Chapter Thirty-Four
Pacino
Iswore I’d never fall in love again. That I’d never let another woman become so important that I would risk everything like I did with Joanna.
And for so long, I’d been certain my heart didn’t exist anymore.
It shattered into a million pieces as I held Joanna while she took her last breath at the hands of my family.
But then came Phoebe. She hit me like a ton of bricks, and I’ve been helpless to fight against it since the day I met her. I tried, but it was futile. She’s the one I’ve been waiting for, and she needs me as much as I need her.
I walk outside with John to get on my bike, but he stops me. “She’s different.”
“She’s perfect,” I snap.
“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. You got out of the life, and I don’t blame you for it. It makes sense you’d find someone to fit your new lifestyle.”
There’s not much to say to that, so I just nod and follow him to an empty warehouse. It gives me a sick pleasure as I climb off my motorcycle that Father won’t be comfortable in any way before he dies.
It’s exactly what he deserves.
Blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth as I walk up to where he’s sitting on a chair, his hands and feet bound. He’s taken a decent beating, but they’ve gone easy. Probably because of his condition.
“Father.”
Tanner walks in after me, and I frown. He shrugs. “If I’m taking over, I should be here.”
No, he wants to give our father a small comfort of not being alone to die at the hands of enemies. Maybe he shouldn’t be the head of the family after all.
“You can stop this,” Father says.
“No, I really can’t,” I say. “The commission ordered this.”
“You don’t live the life anymore. You don’t have to listen to them.”
Bending forward, I stand just inches from his face and smile. “Yeah, I know. Because if they’d denied my request, I would’ve turned you fucking inside out for what you did to Joanna and now Phoebe.”
“I am your father!”
“Yeah, and I’m going to tell you the same thing you said to me as I held the love of my life in my arms after she died. At your hands. Life’s tough. Get tougher.”
“That was sanctioned!”
Snorting, I shake my head and stand up. “What the fuck could they have thought she was capable of?”
“Because she was only involved with you so John could kill you!”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. At least, it’s how it started,” John admits.
Whipping my head toward him, I glare. “What?”
“You were the strongest in the family, and your father was growing more and more unpredictable. I just needed to make it look like an accident, and your father would unravel,” he says. “Then, when he lost it, we’d be given the order to take him out.”
Everything I’ve thought—everything I’ve become—was a lie?
No, this can’t be true. Joanna loved me. We planned to run away together. There’s no way it was just to get me alone to let her father kill me.
“No,” I say and back up. “Joanna… She wouldn’t…”
But his brothers all wear the same look. My entire life has been a lie.
“She did. I had men study your routine, and she knew where to cross paths with you. You weren’t like your father, and I knew your rebellion would allow Joanna to lure you in. Relax the guard that was nearly impenetrable.”
“She never loved me?”
He lets out a long breath. “She wasn’t supposed to, but she did. The plan was underway, and I had a date to kill you. Jo wanted me to call it off, but I said no.”
“That’s why she wanted to run away,” I say.
“She told me she’d sacrifice herself if I didn’t call it off. I went around her, changing the plans. I didn’t want to see you as the man my daughter loved. I needed you to be the son of my enemy.”
My head spins with this information. It all started as a plot to kill me, but she threatened to risk her life for mine. When did it stop being a lie?
“I bribed one of his guys when I found out about you and Jo, and he told me the plan,” Father says. “I wasn’t going to let you die, so I took it to the commission. They told me to take out his daughter. He needed to learn a lesson.”
“That’s why the revenge was denied,” I mutter. “And no one fucking said a goddamn word?”
Tanner clears his throat. “I told them not to tell you how it started. You were in a rough way as it was, but that would have destroyed you.”
I laugh and stare at him. Maybe he is cut out to be in charge after all. “Like I wasn’t already destroyed?”
“See, son? Everything I did was for you,” Father says.
“Yeah? How was kidnapping and drugging Phoebe for me?”
“It was a means to an end. We were never going to hurt her—”
“Bullshit. You forget that I fucking know you. I may have left, but you never changed. You’re not capable of it.”
He coughs and struggles against his restraints. “Tucker, please—”
“You know, this is why I want nothing to do with this fucking life. If the commission had come to me, told me the full story, and asked what I wanted, you wouldn’t fucking be here right now. Either of you. But they decide what they see as justice. Fuck them, and fuck you, too. All of you.”
Reaching out, I yank his oxygen from his nose, tearing the tube to prevent it from being used again. The coughing and wheezing worsens, and he stares with wide eyes.
“You don’t deserve any kind of luxury. If I had my way, you’d sit here until you suffocated. But I’m not in charge. Why I’m trusting a man who got his own daughter killed because he wanted to use me as a pawn, I have no idea, but I’m fucking done.”
John steps forward. “I apologize, Tucker. Sincerely.”
“You apologize?” I snort. “That all you got to say to me?”
“I took the love of your life away. I’m the reason I lost my daughter. It’s been eating away at me that you saw me as an ally after everything that happened and knowing the truth of what I did.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Everything I believed and mourned was nothing. Joanna may have loved me, but everything we had started out as a way to lure me into a trap. To end my life. All because her father wanted to kill mine.
I was just a means to an end.
Like Phoebe.
“Joanna did love you,” Jacob says.
Joanna’s younger brother, and her closest confidant, steps forward. If she told anyone the truth about anything, it would be him. But how much can I trust this family?
“She came to me in tears when she realized she’d screwed up and fallen in love. It wasn’t the plan, but you weren’t what she thought. What any of us thought.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He tries to reach out to me, but I slap his hand away. They’re all fucking lucky I don’t knock them out and set this place on fire with everyone in it. Commission approval be damned.
“When Dad told her he wasn’t going to stop the hit on your life, she needed money to help her run away with you. She was never happier than she was with you, and she saw you as her future.”
“That doesn’t mean as much as it used to,” I say. “You know, considering she was only with me to help me get dead and all.”
Sighing, he nods. “I understand. But don’t hold it against her. She vowed she’d die for you, and she did.”
“That was your fucking fault!” I scream. “I’ve hated my father every minute of every day since she died. I killed my own brother. And I’ve handed my father over to you. And all of this happened because of you fucking idiots!”
“Let me go,” Father wheezes. “We’ll get revenge our own way—”
“Ryan stole twelve grand from Phoebe. He and his men broke into her bakery and tried to take her. Then he kidnapped her at gunpoint after hiring junkies to occupy me by attacking my business. You get nothing from me.”
He sniffles. “Tucker, please. I… can’t… breathe.”
“Good,” I growl. “You all deserve each other. I’m fucking done. Every one of you is dead to me.”
“Tuck—”
“Don’t. I get where you were coming from, Tanner, but I’m tired of being lied to. By everyone. Better mind your business because I’m not helping if you fuck up and end up with a bounty on your head. I saved your life once by convincing them to give you the family. That’s all you get.”
Tanner just gives a curt nod before stepping back into the corner. There’s some sympathy for John and his sons, but at the end of the day, Joanna died because he wanted me dead.
They’re all equally responsible.
Father continues to struggle, and his lips turn blue. I lean down and smile in his face. “I want you to think about how Joanna struggled to breathe as I held her after you and Ryan slashed her to pieces. How he didn’t stop when I stepped in the way. She couldn’t breathe, either.”
“Tucker…”
“See you in hell, Father.”
I straighten up, turn on my heel, and I can’t get out of this warehouse fast enough. Out of this goddamn city.
This isn’t my life anymore, but I don’t know what my life is now that I know the truth. Who the fuck am I?
I’m Pacino. Sergeant at arms for the Hellfire Daredevils. And Tucker to a perky blonde who loved me even when she didn’t believe I could love her back.
My life waits for me back in Gravelton, and I need to get home as fast as fucking possible. I’ve been living on pause for too long, and it’s time to start living again.
And it’s all thanks to my Yellow Crayon.