AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You won’t put a fucking hand on her.”
Danny’s expression changed at the sound of H’s voice. Seemed the whole situation was just an inconvenience. “Oh, and what are you gonna do about it, old man?” he asked, turning to address his father.
“I’ll do what I have to. I’m her father.”
Tess heard the word. Before she could comprehend all the implications of it, disgust hit her. “You’remyfather?” she said. Danny sank back a quarter turn. “And he’s your father?”
For the first time, she saw something approaching amusement glimmer in the eyes of the guy she’d been sleeping with for a month. “Not my biological father. He raised me.” She breathed out in relief. “He’s your biological father.” Danny swung himself around to speak to H again. “We’ve got DNA evidence to prove it, don’t we?”
“In the vault,” H said, backing up to prop himself against one of the desks.
“Which we can’t get into,” Danny said. “Because you’re an asshole.”
“That why you came here? To trade insults? You wanted me to come, son.”
Danny stepped his way, raising the gun to wave it behind himself in her general direction. “Because you were supposed to come and put a bullet in your little princess. After she was gone, you’d know what it was to lose everything… Like I did.”
“Oh,” H said, folding his arms and crossing his ankles. “Boohoo for the little orphan boy. This where the violins fade up and the Kleenex come out?”
Not dissuaded, Danny got even closer to the man he called his father. “Yeah,” he growled. “You’ll need something to clean up the blood.”
H stood up and slapped the gun onto the desk, which prompted Danny to do the same with his weapon.
“Please don’t fight!” Tess said, recalling what Danny had told her about his father.
In the same moment she pushed off the wall, Tess faltered. Danny wasn’t Danny. She didn’t know him. Not the real him. All of it. Everything they’d been through was fake. And she’d fallen for it. Turning her back on them, Tess didn’t know what to do, couldn’t block them out, but she couldn’t trust them either.
“Where’s your SP?” H’s authoritative voice asked.
“None of your fucking business,” Danny answered.
Except he wasn’t Danny. Tess closed her eyes tight.
“Give me the clock,” H said. “You brought her here, which means you don’t want Z to have her.”
“He didn’t make me an offer… Could be on his way too.”
“What?” H asked, confused. “You’re working for him and you don’t know where he is?”
“Since when am I working for Z?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Never in twenty years have you trusted a word from that man’s mouth,” Danny said.
“Twenty-five years,” H said, firm in his conviction.
“Probably longer than that,” Danny said. “Twenty-five years ago is just when Pandora came into play.”
H’s mood hadn’t lightened. “She was never in play.”
TWENTY-TWO
“PANDORA,” TESS SAID. The word from the card. She turned to them again. “Who is Pandora?”
“You are Pandora, Tess,” Danny said.
“Me?”
