Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I frown as the men squabble, and then I hear the words fire.
Images of that night flash before my eyes again, and I can feel the flames licking my skin all over again, making me want to scream for help.
I tell myself I’m here, and I’m safe.
But my brain and my body both know that’s a lie.
Nothing about this place or these people is safe.
“My wife got hurt. Did you know she couldn’t walk for nine months? And that’s not even the worst part. Her ability to have children … stolen from her like it meant nothing. It meant everything to us. And you took that from us.”
What is he talking about?
“You …” Marcello growls, clearly on edge.
My father laughs out loud in a way that’s almost obscene. “You think I’d let that fucker Igor get away with a hit? We went to his house in the middle of the night and ripped his daughter right from his arms. Igor’s precious daughter became my precious daughter. Isn’t that right?”
What?
Igor’s daughter?
Does he mean …
I’m not Frank’s daughter?
I gasp in shock, and I immediately cover my mouth with my hand in an attempt to stop them from hearing me. I don’t want to get caught even though what I’m hearing makes me want to scream.
My father isn’t my real father … All this time, I’ve believed something that was ultimately a lie.
A dirty, filthy trick by a mafia man.
A man I missed, a man I searched for, a man I vowed to avenge, a man I called my dad …
All of it gone within an instant.
Replaced by a sniveling, beaten-up old man standing next to my f—Frank.
Igor.
My whole body starts to quake.
No, that man can’t be my father. Can he?
“We kept that beautiful girl under our roof as collateral. And Igor became my eyes and ears—and muscle. I stayed in the background and let him weave a web for years and years. It looked like things were going to work for a while, didn’t it?” He pats Igor on the back again. “But then you got some foolish ideas. You thought you could rescue your girl, didn’t you? I’ll be honest, you almost pulled it off. But not quite.”
No, no, no!
This can’t be happening.
I shake my head, desperate to rid myself of the idea that my father would do this to me, to this man, to Marcello, to all of us, just because of some revenge plot for his poor family. And that I was nothing more than a tool to him.
Marcello seems taken aback by the information, and the air surrounding them shifts.
“No,” Marcello says.
Frank nods. “There was a fire, don’t you remember? Igor tried to burn my house down, to reclaim his daughter, to kill me and my wife, and finish what he started. But you just so happened to be in the neighborhood. You ran in like the big hero you’ve always wanted to be. And you dragged that little girl out of the fire. I watched you take my daughter away from me. I was stuck in there as the house burned. But I saw. I saw you. You took my daughter.”
All this time, my father knew about the fire. He was there, and he didn’t save me.
Marcello did.
Wait … what?
All this time, I was looking for the man who saved me from the fire … and it was him.
No wonder it always felt like I recognized him from somewhere.
Those tattoos … were they his?
Something’s different. Something isn’t right. I can’t feel it, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know why.
I should go to my father, Frank, ask him to explain, ask him—I don’t know, anything—why he survived and never came for me? Or more importantly, whether what he’s saying now is all a lie?
Because I need it to be in order to function. In order to breathe. And right now, it’s as if there are a thousand elephants squashing my chest.
Suddenly, the man cowering next to my father glances at me, and his face completely falls apart, shock filling his bones. I try to look away, but it’s impossible.
Igor.
The man my father stole me away from.
My real father.
I can see it in his eyes. He even looks like me.
I don’t need to hear the words come from his mouth. Even when his lips part, I already know what he’s about to say.
“I am sorry—the auction—I did not know—”
BANG!
The gunshot is so loud it goes through marrow and bone as it penetrates Igor’s skull.
I shriek in shock, the sound echoing through the warehouse like the last cry of a wounded soldier on the battlefield.
My real father is dead.
All of these people are dead.
And all of it is because of me.
Marcello fought to keep me by his side … my father fought to use me as a ploy for revenge … and my real father, the one lying dead on the concrete ground right now, blood pouring from his ears, fought to get me back to his home.