? You’ll pay for this!” He spits onto the floor, his arrogance dripping from every syllable.
Thomas turns to him, furious. “Shut the fuck up, John!”
But I can’t hear them anymore. The room feels like it’s caving in, their voices muffled under the roar of blood in my ears.
“Go on,” I whisper, my tone deadly calm. “Say it again.”
John grins, unhinged. “I fucked your mother. She loved it. She killed your father and begged me to cover it up.”
Impossible. It has to be.
Without thinking, I slam the muzzle of my gun against John’s temple. The steel is cold, unforgiving, pressing into his skin like a promise. My hand doesn’t tremble. My heart, though, hammers against my ribs, each beat like a drum calling me to war.
There are two of them in front of me. One already half-slumped, slipping in and out of consciousness. One still awake, still breathing. I only need one of them to talk.
“Disrespecting my mother? Wrong move.”
I pull the trigger.
The blast tears through the basement, shaking the walls. John’s head snaps back, splitting open in a grotesque spray of blood and bone. His body jerks once, then collapses sideways with the chair, lifeless. The metallic tang of blood fills the air instantly, thick and suffocating.
Thomas stares at the corpse beside him, his mouth slack, eyes wide with naked terror. He’s pale, his chest heaving against the restraints. Andres, behind the glass, stiffens in silence, he hadn’t expected me to end it so fast.Neither had Thomas. But that’s what they never understand about me. I am not predictable. I don’t wait. I don’t bluff.
I crouch down, my boots scraping against the blood-slick concrete. Calmly, almost tenderly, I drag the side of my gun along Thomas’s pristine suit, smearing John’s blood across the expensive fabric. A red signature. A warning.
“Thomas,” I say, my voice low, steady, edged with steel. “As you can see, there isn’t much patience left in me.” My vision darkens at the edges; my pulse roars in my ears like a storm about to break.
I straighten and press the gun hard against his chest, right above his racing heart. “You think I give a fuck who you are? Or about the dead piece of shit leaking onto your shoes?” My lips twist into a cruel smile. “You might think I’d hesitate because you’re Serena’s father. But that’s the exact reason I should put a bullet through your skull. Kill you, and all my problems disappear in one shot.”
His whole body goes rigid. His throat bobs as he swallows, his eyes darting like a cornered animal.
“So fucking talk,” I growl, each word measured, deliberate, heavy with threat.
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off, tapping the gun against his sternum with a slow, taunting rhythm.
“And don’t waste my time with lies. You saw how easily I put him down.” I nod toward John’s crumpled body, blood pooling like spilled wine on the floor. “It’ll be even easier to make you vanish. And when you do, when the earth swallows you whole, I’ll still be here. And I’ll still have her. My girl. Your daughter. And you’ll rot knowing she’s mine.”
Something flickers in his expression then, not just fear, but something darker. Something closer to shame.
He lifts his head, blood dripping from his ruined face, and his voice comes out rough, trembling but forced steady.
“He was right about what he said,” Thomas rasps, his eyes darting between me and John’s lifeless body on the floor. Then he hesitates, as if the words are poison in his throat. “But… not entirely right.”
Every muscle in me coils. My finger curls against the trigger again, hungry for another release. “Keep talking,” I grind out, the words tasting like iron.
Thomas swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, sweat sliding down his temple. “John was with your mother,” he says slowly. “But not how he told you. He wasn’t her lover. He was obsessed. Sick in the head. He forced himself on her. Again and again. He didn’t give her a choice.”
The world narrows. My ears scream with that high-pitched ringing that always comes when rage claws its way up my throat. Raped. He raped her. My mother. The one person I swore to protect, even in memory. If looks could kill, every single person in this room would already be a corpse.
Thomas’s voice cracks as he rushes to explain himself. “Four weeks later, she found out she was pregnant, with his child.”
My lungs seize. My hand tightens on the gun, so hard my knuckles bleach bone-white.
Ian. The bastard’s words echo in my skull, a poison I can’t spit out. No mother’s name on the birth certificate. Just John’s. A hollow laugh dies in my throat. My voice is barely more than a whisper. “Ian… he doesn’t have a mother listed. Are you telling me…?” My chest tightens, nausea rising. “Is he my fucking brother?”
Thomas’s silence is louder than a scream. His eyes drop. That’s all I need.
