AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fourteen. If I don’t do as I’m told, he has threatened with selling her at his brothel. He’s also warned that he’s not above hurting her if I don’t listen to him.”
“He’s good at holding things over people’s heads and making them do what he wants,” I said.
“Yeah…”
“Have you ever tried to take her away from him?”
“How? You know as well as I do that he’ll find someone to punish me for that kind of insubordination. As long as the Father exists, so will the organization. We can never be free from that,” she muttered, clearly disheartened.
“You did once, didn’t you?” I pushed.
Her gaze flashed to mine and she grasped at her collar, pulling it aside and revealing a wicked scar beneath.
“This is one of the many marks he left behind with his knife that day. He was so displeased with me that he tortured me himself,” she spat. “He told me that if there was a next time, the blade would cut into my daughter and he’d make me watch the whole thing.”
“I didn’t know,” I whispered, horrified. For a moment, I’d considered pulling her into the scheme of what Dean and I had planned, but I knew that was no longer an option. There was no fighting a mother’s love like that. She’d do anything to keep her daughter alive and that would mean that her loyalty would always be with her and never with us.
I dropped the subject. It was clearly painful for her and I didn’t want to cause her any more stress about it than she already put on herself.
“It’s okay,” she answered, and I chewed my lip. I pushed my way over to the minibar and grabbed a few small bottles of champagne.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Running up the Father’s tab,” I answered plainly.
She chuckled.
“Pour me one too,” she added.
“I’d already planned on it,” I smirked. I popped open two of them and very carefully poured them into the fancy flutes on the counter. When I was done, I returned to the table and handed one to her. I set mine down and slid a chair closer to her, grinning as I did so.
“I kind of hate him, you know,” I began.
I was going to push her, but not in a way that she’d recognize. I’d trained all my life to read people and I was going to use every last skill right now to figure out what I needed to know from her.
She laughed with genuine amusement.
“Yeah. He’s kin
d of a dick, isn’t he?”
“For sure. You know, I’ve never had anyone I could talk to about him before, and it’s kind of nice,” I began. I looked down at the table, playing with my hands and hesitantly looking in her direction. “I’ve never had a confidant before.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you the truth,” I pouted, and she relaxed a little.
“You know, now that I think about it, I’ve never had a friend like that either,” she replied.
She’d called me her friend.
“Sometimes, when I have to work with a particularly difficult or annoying mark, I like to imagine what I’d do to the Father if I had ever got the chance,” I confessed.
She snorted out loud.
“God. I do that too. All the goddamn time,” she mused.
“Last I knew he was living in New York somewhere in some fancy hotel and I dreamed about sneaking into the kitchens and poisoning his espresso he insists on having every morning at eight a.m.,” I pushed.
