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“That I work for you.”
“What was that?”
“That I would work for you, god dammit.” My father grated out.
“Oh,” he pulled the gun from my lips and let me sink all the way to the floor. My head throbbed where the hair had been pulled tight and I rubbed the tears off my face in pure embarrassment. There was no need to act— Yuri embodied my terrifying captor. Not for one second had his cruel nature changed, he only dimmed it in my presence so as not to scare me. He let me see a different side of him, but this one was back with a vengeance, and I was terrified. “So, you did understand, and you just chose to let your little girl pay for your fucking sins?”
A stabbing feeling hit me right in the chest.
It was true and my father refused to meet my gaze. He’d made his choice on what was important to him and what wasn't.
And I wasn't.
Maybe I never had been.
The checks he sent, the sporadic phone calls I stopped waiting around for— maybe all of that was just to keep up appearances. To make it seem as though, in a perfect world, he would have been a doting father just the way I remembered him. That if things had been different, I would have had a placement at the table. Or a slot in the mudroom.
Instead, I was the unwanted daughter, a product of a regretful relationship he’d had with a manipulative and obsessive woman. I wasn't the product of love. I wasn’t even the product of friendship. By the time my father had realized just how little he cared for my mother or how she didn’t fit into the future he saw for himself, she was already three months pregnant with me.
To him, I didn’t deserve the life he gave to his sons. Nothing could have driven that message home like my own father, the way his lips pursed and his eyes darted around the room, looking at anything but the blood he betrayed. His dejected, pathetic face showed me everything I needed to know.
“When you work for someone, you don't betray them. Or is that just what it's like for politicians?”
My scalp burned under Yuri’s firm grip and the butt of the gun rose higher, counting my ribs until it grazed the underside of my breast.
“You think that she can settle your debt? That leaving her to me will cancel out you ratting on the fucking cartel?”
“Oh, god,” my father whined. His eyes narrowed in on the way Yuri tormented me. If we were alone, not doing this in front of my father, I might have been aroused. But bile rose in the back of my throat and my legs burned from standing on my tippy toes to relieve the pressure on my scalp.
I didn't need to act anymore or remind myself that this was for show– the pain of his betrayal was real and so was the disgust that coiled through me. It latched in so deep I was sure I would never be able to scrub it out.
“Tell him what I told you, cariño.”
“I…” my voice trailed off.
“Say it or I'll carve it into his chest,” he threatened.
“No, please no. Oh, god,” my father whined above me.
This was it. The final confession that had the power to twist the knife so deep, there was no patching up the wound. But not to me this time– to him.
My eyes watered. “He's threatened the boys.”
For a moment my father looked as though he was going to pass out. Slackjawed, he stared at me, unwilling to process my words.
“He says the cartel will come after them next.”
He slid off the chair and onto his knees, clasping his hands together in front of his trembling frame. “Please. Whatever you want, take it. Keep Darya! I'll give you anything you want.”
And there it was.
Yuri chuckled and bent to wrap his arm around my waist. He pulled me to my feet and crushed me against his side. “I'm definitely keeping Darya. But I'm not interested in anything else besides your loyalty.”
“You have it,” he shouted.
“You hear that baby?” Yuri asked me. I turned my head away from my father, unwilling to look at him for a second longer.
“Swear it.”
