Chapter Forty-five #2
I crack him across the face with the back of the gun, the sound of bone against steel echoing in the room. His chair topples, crashing to the floor, blood spraying from his mouth.
“I didn’t kill your father!” John spits, coughing, eyes wild.
“Then who did?” My voice is calm, too calm. The kind of calm that comes before a storm ripping everything apart.
Thomas finally speaks, his voice gravel. “None of us killed your father.”
A bitter laugh tears from my throat. “Bullshit.”
“Then why did you both give statements the day he died?” My words are sharp, knives cutting through the tension. Their eyes widen, they didn’t expect me to know that.
John narrows his eyes, suspicion flickering. “How do you know about that? That’s classified.”
“Answer the fucking question,” I snap.
Thomas’s jaw clenches, his shoulders stiff. “Because it was part of the plan,” he mutters.
My stomach twists. “What plan?” The words rip out of me, low and savage. I need answers. Now.
The two of them glance at each other, hesitation written across their bloodied faces. And then John breaks into laughter, manic, unhinged, cruel.
“Oh, Lorenzo…” he wheezes, blood on his teeth. “You’re chasing the wrong ghosts.” His eyes blaze with something twisted. “I fucked your mother. And she liked it so much she killed your father for me.” His grin splits his ruined face, wide and disgusting.
The words slam into me like bullets. My ears ring. The ground shifts under me. For a moment, I forget to breathe.
Beside him, Thomas shakes his head sharply, muttering, “Shut the fuck up, John.” But the damage is already done.
I stalk forward, the world narrowing to John’s grinning, blood-smeared mouth. “What the fuck did you just say?”
He leans forward as much as his restraints will allow, eyes locked on mine, daring me. “I can still remember it, her tight pussy.” The smirk deepens. “She killed your father because she wanted me. Because she couldn’t get enough.”
My vision fractures, black spots dancing at the edges. He’s lying. He has to be lying. But my mother’s glassy eyes, her whispered apologies every time I went to Florence, slam back into my memory, shoving doubt into my chest like a knife.
John snarls through the blood coating his lips. “I am the Chief of the FBI! You think you can scare me? You’ll pay for this!” He spits onto the floor, his arrogance dripping from every syllable.
Thomas turns to him, furious. “Shut the fuck up, John!”
But I can’t hear them anymore. The room feels like it’s caving in, their voices muffled under the roar of blood in my ears.
“Go on,” I whisper, my tone deadly calm. “Say it again.”
John grins, unhinged. “I fucked your mother. She loved it. She killed your father and begged me to cover it up.”
Impossible. It has to be.
Without thinking, I slam the muzzle of my gun against John’s temple. The steel is cold, unforgiving, pressing into his skin like a promise. My hand doesn’t tremble. My heart, though, hammers against my ribs, each beat like a drum calling me to war.
There are two of them in front of me. One already half-slumped, slipping in and out of consciousness. One still awake, still breathing. I only need one of them to talk.
“Disrespecting my mother? Wrong move.”
I pull the trigger.
The blast tears through the basement, shaking the walls. John’s head snaps back, splitting open in a grotesque spray of blood and bone. His body jerks once, then collapses sideways with the chair, lifeless. The metallic tang of blood fills the air instantly, thick and suffocating.
Thomas stares at the corpse beside him, his mouth slack, eyes wide with naked terror.
He’s pale, his chest heaving against the restraints.
Andres, behind the glass, stiffens in silence, he hadn’t expected me to end it so fast. Neither had Thomas.
But that’s what they never understand about me.
I am not predictable. I don’t wait. I don’t bluff.
I crouch down, my boots scraping against the blood-slick concrete. Calmly, almost tenderly, I drag the side of my gun along Thomas’s pristine suit, smearing John’s blood across the expensive fabric. A red signature. A warning.
“Thomas,” I say, my voice low, steady, edged with steel. “As you can see, there isn’t much patience left in me.” My vision darkens at the edges; my pulse roars in my ears like a storm about to break.
I straighten and press the gun hard against his chest, right above his racing heart.
“You think I give a fuck who you are? Or about the dead piece of shit leaking onto your shoes?” My lips twist into a cruel smile.
“You might think I’d hesitate because you’re Serena’s father.
But that’s the exact reason I should put a bullet through your skull.
Kill you, and all my problems disappear in one shot. ”
His whole body goes rigid. His throat bobs as he swallows, his eyes darting like a cornered animal.
“So fucking talk,” I growl, each word measured, deliberate, heavy with threat.
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off, tapping the gun against his sternum with a slow, taunting rhythm.
“And don’t waste my time with lies. You saw how easily I put him down.
” I nod toward John’s crumpled body, blood pooling like spilled wine on the floor.
“It’ll be even easier to make you vanish.
And when you do, when the earth swallows you whole, I’ll still be here.
And I’ll still have her. My girl. Your daughter. And you’ll rot knowing she’s mine.”
Something flickers in his expression then, not just fear, but something darker. Something closer to shame.
He lifts his head, blood dripping from his ruined face, and his voice comes out rough, trembling but forced steady.
“He was right about what he said,” Thomas rasps, his eyes darting between me and John’s lifeless body on the floor. Then he hesitates, as if the words are poison in his throat. “But… not entirely right.”
Every muscle in me coils. My finger curls against the trigger again, hungry for another release. “Keep talking,” I grind out, the words tasting like iron.
Thomas swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, sweat sliding down his temple. “John was with your mother,” he says slowly. “But not how he told you. He wasn’t her lover. He was obsessed. Sick in the head. He forced himself on her. Again and again. He didn’t give her a choice.”
The world narrows. My ears scream with that high-pitched ringing that always comes when rage claws its way up my throat. Raped. He raped her. My mother. The one person I swore to protect, even in memory. If looks could kill, every single person in this room would already be a corpse.
Thomas’s voice cracks as he rushes to explain himself. “Four weeks later, she found out she was pregnant, with his child.”
My lungs seize. My hand tightens on the gun, so hard my knuckles bleach bone-white.
Ian. The bastard’s words echo in my skull, a poison I can’t spit out.
No mother’s name on the birth certificate.
Just John’s. A hollow laugh dies in my throat.
My voice is barely more than a whisper. “Ian… he doesn’t have a mother listed.
Are you telling me…?” My chest tightens, nausea rising. “Is he my fucking brother?”
Thomas’s silence is louder than a scream. His eyes drop. That’s all I need.
“Yes,” he finally breathes, the admission leaving him like a man signing his own death warrant.
“Your mother tried to stop it. She begged me to help. She wanted John gone. She wanted her son back. But John wouldn’t let go.
I… I didn’t help. I used it. I thought I could use it to make your father bend, to bring him closer into our fold.
” His face twists, shame and fear colliding.
“But she… she broke. Your father told me. She started seeing John everywhere, every shadow, every touch. She relived it, over and over. She was drowning in it.”
My jaw locks so hard it hurts. My pulse is a snarl inside my head.
“And that night,” Thomas whispers, his voice dropping into something that sounds almost like a prayer, “she snapped. She thought your father was him. She thought she was defending herself. She… she killed him, Lorenzo. And then she called John. Begged him to make it disappear. She promised him her shares in the Moretti Estates if he covered it up. That’s why we gave our statements.
That’s why it looked like a heart attack. ”
The room tilts, the concrete beneath my boots turning unsteady. My chest is a hollow cage collapsing in on itself.
Thomas keeps talking, words spilling in a rush as if silence would damn him.
“But she didn’t honor it. She transferred everything to you instead, through Giovanni’s lawyer.
That’s why she vanished to Florence. To hide from John.
To keep Ian from her. But your father…” Thomas’s voice cracks.
“Your father died because of us. Not because we killed him with our own hands, but because of what we forced on her. We destroyed her mind, and she destroyed him.”
I stare at him, but I can’t see him anymore. My father’s face is all I see, his laugh, his hand on my shoulder, the way he danced with my mother in the kitchen at 2 a.m. And then I see John’s filthy grin. His words.
My stomach churns. My vision is a smear of blood, tears, and rage.
“Does Ian know?” I ask, my voice low, dangerous, every syllable cutting through the room like glass.
Thomas shakes his head, his eyes darting, his lips trembling. “No… no, he doesn’t. He thinks his mother died the day he was born. He doesn’t know the truth.”
Good. Because if it’s true… if that bastard shares my blood… I don’t want it. I don’t want him.
But the truth doesn’t soothe me. It burns. It eats. It tears holes in my chest until all that’s left is the echo of a man who once had a father worth loving.
And now, all I can think is how much I want to put a bullet in Thomas Beaumont’s skull, and how much I want to burn the world until nothing of the Archibalds is left.
Even with John’s blood staining the floor, even with his skull split open like a warning, I feel nothing. No release. No justice. No fucking closure.
The truth is worse than any bullet I could’ve put in him.
My father is dead because they destroyed my mother, because they crushed her when she begged for help, because they twisted her mind until she couldn’t tell nightmare from reality.
That’s why she hides away in Florence, drowning herself in pills, clinging to sanity like it’s slipping through her fingers.
That’s why she whispered I’m sorry a thousand times when I spoke to her.
She wasn’t apologizing for leaving me. She was apologizing for killing him.
And I can’t fucking take it.
The back of my eyes burn, my chest caves, but I refuse to cry. I don’t want this truth. I wanted blood. Revenge. Something clean, something simple. A name, a face, a target. Not this twisted hell of a broken family.
I move before I think. My fist slams into Thomas’s face.
There’s a sickening crunch, the sound of his nose shattering under my knuckles, and he screams through blood.
It’s not enough. Nothing is enough. I wanted a reason to end him, not the story of how my mother was destroyed, how my father died because of it.
“Fuck!” The word tears out of me as I hit him again, and again, my knuckles splitting, his face caving under each blow. All I see is red, all I hear is the thunder of my pulse, all I feel is rage tearing me apart from the inside.
Strong arms lock around me, dragging me back. Andres. His voice cuts through the haze, sharp, controlled. “Let him go. We still need to deal with the other problem.”
But I can’t. I don’t want to let go. My body thrashes against him, desperate to break free, to finish what I started.
Then Lev storms in, wild eyes bouncing from me to the carnage. “What the fuck happened?” His gaze snaps to John’s corpse sprawled in his own blood, skull cracked open, brain matter painting the floor.
Andres tightens his grip on me, keeping me restrained. My chest heaves, sweat dripping down my spine, blood all over my hands.
“Fuck this!” I snarl, shoving Andres off me with everything I’ve got. I lunge at Thomas again, raining fists on his broken face, his blood spraying with each hit. My knuckles are raw, but I don’t care. I want him to choke on his teeth. I want him to bleed until he’s nothing but a stain.
Then—
A scream cuts through the basement like a blade.
“No!”
My world stops.
My head snaps toward the door, and there she is. Serena. Her eyes wide, her face streaked with tears, her voice shattering as guards hold her back.
She’s watching me. Watching me for what I really am. A monster. Covered in blood, fists raised, ready to kill her father right in front of her.
And for the first time tonight, I feel something.
Shame. Rage. And the unbearable fear that I’ve just lost her forever.