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“You’ve presented me with quite the dilemma, Grayson.” He doubles me over with a brutal hit to my stomach that leaves me hissing and cursing for air. “I should take you on a little trip to Sanders’s basement for what you’ve done, but your last name is your Get-Out-Of-Being-Murdered card today. You can thank your father for that.” Dragging me up by my neck, he pins me to the wall, his face a malevolent mask, and his black eyes as cold as mine. “Not to mention, you’re the bestsicarioI have. In less than a year, you’ve turned the Santiago Cartel into the number one criminal organization in New York City. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for what you believe in. In that respect, you remind me of myself.”
“Am I meant to be flattered by that?”
His grip on my windpipe tightens. “Does a bastard shit in the woods? No, he takes what he wants, and shits anywhere he likes, only this time you got caught. But I’m not going to kill you, Grayson. Not this time. Instead, I’m going to tell you all about a choice you’ll be making one day.” He lets go of me to straighten my jacket and shirt with a dangerous smile.
“Is this a concession?” I drag myself up to my full height, undecided which is worse: being in his debt, or my father’s. “Are you losing your edge, old man? You know I don’t deserve your mercy.”
“Maybe not, but I have my own debts to pay.”
“You mean to my father.” My lip curls in distaste.
“Him, and one other.”
“Who?”
“See this?” It takes me a second to realize he’s holding up his hand. There’s an ugly, white scar running through the center of his palm, and it pricks at a recently made memory. “This wasmy choice, and one day—maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few years—you’ll be making it for yourself.You see, I’m not like all those mafia cunts who sell their daughters for status. Women aren’t commodities to be bought and sold. Their future happiness isn’t mine to barter for the price of power, or to show the world how big my swinging dick is. I take mine the old-fashioned way, by brute force. Because of this, I swore to my wife that when the time came our daughters would marry for love. Call it a payoff for dragging them up in a world they have no business being in.” He steps closer, his jaw set, his eyes glinting unpleasantly. “Take note of the word ‘marry’, Grayson. It has a number of meanings, many of which I’d prefer not to think about my daughters doing. Do you have any idea how much I’d like to snap your neck for smelling her on you?”
“I’m not going to date or ‘marry’ your daughter anymore, Santiago.”
He nods, as if he’s expecting this. “No, you’re not because you don’t love her.”
“Hijueputa!” With a roar of pain, I push him away. “Who the fuck are you to decide that? You may own my gun and my allegiance, but you donotown everything.”
His eyebrows shoot up at my reaction, and then I’m spinning sideways from another of his savage uppercuts. “Remember who you’re speaking to, Grayson. It was an interesting reaction though, and it just goes to confirm what I’ve long suspected.”
“Fuck you,” I growl, through bloody teeth.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Old enough to know better, but still young and arrogant enough to think every path you choose is the right one… I’m not disputing that you love her in your own way. You just don’t love her in all the ways she deserves.”
“You have no fucking idea,” I snarl, spitting a mouthful of blood at Sanders’s white marble floor.
He shakes his head and flexes his hand. “You think I don’t know my own daughter? You think I don’t how much she’s been hurting these past six years, and not known the reason behind it? But here’s the thing…” Stepping forward, he grips my jaw between his fingers and forces me to look at him. “You don’t love her enough because you hate your past more, andthat’swhy you’re not good enough for her.”
“Bullshit!”
“Maybe when your ego stops cursing me out, you’ll shut up and listen. My choice came two decades ago in a room with a Russian trafficker called Sevastien Petrov. I was either walking out of there with him dead, or I wasn’t walking out alive.”
“So, you killed him.”
“No, I traded him,” he says, shocking me.This man feeds off retribution like piranhas feed off flesh.“I made a choice, and at the time it hurt worse than the knife he’d just stuck through my hand. I traded all my hate to save the woman who’s lying upstairs in my bed, and then I wrapped him up in a red bow and I delivered him to the authorities.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
“My future was more important than my past, so I let it go. Now, it’s your turn to do the same. Take this and cut it free. I don’t give a fuck how you do it, just get it done.”
With a jolt, I realize he’s offering me his knife.
“You want me to stick this through my hand?”
“Stick it up your ass for all I care, just so long as you do what I ask. Love her whole. Don’t love her with half a heart. Not her, she’s too special, and you know it. That’s why you’re creeping out of this house. You’re protecting her somehow, and that’s another reason you’re still alive.”
I take the knife without a word, fighting dark urges.
“Maybe my past isn’t so easy to cut loose.”
