34. Basilio
Basilio
“T his can’t be a coincidence,” Dante grumbled, echoing my thoughts exactly. The three of us stayed in my place in the Hamptons. It was easier than going back to the city. After we got cleaned up, we sat on the back patio facing the ocean, pondering on today’s findings.
“Agreed.”
Once upon a time, my father wanted the Volkov Pakhan at the Syndicate table. It didn’t happen. Instead he got a different Russian alliance at the table. A weaker one.
But knowing Father, he held a grudge. There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in my mind that either he worked with the Russians to get their dirty paws on my woman or he made up a different story. The one where he’d end up on top.
“What’s his angle?” Priest asked.
“Maybe he recognized Wynter,” I rasped, ice flowing through my veins. “If he knew The Pakhan and his family decades ago, there’s no way he’d miss the resemblance.” My eyes flickered to the screen again. I had never seen two human beings look so alike. “It would explain his hatred for the Brennans.”
“None of this shit makes any sense,” Dante said. “So the old fucker Brennan kidnapped Winter Volkov to keep the Pakhan out of the Syndicate. When the woman died, what would have kept the Pakhan from joining?”
“The grandchild. Aisling Brennan,” I said. Wynter was part of the underworld all along. Yet, there seemed to be so many disconnects. My sixth sense told me she didn’t grow up in the underworld. She couldn’t have. Nothing about her behavior indicated that.
“But all the records point that Aisling Brennan and her unborn child died,” Dante reasoned.
“We know data can be manipulated,” Priest hissed, staring at the pictures. “There’s no way in hell this kind of resemblance was coincidental.”
Russian princess. “They don’t have her,” I concluded. “The fucker said they’re looking for the descendants. That means they didn’t find her.”
“Maybe it’s time we join forces with other organizations,” Dante suggested. “It’s clear the Syndicate is making moves without anyone’s knowledge.”
“Or maybe it’s just my father making those moves.”
I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. He thought himself invincible. The Syndicate was supposed to spread power among different members but my father seemed to conveniently forget that. Or simply ignore it. He used the Syndicate to get what he wanted, at any cost necessary.
“Could this be enough to remove him from the Syndicate?” Priest pondered. “If he made a move without their knowledge, this was a clear attempt to seize power.”
I shook my head. “If Pakhan was a member of the Syndicate, it would have been against the rules. But it's a free-for-all for anyone outside the Syndicate. It’s the loophole that allowed Father to continue his attacks on the Brennans.”
The three of us sat in silence and the waves crashed against the shoreline. I had wanted to bring Wynter here too. There were so many fucking plans I had for us and now-
She had to be alive. If the Russians had her, she was alive. The Pakhan would never harm his great-grandchild. Marry her off, yes. Benefit off her, yes. But the bastard would never kill her.
My father, on the other hand, he’d break her. Bitterness was like fucking acid, eating away at my insides. It was a fucking joke that I hoped that the Russians had her rather than my own fucking father.
Fuck!
If he touched a single hair on Wynter’s head, I’d fucking kill him. Rules be damned, I’d end him.
“Maybe we reach out to Brennan,” Dante suggested. “It’s his family, after all.”
“Then why isn’t he tearing apart the city, looking for her?
” I hissed. “We can’t trust anyone outside the three of us, and Emory.
” I wouldn’t risk it. If Father indeed made a deal with the Russians, Brennan would lose his shit.
Attack us, and it would distract us from looking for Wynter.
“We keep looking for Wynter, keep our focus on her and the elimination of Gio from the Syndicate.”
Priest and Dante nodded their agreement. “If we’re to remove Gio from the Syndicate, it’s the best plan,” Dante muttered. “It makes me fucking sick that we have to play this cat and mouse game with him. I wish Liam would have just shot Gio decades ago and ended it all.”
I agreed with the sentiment. He might be my father, but it was in name only. In my entire life, he hadn’t shown a single fatherly emotion. To me nor Emory. He destroyed her life before it even began.
Screams rang throughout the house, startling me out of my nightmare.
It was always the same one.
The first death I witnessed. The way she gurgled and choked on her own blood as my father stood over her with a harsh smile on his face.
It had been seven years since that day. I was no longer a five year old boy. Mother was a faded memory on the floor of a dirty motel room. Emory didn’t even know what she looked like, because Father had removed all evidence of our mother’s existence.
But when he wasn’t around, I’d whisper to her about Mother. What little I remembered. And when she’d ask me how pretty our mother was, I’d tell her to just glance in the mirror. Because Emory was as beautiful as our mother was.
My door swung open and seven-year-old Emory ran to my bed, her eyes wide with fear and her hair disheveled. She padded across the room barefoot, the light of the moon guiding her way.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her in a hushed tone. “A nightmare?”
She had them too. Courtesy of our fucking father. Though hers was slightly different from mine.
“There are screams,” she whispered. “Downstairs.”
I wrenched my gun out of the nightstand and shot out of bed. “Hide under the bed,” I ordered her. “And don’t make a sound. No matter what.”
Father would have dragged her into the middle of whatever the fuck was going on. But I refused. Emory’s fears were bad enough already and she was only seven.
Once satisfied she was hidden, I crept downstairs. My pulse thundered in my ears as I inched toward the kitchen where the sounds were coming from. It was then that I saw it.
A woman tied to the chair. She was naked, her legs spread open with some tool I didn’t recognize. Blood smeared all over her inner thighs, stark against her pale skin even in the dim light.
My father crouched behind the table that was turned over. Two other men on the opposite side of the kitchen. One hiding behind the large Subzero fridge and the other behind the island where we ate our breakfast. His back was to me and it would have been the easiest one to end.
Father’s eyes flitted to me. There was blood on his shirt and his face. Instinctively my eyes darted to the woman still tied up, her chair in the middle of the crossfire. Was he trying to save her?
I had to save her, yet the need to kill my father was even stronger.
I hated him. He hurt Emory and me, chipping away at our humanity one day at the time.
But I couldn’t let my hate outweigh the right thing to do.
I couldn’t sacrifice the woman that whimpered, bloodied and naked, in the middle of our kitchen.
So I raised my hand and shot one of the men. Then I aimed for the next one, just as he spotted me. I pulled the trigger and he attempted to dodge the bullet. But it hit him, lodging itself into his collarbone.
He fell to his knees, clutching his shoulder and neck, while my father jumped out of his hiding spot and rushed to him. I did the same, kicking the gun away, then rushed to the woman tied up.
She whimpered as I approached her.
“It’s okay,” I whispered as I reached for the knots on her wrists.
Father shot the surviving attacker in both knees. The scream pierced the air, both man’s and woman’s, causing me to cry in surprise. Why was she crying and looking at the attackers like that? Like she-
I swallowed hard. Like she cared about him.
Bile and acid stuck in my throat. Miscalculation. I killed the men who tried to protect the woman. My heart thundered against my chest and guilt was quick to lodge itself deep inside my heart and my soul.
My legs gave away, my sin too hard to bear and I fell down to my knees. I wanted to sink down through the tiled floor and let the ground swallow me. I was a monster, just like my father.
My eyes connected with the soft brown ones, full of anguish and pain. I caused it. I was directly responsible for it. I’d go to hell for it.
I had no idea who she was. I should know whose downfall I caused, shouldn’t I? Yet, I didn’t dare to ask her. Each soft whimper of hers laid blame. It screamed my betrayal at her innocence.
I had given my father open access to her.
Father stalked toward me and pulled me roughly to my feet.
“Pull yourself together,” he hissed, then shoved me into an empty chair. “You did good, boy.”
I had to fight the urge to spit in his face. I hated his guts so much that red mist marred my vision. This hatred choked me, threatening to swallow me whole and leave me in complete darkness. Yet, I knew I had to fight it. For Emory.
If I succumbed to the darkness, my little sister would have nobody left. She needed me.
Father moved to the only living attacker. He didn’t try to crawl away; instead he crawled toward the woman. The woman he loved, I realized by the look in his eyes. I had seen it on TV when my old nanny watched her soaps.
Father lifted the man up with one hand and tied him up to the chair nearest to the woman. But far enough that he wouldn’t be able to reach her.
Then with a cruel gleam in his eyes, Father’s eyes zeroed in on the woman.
He unbuckled his pants, then whipped his belt out of the loops in one swift movement.
“Now, let’s finish what we started,” he purred as bile crawled up my throat. “Now, Son, I want you to see how a woman is fucked. They’re good for pleasure only. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The screams filled the room, high-pitched and gutting.
First, he fucked her mouth so violently that she gagged. But the entire time, he kept a gun aimed at the attacker.
“If I feel one single scrape of your teeth, I shoot him again,” Father grunted as he pushed himself deeper down her throat. It didn’t end there. Tears streamed down her face, with each passing minute I watched something slowly die in her eyes.
When he finished, Father squirted his cum all over her face. “That’s how we treat whores. And you’re all whores.”
Letting his dick hang, like a disgusting, shriveled cucumber, he strode to the tied up man.
“How does it feel, figlio di puttana, to know you’ll never fuck her virgin pussy? Her virgin ass?”
Father reached for his knife and touched it to the man’s bullet wound, then wedged the point into it. The screams rang, my blood buzzed and the scent of metallic blood filled my nose.
Miscalculation, my mind whispered. I missed my chance and chose to save my father, at the expense of an innocent.
Father glanced my way. “Did you learn something today, Son?” Father muttered.
I nodded my head, but I remained numb. My answer wouldn’t please him, might even earn me a bullet.
He untied the woman, then yanked her hair. Then bent her over the kitchen table, so she’d face me. Then in one forceful push, he buried himself deep into her ass. As he fucked her raw, her naked body sliding back and forth across the table, she kept her eyes on me.
Accusing. Broken. Hateful.
“Keep your eyes on him, whore,” Father grunted. My hands shook, a roar formed in my throat, clawing to get out. “He’s learning.”
I learned that day that I’d never be able to coexist with my father.
That night, he threw the woman to traffickers. It was a retribution for her father’s betrayal. Many years later, I searched for her. I wanted to save her, atone for my sins and explain myself to her.
‘I didn’t know’ seemed inadequate. Yet, I had nothing else.
But before I got to her, Nico Morrelli saved her. She worked for him, even ran a shelter for abused women. Her eyes were still dark but her hair was white as snow. Like her innocence before my father destroyed it.
Pulling my thoughts from that dark day, I focused on now and the things I could fix.
“Violating the rules is a sure way to get us kicked out of the Syndicate,” I finally said, leaving the past where it belonged. In the fucking past. “And that’ll leave Emory vulnerable. Wynter too. The only way to protect them is to take over the seats of our fathers in the Syndicate.”
A hot summer breeze swept through the large backyard, and memories of my time with Wynter at the beach a reluctant memory. I could almost smell her suntan lotion, hear her laughter, imagine her eyes shining with that mischievous gleam in her eyes.
I’d find her, if it was the last thing I’ve done before I took my last breath.
It was the only hope I held now.