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Goosebumps bloom across my skin.
“They won’t hurt you,” he says, running a hand across my hair. “Not until they have to.”
I shiver involuntarily. This can’t be happening. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and I don’t know if it is morning sickness or not. It might just be that this level of betrayal is unnatural. A daughter shouldn’t be held against her will by her father. She shouldn’t have to worry if he’ll let her be harmed or not. Perhaps, my body is just reacting to that.
“But I’m sure Luka will come and trade you for the guns he stole.” He steps away and crosses his arms. I don’t see any love or concern in his eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I don’t understand a word of it. Nothing makes any sense. My head is swimming, and I wonder if there wasn’t some kind of powdered drug in the black bag. A hallucinogenic. That would make more sense than this.
“Your husband stole something from me this morning, so I stole something from him.”
He means me. I’m the ‘something.’
“But don’t worry,” he says. “I’m sure you and his child are more important to him than a few measly weapons.”
“Fuck you.” My confusion channels into rage so fast it nearly makes my head spin.
My father smiles, but there is no humor there. “None of this would have happened if you had simply played your part, Eve. If you had stayed with Luka, you’d be safe right now. I even came to you tonight and gave you the chance to correct your mistake, but you turned your back on me. So, you have no one to blame for this situation but yourself.”
“‘My role’?” I ask, lip pulled back in disgust. “I don’t even know what is going on. How could I have changed any of this?”
“You are a beautiful woman, Eve,” he says, stepping forward and bending low so his eyes are level with mine. “I’ve been telling you your whole life, you don’t need to know a damn thing. You just need to look pretty and make a man love you. Cook for Luka, fuck Luka…distractLuka. That was your job, and you failed.”
“Distract him from what?” I ask, trying to ignore the fact that my own father just told me my duty was to fuck one of his enemies.
“From this,” he says, gesturing between himself and the men around him. “I wanted to team up with the Irish, which is why you were engaged to the gunrunner years ago. You screwed that up, too, unfortunately, but I fixed it. Luka helped. He was so smitten with you, he proposed the solution himself the first time he met you. All I had to do was force the pieces together. He loved you from the moment he saw you, whether he could admit it to himself or not, and I used his emotions as an opportunity. You were more difficult to persuade, but you came around. I had faith you’d come around again, but you disrespected me tonight, Eve.”
“You didn’t persuade me,” I say, almost laughing at the absurdity. “I only accepted the deal because of what the Volkovs did to Samuel. I accepted the deal because I was crazy enough to love you and want to protect you.”
The smile that spreads across my father’s face chills me to the bone. “That was my persuasion.”
I blink, confused. “What?”
“I planted the bomb,” he says with a shrug. “You are soft, and I knew your aversion to violence would push you to make peace. Plus, it was really killing two birds with one stone. I was sick of Samuel contradicting me. I need an advisor who is on my side, and he clearly wasn’t.”
I remember Samuel telling me at the funeral that he was trying to persuade my father against the deal with Luka. He was trying to help me, and my father killed him for it.
I’m speechless. The world is crashing down around me, and I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Everything I thought I knew was a lie. My father told me the Volkovs were cold-hearted and ruthless, but Luka believes in loyalty. It is why even the thought that I could have deceived him sent him into a spiral. He trusted me, and my father made him believe I fooled him.
“Why did you attack the wedding?” I ask finally. “I was doing what you wanted. Why did you interrupt things?”
“Because I wanted Luka dead.” The words echo back to me off the concrete floors, and they hurt just as much the second time. He looks over his shoulder at the men around him, eyes narrowed. The men seem to shrink under his gaze, ashamed. “The attack was meant to be more…effective… than it was. Unfortunately, it failed, and we had to regroup. But finally, things are back on track. Luka will come here to save you, I’ll take my guns back, kill him, and things can go back to normal.”
Normal. He says it like that word has meaning. Like there is any such thing. My ‘normal’ was a lie. If Luka is killed, I don’t know what normal would even look like.
He sighs and then pulls out his phone and hands it to me. “I already told Luka I had you, but I’d like to really sell it.”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, looking from him to the phone.
“Ask him for help,” he says, waving a hand like I should know how to do this. “Cry and scream. Really sell it.”
I shake my head. I’m not going to beg Luka to come and save me because he actually might. Besides, some part of me clings to the hope that my father wouldn’t really hurt me. That he wouldn’t actually put me in harm’s way.
Before the thought can fully formulate in my mind, there is a loud crack and my head snaps sideways. My cheek is on fire, and my father shakes his hand, wincing slightly. Then, he chuckles. “You have a bony cheek.”
The men around him chuckle and shift on their feet. They are like hungry dogs who smell blood. Given the opportunity, they’d rip me to shreds.
Tears burn in my eyes, and my father nods encouragingly. “That’s it. Tell him to come save you.”
