Chapter 31
CHIARA
My eyes pry awake, and my body tries to follow suit, but the headache at my left temple makes it harder.
Confusion settles in the depths of my cluttered mind, and as I try to lift a hand to rub my eyes, I can’t move my arm.
What the…?
I pull my wrist, then the other, causing my shoulders to ache. When I yank again, something cuts into my wrists and the realization hits: I’m tied up.
Again.
Fighting through the heaviness in my eyelids, I come to find myself sitting on a chair in a large, slightly darkened room, my arms twisted backward, bound behind me.
I can’t tell where I am, but it’s eerily cold, devoid of life. It doesn’t feel like I’m in someone’s house.
“Hello?” I whisper, my voice scratchy. “Where the hell are you, Daddy? What is this?”
Pounding footsteps crash against the floor.
Looming closer…and closer.
A chill runs up my arms, dread filling the crevice of my mind, taunting me with awful thoughts.
The fact that my father could do this to me should not shock me, yet it does. On some subconscious level, I’m still a girl who wants her daddy’s love.
“So nice to see you again, my darling daughter.” My father’s tone drips in bitterness.
My vision is a little blurry, but I can make out his figure in the shadowy darkness, marching over to where I helplessly sit.
“What the hell are you doing?” I spit out. “What kind of father does this to his child?”
His laugh is cold and conniving, crawling over my skin like a snake readying itself for a bite.
“Ah, I’m your father now, am I?” In the hollowness of the room, he sounds like he’s talking through a speaker. “Was I your father when you betrayed me by giving that scum my location, or at the least the location you assumed I’d be at?”
How the hell did he know it was me? Dom promised he’d never say anything. It had to be Miles.
Regardless of who he pretended to be, I refuse to believe Dom would purposely put me in harm’s way by telling my father something he swore he wouldn’t. The man I slept with truly cared for me. I felt it when he touched me, when his lips worshiped me. It was real.
“Yes, Chiara. I know everything.” He takes a few more steps forward and turns on a light above me, shining brightly over my eyes. I see him better now, his loafers almost touching my feet. “You’re no daughter of mine. You showed your loyalty.”
My brows twist with vile disdain.
He snickers. “I knew you were listening to my conversation when you came by the house. I intended for you to hear every word, wanting to see what you’d do with it once Dom took you like I suspected he would.”
“You don’t deserve my loyalty. You never did.” Balling my fists, I contain the anger wasting away my very heart. “I heard what you said. He recorded you when you told him to kill me, promising to do it yourself if you had to.”
I spit at his shoes. Before I can say another word, his palm connects harshly against my cheek, my skin flaming with searing pain.
“You’re a fucking whore, like your mother was. Betraying me like she did.” He lowers his face to mine, his hand snaking up, his fingers squeezing my neck until I can’t breathe.
My eyes bulge. My chest tightens with agonizing pain, my fingers scraping at nothing but air. “Do you know how much worse it is that you betrayed me to that family?”
He drops his hand and my chest heaves with hurried breaths, clawing for every ounce of air I can draw into my lungs.
“My mother wasn’t…”
Inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
“She wasn’t a whore, you asshole!” I say, my words marred with vitriol.
“She was a fucking whore. That’s why I killed her.”
My eyes bulge as violent tremors rock my entire body, tears swelling, collapsing down my face.
“No,” I cry with a shaky voice, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment from the room now spinning, my tone betraying all the confidence I had moments before. “Why? How could you take her from me?”
He pulls a chair and places it before me, sitting down.
“She never told you what she was planning with him, did she?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I sniffle.
He laughs, and it’s one of those purely evil ones.
“You may have been sneaking around with the baker’s son, but your mother was all about the baker.”
My head tips to the side, a fluttery, heavy feeling filling the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t look so surprised.” He leans back in the chair, all smug. “I knew everything she was doing, what you were doing, going to that bakery to see that boy. I only let you continue because I knew soon enough he’d be gone from your life.”
“What the hell do you mean, gone?”
“You see, when I found out your mother was telling Dominic’s father our personal business and getting his help to run away, I set out a plan to kill her and kill Francesco’s entire family.”
I suck in a rough breath, my body breaking out in a tremor, tingles forming over every inch of my skin.
“How could you want to kill innocent children? Wha-what is wrong with you?” I stammer with shattered words.
“Blame your slut mother!” he bellows. “It wasn’t good enough to spill our secrets, but she decided to fuck him too.
Placing a bug in her handbag was the best thing I did.
I’d hear every word, every time they were together in the back of his bakery.
The whore couldn’t fuck him anywhere else.
” His chuckle slithers up my arms like a creepy snake.
“Can you imagine going from me to that lowlife?”
His features bend with revulsion, as though he really thinks he’s better than Francesco.
“You didn’t let her do anything! She was a prisoner! I’m glad she had someone to spend her time with instead of the likes of you.”
“You little bitch!” His palm hits me harder than the undercurrent of his tone.
“I feel sorry for you.” I grit my teeth. “You’re not even human. Hell, you’re not even an animal. You’re something worse.”
And then it hits me… He must’ve killed someone from Dominic’s family. This is what this whole thing is about. Oh, my God…
“What have you done?” I whisper. “Who did you kill other than…”
It’s hard to get the word out, too painful to say out loud.
“Other than your slut mother? None other than Francesco himself, but not before I put a bullet into his little Matteo.”
A heavy pounding of tears wells into my eyes.
“No!” I scream, my heart squeezing tight under the imaginary weight of his fist. “No, no, no.” The heavy sobs wreck me, my shoulders shaking. “You didn’t. Not that sweet baby.”
“Don’t worry. I made it quick.” A callous smile crosses his face.
Nausea churns in my stomach and I try hard to keep it down. No wonder Dominic is so desperate to kill them all. The urge to do it myself rises from the depths of my grief.
“Your uncle Agnelo was more than willing to off them both, but I needed to be the one to pull the trigger. I needed Francesco to know I, Faro Bianchi, was the one who took his son away, and if it weren’t for Dominic and the other boys running away, I would’ve killed them too.”
I cry violently, not caring how weak it makes me in front of this demon.
“But at least before his death…” he continues, ignoring my tears. “Francesco thought all his sons would die. He had no reason to doubt me, considering one of his sons was bleeding before his eyes.”
My uncle Agnelo is as evil as my father.
They all are, really, but he lacks the same humanity my father lacks.
The older I got, the more I saw it. His daughter, Aida, might as well be a stranger to Raquel and me.
We never saw her growing up, except at family functions.
She didn’t even go to school with us. He had her homeschooled.
I often wanted to find a way to speak to her in private, but I never did.
I was afraid her father would find out and get angry at her because of me.
“There’s something not right with you,” I tell my father with a shaky breath.
“Shut your damn mouth!” He rises to his feet. “You don’t speak to me that way!”
His jaw clenches, teeth baring before he reaches into his pocket and takes out his cell. He moves back a step and starts typing.
He glances up at me through narrowed slits of his eyes.
“You, my daughter, are as good as dead. Your betrayal is the final nail on your coffin. And Dominic will watch you fall before I kill him, just like your mother did, seeing her lover dead.” His mouth curls into a sneer. “It’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?”
“No! I won’t let you hurt him!” I pull on my binds, rattling the chair, trying to find a way to loosen my hands, but it’s too tight.
He reaches his other hand behind him and pulls out a handgun, pointing it right at me, his glare as deadly as the weapon.
“What do you think you’re gonna do about it?”
DOMINIC
“Find her!”
I slam my fist against the desk, shattering the decanter full of whiskey in the process. I watch as the honey-colored liquid drips onto the floor, the glass scattered across my desk in large fragments.
“We looked everywhere for both Chiara and Miles, but—”
“There’s no but!” I explode at Enzo. “You find them.”
He stands from the leather armchair in my office, clasping me on the shoulder.
When I look up, the icy glare I know that’s smeared on my face has him sitting back down.
It’s been hours, and there’s not even a hint of where she could be. Miles would’ve found a way to call by now. He’s either dead or he’s been working for Faro all along. The mere thought has me seething, the rage twisting in my gut like a blade.
If he hurt Chiara, I will end him myself. I’ll enjoy hearing his screams right along with Faro’s as I burn both of their bodies to the very ground.
And if she’s dead, if I did this to her, I’ll put a bullet in my own brain. If it wasn’t for my lies, she’d still be here with me, under my fucking protection.
When I found her note, I read it so many times, the words blurred into one another.
Her pain oozed through each letter. I feel it in my heart still. My pulse grips around my throat, the sharp pain radiating down my arm.