Chapter 24
Aron
I groan and try to lift my head, get a sense of my surroundings, but my fucking skull feels like it weighs fifty pounds. Any movement brings stabbing pain to my temples, and my thoughts are sluggish.
Great. I’ve been drugged. But by whom? Last I remember, I was safely asleep with Matt.
Nobody should have been able to get near me, let alone slip something in my food or drink.
Hell, even a syringe is unlikely, because Matt would’ve woken up at the slightest sound in the room.
I’ve seen him jerk out of a sound sleep for much less than the uncapping of a needle.
While I ponder the hows of my capture, I try to work free of my bonds.
There’s enough rope around my arms to strangle an elephant, knotted several times, and my legs are similarly bound.
The only thing keeping me and my fifty-pound skull up is the fact that I’m roped to a rigid steel chair, which seems to be bolted to the floor.
I certainly can’t move it by shifting my weight or trying to scoot it closer to the only door I can see in the bare, steel-walled room.
That door opens a second later, and the light from beyond creates enough shadows on my captor’s face that I can’t make out any details. I don’t need to, though.
I’d recognize Dad’s silhouette anywhere.
“Hello, son.”
“Yo, pops, wassup?” My words come out slurred, likely an aftereffect from the drugs. “Long time no see. Vi’lated anyone’s trust lately?”
“Speaking of violated …” Dad steps further into the room, and the single overhead bulb casts a pallid glow on his tan skin “I heard some disturbing things about the goings-on at the Syndicate since my—shall we say—departure.”
“Since you killed Tito.”
Dad waves a dismissive hand. “That’s a trifling matter compared to what’s happened to you, son.
” He squats in front of me, bringing himself to eye level.
“I hear that you’ve been sinning, Aron my boy.
You’ve let that sick fuck Matteo sodomize you, corrupt you.
Now, I can forgive you for that, but it’s going to take some work to get God to forgive you. ”
I snort with laughter. “I thought God was the forgiving sort. What do I need to do, anyway? Fifty Hail Marys, maybe a hundred Our Fathers? Think that’ll square me up?”
The smack of Dad’s backhand to my face echoes in the bare room.
I spit a mouthful of blood in Dad’s face. “You’re right. That won’t work at all because I fully intend to go right back to Matt when I get out of here. You have to actually be repentant to repent, right?”
Dad sits back on his heels with a wicked grin plastered on his scarred face.
“I know what will bring you back to God. I have something that’ll stop you from going back to the Syndicate.
Keep you here, help me build my Empire. Father and son, the way it’s meant to be.
My Empire will be a family business, with my son and granddaughter following in my footsteps. ”
Rage burns through the remnants of the drug as Dad mentions Emily’s child.
“You fucking murdered your granddaughter, Dad, or did you forget that?”
Javier Martinez blinks blankly for a moment, then grins. “Oh, is that what he told you?”
“Matt didn’t need to tell me anything! I fucking watched it happen, Dad, watched my wife and unborn child get blown up by your fucking bombs!”
“Is that what you think you saw?”
Tears stream down my face. “I saw Emily go in the house, and I saw the fucking house explode. This isn’t some fucking movie, Dad. People don’t survive that shit.”
“They do if they exit before the explosions.”
Dad’s nuts. He’s gone fucking batshit. There’s no way Emily could have gotten out in time. Hell, Matt barely had time to warn me. How could she have known about the bombs? How could she have had the foresight to—
—To walk straight through and out the back door.
But that doesn’t make sense. For Emily to escape, she would have had to know. She would’ve needed a body double, some poor, pregnant sacrifice to take her place in the explosion.
She would’ve had to murder an innocent woman. An innocent child.
That’s not who Emily was. She wasn’t vicious, wasn’t evil. She was good and kind and—
I look at the next silhouette to appear in the doorway …
… And I realize I was a fool.
“Hello, baby,” Emily says as she strides into the room with our daughter in her arms. “I’ve missed you.”
To be continued in Wicked Prince …