Chapter 8 #5
“I thought...” My mind scrambled uselessly. “One of his brothers. Or a cousin. Someone distant.”
A bitter smirk curved his mouth. “That’s what he wanted you to believe.”
My head shook slowly, denial warring with the sickening sense of truth clawing its way in. “No. He wouldn’t. He loved her. He loved my mother.”
Ruslan’s eyes hardened. “Men like your father love only power.”
He leaned back slightly, gaze never leaving mine. “I killed Al-Chapo. I dismantled most of his inner circle. But his network was vast. Deep. And ironically, your father was one of his most loyal allies—his financier, his strategist. The man who kept the money clean and the blood invisible.”
The room tilted harder now, nausea crawling up my throat.
“No,” I whispered. “You’re lying.”
“I don’t lie about things like this.”
I pressed my palms to my temples, as if I could physically push the truth away.
Memories surfaced unbidden—my father’s frequent absences, the coded phone calls he’d end abruptly when I entered the room, the way he’d insisted on private flights, private doctors, private schools.
The paranoia I’d mistaken for protectiveness.
“He let me believe he was dead,” I said hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“He let me grieve him,” I whispered. “Let me bury him.”
“Yes.”
“And my sister?” My voice cracked completely. “Did she know?”
Ruslan didn’t answer immediately.
That silence told me everything.
A sob tore out of my chest—raw, broken, humiliating. I folded forward, forehead pressing to my knees, breath coming in jagged gasps.
“My whole life,” I whispered. “It was all a lie.”
“Your family,” he went on, voice steady. “And your ex-fiancé’s family. Along with the other three of California’s five dominant syndicates.”
He leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on his thighs, eyes fixed on mine without blinking.
“They were all tied to Al-Chapo—money laundering, logistics, shell corporations, political cover. Different roles, same disease.”
He paused, letting it sink in.
“That is why they want me gone. Why they are hunting me.”
A faint, humorless curve touched his mouth.
“They tell themselves it’s because I came to California to build a sixth throne. That’s the lie they’re comfortable with.”
His gaze hardened.
“The truth is simpler. If I killed Al-Chapo and took his empire, then I also inherited his knowledge. His ledgers. His connections.”
He straightened slightly.
“And they know their names are written all over them.”
The room felt smaller. The air thinner.
“I didn’t come to California to start a war,” he said, his tone flat, almost bored. “Wars are loud. Messy. This is neither.”
His eyes stayed on me, unblinking.
“I came for one thing only—to find the woman who murdered Maria.”
A pause. Precise. Controlled.
“I haven’t found her yet.”
Then, softly—lethally:
“But I found you.”
The words landed like iron.
“As long as you remain in my custody,” he went on, calm as a man discussing logistics, “your sister will not stay hidden. She will feel you like a hook in her ribs. She will surface.”
His mouth curved, not quite a smile.
“And when she does,” he finished calmly, “divorce will no longer matter. You will be free to go. Free to live whatever remains of your life.”
My stomach twisted. Free? Free from what? Free from him? Or free from the weight of a sister’s sins I had never committed? I realized in that instant—I wasn’t just his wife. I was a hostage, a living instrument to draw my sister out of hiding.
Every breath I took, every step I made, was a tether in his plan.
“I... she wouldn’t do that,” I whispered, barely audible, the words trembling with disbelief.
My throat burned, my chest tightened. “She’s not capable of it. You’re wrong—she couldn’t... she wouldn’t hurt anyone like that.”
Ruslan’s gaze didn’t waver.
His voice dropped lower, steady, each word measured like a scalpel.
“Be concerned about your father,” he said, “the one you thought dead, the one who watched you suffer in silence all these years. Getting your inheritance? Impossible. He’s alive.
Unlike Harris’s father. Harris would have gained control of his family’s fortune by marrying you.
You? You would see nothing. Not a single cent.
Your father is the one who stands to benefit. ”
He leaned forward slightly, the weight of his presence pressing into me, unrelenting.
“Let this be the last time you defend that... sister of yours. You weren’t there.
You didn’t see what I saw. A woman punching my sister—over, and over, even after she was dead.
Even after her chest stopped moving. You didn’t see the cold, the obsession, the cruelty. You weren’t in the room. But I was.”
He leaned back, letting the silence stretch until it hurt.
The words crushed me.
Ten years.
Ten years of sleeping on concrete. Of eating from dumpsters behind bakeries and grocery stores. Of washing myself in public bathrooms, of scrubbing floors until my hands cracked and bled. Ten years of believing I was an orphan. Of believing the family fortune had died with my parents.
All while my multimillionaire father watched.
Alive.
Breathing.
The betrayal was so immense it felt like drowning—lungs burning, chest tight, no surface in sight.
Yes—my father and I never shared the kind of warm, effortless bond other girls talked about in hushed, envious tones.
There were no bedtime stories read at the edge of my bed, no gentle kisses on scraped knees, no soft reassurances whispered in the dark. But he wasn’t always the monster. At least... not then. Not entirely.
Kneeling on the cold marble floor of the suite, the chill seeping through my knees and into my bones, I found myself clinging to those memories like fragments of glass—sharp, painful, but proof that something real had once existed.
Proof that he hadn’t always been hollow.
I remembered being nine years old, during one of the harshest winters California had seen in years.
The cold had been unnatural, biting, the kind that crept under doors and settled in your lungs.
A vicious flu had torn through the city, and I’d been one of its unlucky victims.
For days I lay trapped in my childhood bed, skin burning, chest rattling with each shallow breath.
Every cough felt like it might split me in two.
I remember my mother—my real mother, before fear and secrets hollowed her out—hovering over me, eyes red-rimmed, hands trembling as she pressed cool cloths to my forehead.
She begged him to call a doctor.
He waved it off at first. “It’s just a bug,” he’d said curtly, already halfway down the hall toward his study. “Kids get sick.”
But that night, as snow lashed against the windows like furious spirits and the house groaned under the weight of the storm, the front door slammed open.
I remember the sound vividly.
Heavy footsteps. The sharp intake of cold air. And then him—standing there in the entryway, coat dusted white with snow, hair damp, cheeks flushed red from the wind.
He was holding a large, awkward box against his chest like it might slip from his grasp at any moment.
He didn’t explain.
He simply carried it into my room, set it down, and began assembling it with rough, efficient movements. A portable nebulizer—the exact model our family doctor had recommended weeks earlier, the one my mother had said we couldn’t afford.
“Here,” he’d muttered gruffly, plugging it in. “Breathe.”
That was it.
No hug. No soft words. But when the machine hummed to life and the medicated mist eased into my lungs, when the crushing tightness finally began to loosen, relief flooded me so powerfully I cried.
And for the first time, as I watched him adjust the tubing with surprising care, I saw him as something other than the distant figure who barked orders and vanished behind locked doors.
For one fragile moment, he had chosen me over everything else.
Then there was my thirteenth birthday.
I’d woken that morning to silence. No balloons. No breakfast waiting downstairs. Just an empty house and the familiar ache of being forgotten.
School had been torture—classmates whispering about parties, comparing gifts, laughing about plans I wasn’t part of. I’d kept my head down all day, counting the hours until I could crawl back into bed and pretend it wasn’t my birthday at all.
When I got home, the house was dark.
Every light was off.
I remember thinking, stupidly, Of course. They forgot.
But the moment I flipped the switch—
“Surprise!”
The room exploded into noise and color. Streamers cascaded from the ceiling. Balloons bounced across the floor. Music blared. A massive cake sat on the table—shaped like a princess castle, complete with turrets and sugar flowers. My secret obsession. One I’d never admitted out loud.
My father stood near the back of the room, arms crossed, watching my reaction like he was bracing for impact.
He’d invited my entire class. Every single one. He’d tracked down parents through the school directory, arranged rides, ordered food, coordinated everything with military precision. Pizza boxes lined the counter. Presents were stacked haphazardly, wrapped in glittering paper that caught the light.
For once, laughter filled our house.
For once, I felt... normal.
He even joined in—awkwardly tossing a balloon back and forth, missing half the catches, scowling when kids laughed and then surprising everyone by laughing too. When it came time to blow out the candles, he stood close behind me, clearing his throat like he didn’t quite know where to put his hands.
“Happy birthday, kiddo,” he’d muttered, ruffling my hair with uncharacteristic clumsiness.
I’d never felt so seen.
Those moments didn’t erase the years of distance. They didn’t excuse the coldness, the control, the silence. But they mattered. They rooted themselves deep inside me, stubborn and aching, refusing to reconcile with the man Ruslan described.
That was what shattered me now.
Because monsters aren’t supposed to do things like that.