Chapter 13 #3
Everyone in the room paused.
Even Harris.
Even the soldiers.
Vasquez’s eyes drifted somewhere distant — not at me, but through memory.
“I loved her more than anything. I met her four years before we married. She was gentle. Soft. The kind of woman who made power feel irrelevant.”
His jaw tightened.
“We married. Your sister was born one year later. Then you. Then your brother.”
His fingers flexed around the baton.
“Was I not a good father?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical.
It demanded validation.
“Did I not provide? Protect? Put food on the table? Shield you all from the enemies who wanted my empire?”
His voice cracked — just slightly.
The baton lowered an inch.
His eyes locked onto mine with dangerous intensity.
“Then five months before your fifteenth birthday, your mother said she needed a vacation. Poland. She called it time alone.”
His lips thinned.
“I offered to come. Bring the kids. She refused.”
His breath grew heavier.
“Just her and your little brother.”
He swallowed.
“I allowed it. I trusted her.”
The baton trembled.
“I would have done anything to make her happy.”
He stepped closer again.
This time there was no space between rage and memory.
“She was bathing one afternoon. Her phone buzzed.”
My stomach twisted.
“I trusted her — God, I trusted her with my life. But curiosity... I glanced at the screen.”
His eyes darkened.
“Caller ID: Andrew. Polish number. The name felt foreign.”
He gave a bitter laugh.
“Then she burst out of the bathroom — robe half-on, water dripping from her hair — and saw my hand near the phone.”
His jaw clenched.
“The relief on her face when she realized I hadn’t answered... that look gutted me.”
He suddenly slammed the baton into the marble floor.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Crack.
The stone cracked beneath it.
“That was the first crack,” he said. “Suspicion.”
He circled me slowly now — predator analyzing prey.
“Why the panic? What was she hiding?”
His voice dropped. “Turns out... everything.”
He picked the baton up again.
Slower this time.
More controlled.
“She guarded that phone like it was classified intelligence. She slept with it under her pillow.”
My chest tightened.
“One night,” he continued, voice raw now, “she was asleep. Deep. I took it.”
His grip tightened around the weapon — as if reliving the moment.
“I opened the messages under ‘Andrew.’”
Silence.
His eyes flickered with something feral. “Months of conversations.”
My throat went dry.
“Hotel meet-ups whenever he flew in from Poland. Explicit. Graphic.”
His lip curled in disgust. “They talked about how hot the sex was.”
The words hit like physical blows. “How much she craved him.”
His gaze locked onto me again.
The room felt suffocating now.
Vasquez’s shoulders sagged — not from weakness but from memory.
“I stood there in the dark reading those messages and felt my entire world collapse.”
His jaw flexed violently.
“I could have strangled her right then.”
My breath caught.
“Could have woken her and ended it.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Instead... I put the phone back.”
His voice cracked. “Went to my study. Sat in the dark. And sobbed.”
The word sounded alien coming from him.
“Like a child. For a second — just a second — the monster disappeared. All that remained was a wounded man.”
He looked at me again.
This time not with rage.
But with betrayal.
“I never told her I knew.”
His expression hardened once more.
His fingers tightened around the baton.
He stood over me, chest rising and falling violently.
Harris stood apart from them — arms folded, expression unreadable — watching the scene with cool detachment, like a man observing a calculated execution rather than a father confronting betrayal.
“I kept pretending,” Vasquez continued after a long silence.
His voice dropped lower now, almost hoarse. “Acted like nothing had changed. Smiled at breakfast. Kissed her goodbye when she packed for Poland. Sat across from her at dinner and listened to her lie straight to my face.”
His jaw tightened.
“But inside... I was rotting.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing slowly around me as if reliving every memory.
“She didn’t notice the distance I forced between us. Didn’t question why I stopped touching her the same way. Didn’t ask why I stopped looking at her like she was mine.”
His lips twisted.
“How long had she been lying? How many times had Andrew been in our city... in our house... in our bed?”
The words exploded from him like poison.
“I endured it for weeks. Every laugh she gave the children. Every casual touch on my arm like we were still normal. I let it sit inside me — festering — until three days before her flight.”
He stopped walking.
His eyes darkened.
“I took hair samples.”
The room went quieter.
“Quietly. From you. From your sister. From your little brother.”
My stomach dropped.
“Sent them to a private laboratory under a false name. Paid in cash. No trace.”
He swallowed.
“The results came back inside a plain envelope.”
His gaze flicked to me — sharp now. “None of you were mine.”
A single tear slipped down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. He didn’t look ashamed of it either.
“The pain wasn’t anger anymore,” he said quietly. “It was annihilation.”
His voice cracked again — but this time with something colder underneath.
“I let her board that plane thinking she was going to meet her lover in Poland.”
My throat tightened.
“I had already arranged everything.”
He turned slightly, gesturing vaguely toward the sky as if the memory still hovered above us.
“A timed device in the cargo hold. Small enough to evade detection. Powerful enough to bring the aircraft down over the Atlantic.”
My breath hitched.
“I didn’t care that your brother — the boy I believed was mine — was on that plane with her.”
His jaw clenched.
“They both died by my hand.”
The words hung in the air like smoke.
“Your mother. The boy. Gone.”
My knees trembled beneath me.
His gaze snapped back to me — hard again, like steel reinforcing itself after breaking.
“And you two — the girls — I had my lawyer fabricate the story.”
He laughed once — hollow, cold, and empty.
“That I went with them to Poland on that plane... and crashed before we ever reached our destination.”
My vision blurred.
“I made sure the paperwork convinced you. Made sure you believed I was dead too.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I chased you out of the house at fifteen. Threw you into the world with nothing.”
His voice lowered to something almost personal.
“Let you think your entire life had collapsed overnight.”
He stepped closer.
“Because in my mind, you weren’t family anymore. You were proof. Reminders. Bastards wearing my name.”
The insult hit harder than the earlier blows.
“I stopped caring what happened to you.”
He pointed at me with deliberate contempt.
“Reports came back — your suffering, the streets, the hunger, the people who used you.”
His mouth curved in disgust.
“I read them.”
He leaned in slightly.
“And I thought — good.”
My chest burned.
“Let her die,” he continued.
“Let the world chew her up the way her mother chewed up my marriage.”
His gaze shifted briefly — calculating — as if recalling another name.
“When Ruslan started hunting your sister...”
He shrugged. “I didn’t interfere.”
The confession was colder than the rest.
“Let him find her. Let him end her.”
His eyes hardened again.
“She wasn’t mine either.”
The words felt like another execution.
My mouth tasted like copper and rage. I swallowed blood and forced my voice to steady itself.
“So you punish us for her sins?”
My hands trembled — but I forced my chin up.
“Mom cheated. Mom lied. We were children. Innocent.”
Vasquez’s expression twisted.
“You’re bastards,” he spat.
His boot scraped against the marble as he stepped closer.
“Tainted. Unwanted.”
The word landed before his hand did.
His open palm cracked across my face — brutal, unrestrained.
My head snapped sideways. Pain detonated through my jaw. Blood filled my mouth, metallic and warm. For a moment, my vision fractured into white and black stars.
Before I could recover —
His boot slammed into my shin.
Sharp.
Intentional.
My leg buckled instantly.
I crashed backward into the wall, spine slamming against stone before I slid down to the floor.
“Hold her,” he barked.
Two men moved immediately.
Rough hands seized my wrists and jerked me upright again before forcing my arms wide and pinning them to the cold marble.
I thrashed once — uselessly.
Their grips tightened like iron cuffs.
Vasquez approached slowly.
Each step deliberate.
He stopped directly in front of me and lifted his shoe.
Then pressed it against my abdomen.
Slow.
Unrelenting.
The pressure increased — crushing air from my lungs.
Pain radiated outward from my ribs as his weight bore down harder.
“Where is your daughter?” he demanded.
My heart spasmed.
“She’s... she’s not here,” I forced out, struggling for breath. “She went with Ruslan.”
His foot pressed harder.
“To Greece.”
“Liar.”
The word snapped through the air.
He leaned forward slightly, eyes scanning my face for cracks.
“Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I don’t know when you’re protecting someone?”
He signaled without turning.
“Search the house.”
His men shifted instantly.
“Every room.”
“Every closet.”
“Find the child.”
His shoe still pinned me to the floor.
“And bring her to me.”
Boots thundered away — up the staircase, down the hallway, doors slamming open with violent force as the search began.
Wood splintered somewhere upstairs.
Glass shattered.
Drawers were dragged out and thrown across the floor.
I lay pinned against the cold marble, staring at the ceiling as dust drifted down like ashes from the chaos above. Tears slid sideways into my hair.
Please, Daphne.
Stay quiet.
Stay hidden.
Don’t cry. Don’t make a sound.
My chest burned from the pressure of his shoe still pressing into my abdomen.