Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
The fact that my father didn’t argue let me know he was aware of his position. He was going to try to salvage things, but he was going to fail. Why hadn’t I gotten help to take care of him earlier? I could have ended his reign well before now. I couldn’t have saved my mother, I’d been too young for that, but I could have gotten help from my friends and made my father and brother pay before now.
Could you though? They were young, and there was no guarantee their families would have listened. You didn’t know X until you were deep into this shit.
Matteo raised the angle of the gun slightly and put a bullet into the wall just over my father’s head, making him jump.
I loved seeing him sweat. His fear fed me, the way mine had fed him for so many years. “There’s no way you win in this scenario. You can help us find Landon, or we can torture the information out of you.”
Matteo grinned. “I know of so many things I’d enjoy doing to you.”
“I don’t know where he is,” my father yelled.
“Then you damn well better figure it out.”
“He’s my son. I’m not turning him over to you.”
“No, he’s not. He’s the person you tried to turn into your clone, but it never really worked, did it? Landon is weak, and he’s never been mentally stable. He pushed his own mother down the stairs when he was only ten. That was the child you wanted to form in your image. And as he got older, he chose to get other people to do his dirty work.”
“I’m not just going to roll over for you.”
Now that Matteo’s gun wasn’t pointed at him, my father returned to his normal arrogance. That wouldn’t last long. “No, you’re not. You have twenty-four hours to turn all your business assets over to me. I don’t care about your personal money; keep it, I have enough of my own.”
“And if I don’t?”
I looked at Matteo and smiled. “Then I’ll let my boyfriend do whatever he wants with you.”
His brows went up. “Your boyfriend?”
“How many times have I told you I’m gay, Father?”
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s bad enough, but this….” He waved his hand at Matteo who aimed his gun again.
I needed to get Matteo out of here before my father riled him up even more. “I’ll speak with you this time tomorrow. I hope for your sake that everything is arranged by then.”
A soon as we exited my father’s office, we heard the sound of him slamming his hand down on his desk.
“You’re not going to let him get away with everything are you?” Matteo asked. “Tell me you’re going to kill him in the end or let me do it.”
“Once we’ve taken care of my brother, we’re going to reveal what happened to my mother, and he’ll go to trial as an accessory to murder. The conviction will strip him of his belief that he’ll never face consequences. That is worse than death to him.”
Matteo huffed. “We’ll discuss that when the time comes.”
“Fine, but right now I’m not in control of his businesses. If we kill him, then take out my brother, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know who’s next in line to inherit, but I doubt it’s me or anyone else we would want in that position. I need control because I need to make sure I can stop every fucking evil thing he’s got going on right now, and we’ve got to cut off the cartel’s money so we can destroy them.”
“You know someone else will just step into their place. If we picked up where your father left off, we’d be in a position to—”
“No, that’s CIA bullshit you’re spouting now. We’re not playing games with them. We won’t dirty our hands anymore, no matter how much we could learn. Sure, someone else will step in, and they’ll need to be put down too, but that’s not our job. This is.”
“I know it’s personal for you.”
“And it’s not for you? After what they did to you?”
He shrugged. “I think I’ve put up so many walls I don’t feel anything about my time there unless I let the walls down. I don’t have to end the cartel for myself, but they made me shoot you, and for that, I will take out every single one of them.”
“Then why are you challenging me on this?”
“Because I don’t want you looking over your shoulder all the time. What you’re planning will create a lot of enemies for you. I don’t want you to have to deal with that.”
“Jesus, Matteo. I’m hardly an innocent pawn.”
“No, you’re a fucking hero.”
I snorted. “Don’t tell me you bought all that bullshit from me.”
Matteo grabbed my shoulders and slammed me into the side of the SUV. “It’s not bullshit. You believed that.”