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“Whiskey could be kept in a cellar too,” Matish practically whispered.
I snorted at the panic creeping into his expression. “Could be, but my father was really more into keeping his prisoners in the dark. The alcohol is all upstairs on display. He always did have more respect for those bottles than he did for human life. But you knew that, right, Matish? You knew that when you sold him your daughter?”
Matish shook his head, but we both knew he was lying.
He doubled down on it anyway. “No. I didn’t know.”
I raised an eyebrow and my voice at the same time. “You hear that, Nyah? He says he didn’t know he was selling you to a man who liked to keep women in cages.”
Nyah emerged from the shadows at the back of the room, so stunningly beautiful dressed in all black that hugged the new curves she’d gotten from pregnancy. Her tits were full, her hips rounded with some extra padding she hadn’t had when I first met her.
She looked Catwoman-esque, in leggings and a tight long-sleeved top, but it was the expression on her pretty face that really gave me a hard-on.
The pure venom and fire and determination in her eyes when she stared at her father, the man who’d started all of this.
Behind her, Lynx and Dax stepped forward, the three of us forming a wall of protection around Nyah, all four of us facing off against the man who’d given her life.
Jeremiah backed up a step as we advanced, and then another. “Nyah? What is this? What’s going on?”
We pressed forward, herding him like the dumb animal he was.
His foot crossed the line of the cage, the one Nyah had been held in, the one that still bore the traces of her blood from when she’d birthed her baby down here.
She made a show of kicking the cage door shut.
It clanged so loudly the sound echoed off the walls.
Matish cringed at the noise but made no move to try to escape.
Smart man. He knew we had him surrounded.
“Nyah,” he said softly, but in the same tone he always used with her that he never used with me. The tone that told her he was better than her, stronger, and in control. “What is this?”
Nyah was having none of it today. She glared at him and pulled a gun from the waistband of her pants, casually trailing it over the metal bars of the cage she’d locked her father in. “The guys and I thought it was about time you and I had a chat.”
Her father narrowed his eyes at her, his temper seeping through the cool, calm, Mafia don exterior he laid on thick with everyone else. “We could have done that in the civilization of the living room.”
She shrugged. “Could have. But I thought you might like to see what it felt like to be locked up and held against your will.”
“Why would I want to know that?”
She stopped her pacing and stared at him. “You know he locked me in here, right? Carlos, I mean. The man you thought was such a good match for me.”
Matish folded his arms across his chest and repeated his earlier mantra. “I didn’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Nyah spat back, tongue quick as a serpent. “You knew, and you didn’t care, so long as it got you in with the almighty Guerra family. You sold me off like I was property.” She shrugged. “But I’m stronger than that. Question is, are you? It’s your turn now to be alone and scared, held down here by someone with more power than you.”
Matish turned to me.
Stupid, stupid man.
Nyah smacked her gun on the metal bar, just an inch from her father’s face. “That’s me, Dad! Not him. He knows it, why don’t you?” She shook her head in disgust at him. “Hell, maybe I should thank you. For tearing me away from Dax. For taking him. For faking Luca’s death, and getting Lynx arrested. You left me all alone in the hopes I’d break and go running back to Carlos. And boy, I got so close, didn’t I? Maybe I should thank Enzo too, for saving me from that fate. But I’m still here, and now I’m the one holding the gun.” She laughed bitterly. “I could almost forgive you for all of it. I could forgive you for hurting me.” Her eyes were so sharp they were like spears. “But you took my son, and you killed his grandmother. And for that, I’ll never ever forgive you.”
Jeremiah did a double take. “What? I didn’t have anything to do with the baby or Virginia—”
“Stop fucking lying! I don’t believe for a second you and Enzo aren’t in bed together.”
He shook his head. “Nyah, we aren’t. I was just as surprised as you were by everything that happened at that wedding.”