Chapter 3 #2
Four years of college. More than a year of postgraduate work, a poetry collection I’m three-quarters of the way finished writing.
And it means nothing to him, just like I do.
My only value to my father has always been as a bargaining chip.
A woman’s worth is between her legs. I’ve heard him say it. I know he believes it.
And now? He’s selling me to secure his own future.
I lunge at him. I don’t even know why. It’s dangerous with all these guns pointed at me, all these killers surrounding us. I’m a loose cannon in a room of vipers I can’t trust. I throw myself at my father, pounding his chest.
“Fuck you!” My voice is hoarse with emotion, with betrayal. I want to hurt him. I want to hurt myself. “Fuck you, you heartless son of a bitch! You sold me to them like I’m a fucking cow.”
My father’s reaction is instant. He backhands me across the face. It’s fast and painful. With as much violence as he’s perpetrated on others over the years, he’s never hit me before. I didn’t expect it.
Just as quickly, there’s an arm banded around my waist like steel. I’m hauled backward, behind a wall of six-foot-three, muscle-bound mobster.
“No one touches what’s mine,” Priest snarls at my father, barely leashed violence in his voice.
I’m not his, but I’m still so shocked by everything that I stare at his back, words eluding me, pressing a hand to my aching cheek.
Tasting the coppery tang of blood. I must have bitten my tongue, and I’m momentarily stunned into allowing Priest to shield me, to take my side against my own father.
It’s the last thing I expected of myself, just as much as it’s the last thing I expected of Priest.
“She’s not yours yet,” my father is saying.
My heart is pounding too hard, threatening to drown out the words. Everything around me starts to spin, and I don’t know if it’s from the force of the blow my father dealt me or if it’s the shock. Maybe both.
“You signed a contract,” Priest rumbles. “No second thoughts. It’s done. Do I need to remind you of what happens to this shithole and the Revello family if you go back on your word?”
“Maybe we should remind him of why he needs the Andrianis,” says one of the brothers.
A gunshot rings out, followed by a hail of broken glass raining on the floor.
“That light fixture cost me twenty grand,” my father complains. “I flew it in from France.”
That’s what he’s concerned about right now. A light that’s lying in a thousand broken pieces on the dance floor. Not his daughter.
“Next time, it’ll be your kneecap, asshole,” Priest warns. “She’s coming with us now, or the deal’s off.”
I’m coming with them?
Now?
Oh my fucking God. I might pass out.
This can’t be happening. I need time. Time to get myself out of this. Time to run and hide, to start over in another city with a new name. Somewhere in the Midwest where none of these psychos will ever find me.
“Take her, then,” my father says. “You know the deal. I want it done, pronto.”
“It will be.” Priest glances at me over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. “You okay?”
He frowns when his gaze dips to my cheek. It’s throbbing, and the skin feels tight and swollen, so I know my father did a number on me.
“Never been better.” I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
I’m not close to my father, and the last five years of distance haven’t brought us together.
Neither has his devotion to a string of flavors of the month who usually happen to be my age.
But I’m his blood. His daughter. I thought that meant something.
In my own foolish way, I loved him. I just loved him from afar, in the only way I knew how, trying to reconcile the heinous crimes I know he’s committed with my own conscience as best as I could.
I should’ve seen this coming. My father hasn’t had a damn scruple in his life.
I shouldn’t have answered his call. I shouldn’t have come back here.
But it’s too late. I fell into his trap, and I’m going to have to fight with everything I have to get out of it and return to the life I’ve made for myself.
Priest is still staring, his gaze boring into me. Slowly, he nods.
Then he turns back to my father, takes a step forward, and in one swift, graceful motion slams his fist into my father’s jaw. I hear the dull thud of bones connecting with flesh and don’t even flinch. I’m numb except for the pain.
“That’s for hurting her,” he says, flexing his fingers at his side. “If you dare to touch her again, I’ll kill you, but not until you’re begging me for a final bullet.”
The way he’s talking to my father…
I’m stunned.
When I left, my father was the kingpin of this city. No one would dare to meet his eye, let alone threaten him. Something has changed, and I don’t know what. I’m in way over my head, and not just because I’m about to be kidnapped by a bloodthirsty gangster who intends to force me into marrying him.
But yeah, that’s enough to make me feel like I want to throw up all over Priest’s black Dior shoes.
He’s facing me now, his sinful lips in a grim, thin line. “Time to go, Luna.”
It’s the first time he’s called me by my real name since I walked through these doors earlier. And it causes a strange reaction to cut through me. Heat and shock. Like lightning in a summer sky, it’s electric.
“I need to get a few things,” I hedge, trying to buy time so I can make good on my escape.
He laughs, the sound dark and bitter. “Do I look stupid to you?”
No, he looks like a mobster, a criminal. Like a devil who will melt your panties one day and put a gun to your head the next. A heartbreaker and a callous killer. Everything I’ve spent the last five years trying to flee.
I can’t say that, though. I refuse to give him any more of the upper hand than he already has on me.
“I won’t run, if that’s what you’re thinking. I have nowhere to go.”
That’s the truth. I don’t have anywhere to go.
I may be an independent twenty-four-year-old woman, but I’ve been working my ass off, paying for college and my MFA myself.
I spent every last bit of savings I had on my Uber and plane ticket to get here.
I have no car, no cash, and no home. Nothing but my precious collection of books in my apartment in Iowa, my laptop, my phone.
No future either, judging by the way this disaster of a reunion with my father is going.
“I’ll send a guy,” Priest says. “Just tell me what you need, and it’ll be done.”
Hell no. If he sends a guy , I have no chance to escape. He can’t send a guy. And I can’t go with Priest. What am I going to do? Tackle him and try to steal his Glock? I’ll be dead in a millisecond.
“I want to do this myself,” I tell him, leaving out the salient part.
“Then I’ll go with you. Another day. Today, you come with me.”
“Against my will?”
I’m getting desperate. And I know he doesn’t have a conscience or a soul, but I’m trying to appeal to the part of him that’s still human, if it exists.
“Don’t play games with me,” he warns coldly. “It won’t work.”
I take a deep breath and ditch my pride. “Please, I’m begging you?—”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” interrupts a different Andriani. They’re all running together now, bleeding like ink in the rain. I think it’s the brother who shot out the light fixture. “We need to get going, Priest. Speed up the process, or I’m going to start shooting again.”
Confirmed. It’s Mr. Trigger-Happy.
And he looks like he’s about to make good on his threat. He points his pistol in the direction of the lights in the DJ booth. Yep, it’s official. Criminally hot and criminally insane runs in the family.
“ Bella , look at me.”
It’s my father’s voice. I shift to the right so I can see past Priest. My father looks pale and old, rubbing his jaw. Different. He was always hearty and sturdy as a bull. For the first time, I realize he’s lost weight. His suit sags on his frame.
There’s something in his eyes that stops me. Shocks me. Whatever is happening here, it’s bigger than him.
“If you don’t go with them, I’m a dead man,” he says. “But you, Luna Alessandra Revello? You’re dead too.”
I shouldn’t trust him. I know I should tell him that he’s put the final nail in the coffin of our father-daughter relationship by tricking me into coming back here, selling me to a mobster, and hitting me.
But he’s still my father, and he’s been fucking up my whole life—lying to me, disappointing me, hurting me—and I still love him anyway.
I don’t want him to go down in a hailstorm of Andriani bullets. I want him to live, to fight.
And I want to live too.
It takes every ounce of strength I have to turn back to Priest like I don’t have a care in the world and shrug. “Fine, then. I’ll go with you.”
You can do this , I tell myself. It’s the world’s worst pep talk.
I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can go from writing workshops and cornfields to Glocks and kidnappings and forced Mafia marriages.
I’ve been running from the monsters of my past for years, and they’ve finally caught up with me.
Priest watches me with a glittering stare, like he’s trying to look into the darkest places inside me, the shadows where all my secrets dwell. His gaze is so unnerving that, for a second, I’m afraid he can.
But then he jerks his chin toward his brothers. “We’re finished here.”
Their guns go back into their hiding places.
Priest takes my hand in his huge, tatted one, lacing our fingers together, and he brings my hand to his surly mouth for a kiss like we’re in a historical romance novel.
The silken brush of his hot lips makes every part of me tighten up against my will, and I clench my thighs.
Sadly, my pussy has no conscience. Heartless killers are apparently her jam. It’s totally that historical romance thing he just did. That’s all.
I try to take back command of my hand, but he’s stronger and holds tight, dipping his head, speaking so that only I can hear. “But you and I, Luna? We’ve just begun.”
It’s a warning.
It’s a threat.
It’s a promise.
And it settles inside me like a stone as he leads me out of Club Venere. As the autumn air hits my face when we venture into the late-afternoon sunshine, realization hits me with stunning clarity.
I’m going to have to fight my way out of this.
Or die trying.