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How long had I been out?
That didn’t matter. I needed to save Lila and her grandmother.
“Wait until I get my bat back, you riffraff,” Nana yelled from the bedroom.
I almost smiled. She was alive and still strong enough to make threats at a motorcycle gang.
Two guys—wearing sleeveless leather vests stitched with Devil’s Eyes club patches—came out and joined us in the living room. I guessed they were fed up with listening to Nana’s outdated insults.
I glanced at the two gang members. One of them had a mullet, and the other walked with a limp.
That made four enemies. And the three of us were still alive, which meant they wanted something. This wasn’t retaliation unless they had waited for me to wake up so I could watch as they tortured Lila. If I believed in a God, I’d be praying right now.
Instead, I twisted my wrists, loosening the bindings while distracting them with taunts. “What do you want?”
Butch’s meaty fingers clutched Lila’s throat. “What do you think we want, you prick?” He snickered, and his big beer gut bounced over the waistband of his jeans.
Lila thrashed in her chair, struggling against her confines. The wheezing gasps escaping from her as she struggled for air was the worst sound I’d ever heard in my life.
A stabbing pain shot through my heart, and it wasn’t Fiona’s blade. “NOOO! STOP!”
“Squeeze the life out of the bitch, Daddy.” Fiona’s laughter pierced my ears.
Butch obeyed his daughter’s whims and squeezed tighter. Lila’s frantic eyes bulged, and her lips turned blue.
“STOP! I’ll do anything you want. I’ll marry you, Fiona. I said I’ll marry you. STOP!”
Butch relaxed his grip but kept his fingers wrapped around her throat. Lila gulped in lungfuls of air. I struggled against the restraints. They dug into my wrists, cutting off my circulation. I had to get them off before losing the feeling in my hands. I couldn’t shoot a gun with numb fingers.
“Too late for that,” Fiona said as she finally got off my lap. “You think I’d trust you after this? You’d probably slit my throat from behind while you fucked me like a dog.”
My eyes were fixed on Lila, watching as the pink returned to her lips. A tiny wave of relief washed over me. I’d bought us time. “Then what do you want? Name it.”
“Everything else. Your organization. The money laundering business and the lucrative front you have with all the suits on Wall Street.”
Giving over all my business, the legal and illegal, meant my father would be dead within a week. My power and connections were the only things keeping him alive. Could I betray the man who was in prison because of me?
I had a choice to make.
Choose the man whose idea of love was to turn his son into a ruthless, soulless killer? Or the woman who showed me what true love was last night.
“Take it. All of it.” I could live with the guilt of my father’s death. I couldn’t live without Lila.
There was only one reason Pop was in jail. Because I refused to make a kill. So, the next day, he had to finish the job himself. He kept blaming me, saying he would’ve never been caught if I’d killed the enemy when I was supposed to. That I’d pissed him off so much, it completely distracted him. It was my fault he’d let his guard down and got caught.
If it weren’t for me, he’d still be the head of our organization. And now, he was serving a life sentence in prison and guilting his son into submission.
No more. He was the one who put the hit on the guy. And carried it out. He murdered someone and let his guard down, the biggest crime of all. Got sloppy and left a witness. He had no one to blame but himself. I’d no longer take responsibility for his fuck-up.
“Let them go,” I said. “And I’ll sign everything over to you. I’ll call my crew and tell them they work for you now.”
“Nice try,” said Butch, his fingers still around Lila’s throat but not squeezing. “You think we’re going to let you call your crew?”
“Fine. Whatever. We’ll do it whichever way you want. Just let them go.”
Fiona sneered. “Oh, she’s not going anywhere. You don’t give the orders anymore, Hawk.”
Fucking bitch, wait until I free my hands. “We had a deal.”
“And we will keep our end of the deal,” Fiona said. “Once everything you own belongs to the Devil’s Eyes.”
