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“Wake up, Lucas. Wake up,” I say. Of course, he doesn’t because my life isn’t that easy or lucky.
A shuffling sound behind me makes me freeze. Slowly, I turn my head to glance at what’s behind me. My gaze falls onto my father standing there watching us. When he realizes it’s me, his face turns glacial. The same look he gave me the night he told me my sister was dead.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands, stalking forward to snatch me up by the arm.
I jerk away but don’t get far before he drags me back into his tight, painful grip. “Answer me, girl. What are you doing here talking to this bastard?”
“What do you think I’m trying to do, Daddy? I’m trying to save him. He might be dying. Did you do this to him?”
My father narrows his eyes. “You’re with them. You’re with—”
Realization dawns, and I know my life is about to get a lot worse for the immediate future. “Are you fucking both of them? Because you should know, one of them is your brother.”
I rear back, again trying to get free, but he just drags me to a chair and tosses me at it. It occurs to me I should be afraid. For my life, and for Lucas’s, and yet, I can’t summon it, not with my cowardly father standing in front of me.
“You knew,” I accuse. “You know Lucas is your son, and still you did this to him?”
“He isn’t my son. He is a mistake. Something that should have never happened. Did you bring the other Diavolo with you?” he asks, spreading the curtains to peer out into the gathering darkness.
When I don’t answer him, he marches back across the room and strikes me hard in the face. I glare up at him. “No, it’s just me. I came alone.”
“Stupid girl. You’re dumber than I thought you were if you’d come in here like this.” He shakes his head in disgust and swings around to kick Lucas in the belly.
I jolt upright and rush over, but he only grabs my neck hard in his hand and drags me back to the chair. “Move again, and I’ll shoot you so you can’t.”
“Then stop hurting him. He doesn’t deserve that.”
“You don’t have any idea what he deserves. You’re just the same as his mother. A little whore who fucks anything with a cock. At least his mother had the smarts to stay away from me after she got pregnant.”
I narrow my eyes. “The way I heard it, you raped her.”
He moves fast despite his age. One minute I’m sitting on the chair, and the next, I’m flat on the floor with my cheek split open.
I roll over to lever myself up, but I can’t see out of my right eye, and my head is spinning. Somehow, I hit it on the hardwood and didn’t realize.
My father stands over me, staring down into my blood-streaked face. “You’re just like all the rest. I had high hopes for you when you were going to marry that Gardello boy, finally worth the money spent keeping you alive all these years. But no, you had to go and blow it, and Diavolo too, I imagine.”
Rage and anger have my adrenaline spiking, and my foot moves without thought. I kick out at his legs, but he neatly dodges them and returns one to my ribcage.
Pain shoots up my side, and I roll over, trying to protect my new wound.
He crouches down beside me and presses the muzzle of the gun to my forehead. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right now and save myself some time when the other Diavolo finally arrives to save his brother?”
I won’t justify my life to him for another second, so I keep my mouth shut and just glare my hatred toward him. How could this man have given me life?
He stares into my eyes, and I can see how lifeless and soulless his are, and I feel pity. But nothing else. He might have been my father when I was a young child, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything beyond duty toward him.
“If you need to kill me to feel like a man, then do it,” I say. “But it won’t change things. Nic is still going to kill you, eventually.”
He curls his lip. “Nic, is it? So, you are fucking him.”
A man in a black suit comes out of nowhere and ties my hands behind my back while my father continues to hold the gun to my head.
“Any last words,” he says, stepping back to get a better angle, I assume.
I suck in a breath and brace myself for the shot.
25
Nic
I’m cursing Lucas all the way back to the house. Soo sits in the driver’s seat, listening to me rant about my idiot brother the entire trip. We spent most of the afternoon looking for him once I got word he’d been taken. The spies Soo had on him spotted him rolling out this morning, and by the afternoon, Lucas had made a move and gotten caught.
