14. Fourteen #2
Frank gave me a slow nod. If he wanted to warn me, or comfort me, even to suggest I wouldn’t survive the night, he kept it for himself.
He eased open the foyer door, and I stepped onto the marble like I was being led to auction.
Arrow stood at the foot of the front steps, suit perfectly dark against the oily street. His eyes caught the headlights—bright as a wolf’s. Behind him, two of his men stood at lazy-parade rest—hands crossed, scanning the perimeter for threats or maybe just prying eyes.
Not that they’d find any.
The Virelli compound was a fortress with ornate pillars, baroque stone, and stained with centuries of blood and the ghosts of better families. They could have buried me out back next to the roses, and no one would ever know.
My father was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding in his study.
Fucking coward.
Arrow’s gaze started at my heels, moving up my dress, cataloging every inch before locking onto my face. He studied the bruise on my cheek, then the cut on my lip, almost hidden beneath my makeup.
Almost.
His eyes narrowed, then he moved to me, voice low and raw enough to strip a living nerve. “Who did that?”
I shrugged, because it made the cut on my mouth flex. “You’ll have to narrow it down.”
Arrow’s eyes went from storm cloud placid to blood-glinting, but there was no explosion, no grand swerve into violence.
He put his hand, palm flat, to my cheek, and turned my head to examine the bruise like I was a delicate relic he was cataloguing for later theft. His thumb traced the curve of my jaw.
For the length of one ratcheting heartbeat, my body went weightless with the force of being seen. I could do nothing but stare.
“Was it your father?”
The way he said it made it clear he already knew.
I wanted to deny it, but that would be a lie, and I was done with lying for men. So I nodded, barely. Arrow’s jaw ticked, a single flicker of violence behind his mask—there and gone.
My blood chilled as I watched him walk past me toward my father’s study. Once he rounded the corner, his men kept their hands on their guns, preparing for a war.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I looked at Frank, and he looked at me, neither of us moving. Then, my feet started running toward the door, right as Arrow exploded back across the marble, holding my father by the throat, dragging him into the foyer.
Blood trickled from my father’s mouth, staining the gold of his incisors. I’d never seen Giovanni Virelli subdued. He fought like a rabid thing, clawing at Arrow’s arms, trying to twist loose.
But Arrow was the stronger animal. He’d been bred for this kind of show.
Frank tried to intervene, hands up. “Arrow—don’t—”
Arrow’s men had already stepped between them, guns drawn, and it became clear who owned the room.
I looked around the room, and my father’s men were looking at each other, lowering their guns.
They were afraid of him.
Arrow slammed my father down onto the marble, one knee on his sternum, and his forearm pressed to his throat. In another life, the urge to help my father would have twitched in my spine.
Now, I only watched, almost calm, as Arrow bared his teeth.
“Touch her again, old man, and I’ll put you in the ground like the rest of your fucking ancestors.”
Arrow’s words were a hiss, a snarl of power, not shouting, because shouting was for men who needed to prove they were in control.
My father gasped. “She’s my daughter—She’s a Virelli—”
“She’s whatever the fuck I say she is,” Arrow spat, and then he pulled out his handgun and pointed it at my father’s head.
He was going to fucking execute him in front of me, leaving his brains all over the pristine white marble floors.
The click of the safety, the cold metal, all of it was a ritual, as old and holy as confession. I flinched, not for my father, not for Arrow, but for the ghost of a girl who still believed there was a limit to hunger.
Arrow had none.
His eyes were flat, like a winter lake that never thawed. He looked straight through the old man on the floor and into the space where I stood.
“Arrow, don’t,” I heard someone say, but the voice was a memory, or maybe Frank, or maybe myself from a future where I still cared who lived or died.
Arrow’s forearm pressed deeper into my father’s throat.
My father kicked, gurgling, blood splattering his white collar.
He tried to claw at Arrow’s hand, but Arrow had a gun in one, a grip like a crucifix in the other.
I saw, maybe for the first time, how alike they were—these men.
The need to win, the belief that pain was just a language and they could always out-argue you in the end.
I said nothing. I just watched, like I was reading a story about myself in some other universe, where the daughter’s destiny was to stand witness, not interfere.
Then Arrow tilted the muzzle. The gun gleamed up at the chandelier, before tracing my father’s cheekbone, tapping three times—temple, eyebrow, nostril, like a priest anointing a newborn.
“Let me help you understand, Giovanni,” he purred into the hush. “She’s not your bargaining chip anymore. She’s mine.” He cocked the hammer. “She’s mine, from now on, not after the fucking wedding.” He smiled, bloodless. “You’ve lost, Giovanni.”
Arrow stood in a smooth motion, released him, and turned to look at me, not searching for approval, but as if to show me the definition of ownership.
“Pack her shit. The girl stays with me now.”
He nodded toward my father’s men, and in a surprising turn of events, they looked down at my father, who nodded in defeat, before they left the room.
My world collapsed into a standoff of three men, each holding a piece of my life, but none of them caring what I did with the wreckage.
In the end, Frank gently nudged me to the stairs and told me to go upstairs and pack things I couldn’t live without. He said it so evenly, as if we didn’t both know there was nothing left I wanted to keep.