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“No!” she bawls. “No, I swear! I didn’t know about any of this!”
“More lies. I’m supposed to trust you? Knowing where you come from?” What a fool I’ve been. Standing here, thinking all these ridiculous thoughts about our future, about how I want to make this better for her, how I want to make her happy. I lost all sense of reality, and it’s all thanks to her. I stopped thinking of her as my hostage and started thinking of her as an equal. The biggest mistake I ever could have made.
A mistake that left my grandfather dead at my side, staring blindly up at the sky. My grandfather. The strongest man I ever knew, who I now realize I never imagined leaving me. How am I supposed to get through any of this without him? How am I supposed to take over the family after this?
Of course, that would be another of Josef’s plans, wouldn’t it? I press the gun tight against her head, and she lets out a full-bodied howl like an animal caught in a trap. And that’s exactly what she is. A lying, deceitful little animal. “It should be you I’m pointing this at,” I growl at Alvarez, still standing with his hands raised. “This is all you. You set this in motion. You deserve to die.”
“I’m telling you, this wasn’t me.”
“Will you please listen to him,” she begs, almost choking on her tears. “Please!”
“Shut up,” I growl. “I’ve heard enough of your bullshit lies. Do you think I would believe a word you say now? And there I was, feeling sorry for you. Wanting to make this up to you. What a fucking joke. You’re nothing but a lying little snake. I blame myself for forgetting that.”
Alvarez hasn’t made a move, choosing to simply stare at me. No threats of what awaits me if I harm his precious daughter. He hardly looks at Elena at all. “Are you sure this wasn’t a plan on your end?” he shouts. “A way to negate our deal? Because guess what, boy? It’s sealed. Cemented. The old man signed his name on the line. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Then how about I fucking kill her since nothing I do will affect our deal? What about that? Will you be standing there looking so smug when I put a bullet in her brain?” She whimpers pitifully, but all that does is make me tighten my hold on her. The lying, traitorous little bitch. I can’t believe I let myself fall for her tricks. There’s a mistake I’ll never make again.
He lowers his brow, smirking. “So you’re going to kill her? Your own wife? Because that’s what she is now, boy.”
“Call me boy one more time,” I warn in a growl. “See how well that goes for you.”
“You and I both know damn well that if you so much as gesture at me with that piece of yours, you’re done. Dead on the spot, just like the old man. And what would happen to your precious little family then? How many people will move in to claim what he fought for all this time? Sort of seems like a waste, doesn’t it?”
“Enough talk. You’re only trying to save your own ass.” But at the same time, I know every word of it is true. I wouldn’t even have time to aim at the man before one of the half dozen or so men now training their guns on me opened fire. They would turn me into a corpse on the spot, I have no doubt.
Except for one thing. “You’d have your men open fire on me while I have her in front of me like this? Your bluff is showing. You aren’t even very good at it, are you?”
That’s when the most chilling thing of all happens. That’s when he smiles the way he did when he brought Elena to my side. The way he did back at the restaurant when his demeanor struck me as slightly strange. A man who knows he’s been bested does not smile that way.
“Oh no,” he murmurs, touching a hand to his chest. “You’re going to threaten me with the death of my sweet little girl? As it has been from the beginning, the joke’s on you. I’ve already been through that.”
Elena’s broken sobs barely register on my overworked brain. As usual, the man has found a way to leave me at a loss. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means my daughter is dead. She died years ago, my Elena. We never told anyone because it was no one’s business. This little bitch?” He waves a dismissive hand, scoffing. “She’s not mine. Not my blood. I didn’t even adopt her.”
“That’s not true,” I grunt.
“Isn’t it?” he sneers. “I don’t know why she used my daughter’s name, but she’s no daughter of mine. In fact, when I met up with her upstairs? That was the first time I ever set eyes on her.”
It’s the strangest thing. I heard what he said, every word spoken loud and clear. Yet it doesn’t make sense, almost like he lapsed into a different language, one I don’t understand. Because there is no way I heard what I think I heard. I must have mistaken him.
“You’re lying,” I scoff.
He tips his head to the side. “You don’t really think I’m lying, do you? No, you look like a scared little boy who finally figured out how badly he fucked himself over.” His smile is triumphant as he goes about re-buttoning his jacket, then using both hands to slick down his hair. “She’s not mine. She never was. You assumed she was. Didn’t anybody tell you what happens when you assume things? Or are you so young that you haven’t had time to learn that lesson yet?”
He offers an amused little shrug. “Now you know. I like to think I helped school you a little.”
“You’re a lying bastard.”
“I admit, I have lied in my life, and I have been called a bastard. Maybe I am,” he admits with a laugh. “But I’m completely serious now.” All semblance of good humor drops from his face when he scowls. “She’s not mine. But you know what is mine? Everything your grandfather signed over to me today. I don’t know who killed him—that’s the truth—but before they did, he made me a very happy man.”
Then because this entire situation could not be more bizarre, he begins backing away. “I don’t care what happens to her,” he says with a shrug. “She’s nothing to me. But congratulations on the wedding.” He is most of the way inside the house, where his wife waits by the door, before he gestures for his men to follow him. They smirk and sneer but follow his instructions, though they keep their guns trained on me for as long as he and his wife are visible.
I don’t know what to do. What comes next? My entire life and everything I thought was true just came crashing down around me. My grandfather is dead, and my family is now in shambles. Josef Alvarez has made a fool of us all, thanks in no small part to an assumption I made that he was more than willing to allow me to continue believing. He must have seen all of this from the beginning. The moment he learned what happened in the warehouse. Who told him? I don’t know. I only know that men like him have no trouble piecing together how a situation will benefit them. Right away, he saw what needed to be done. If she wasn’t going to tell me the truth, if only to save her own hide, he would continue to bluff until the very end. Until his family was bound to mine, thanks to a contract I was never even given the privilege of seeing.
And now I’m holding a woman in front of me like a shield, but she’s not the woman I thought she was. The woman I talked myself into believing she was. No matter how long I live, I will never find a way to stop hating myself for what I let her do to me. The fool I let her make of me. The fool I’ve made of myself.
“Well, Enzo, please—”
