Chapter 64
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Ayanna
“And?” It’s all I can manage when Aric walks through the door of our hotel suite.
He looks at me and nods, and the last small, desperate piece inside me that was still hoping my father might be innocent quietly dies.
The building where the meeting is set is old.
I’m on the upper level, tucked behind a low wall that overlooks the room below through a gap in the floor where a section of ancient timber has been removed and replaced with reinforced glass.
From here, I can see everything—the whole room laid out beneath me like a stage.
Aric is standing in the center of it, alone and unarmed, waiting for my father.
Eero is beside me. Close enough that I can feel the heat of his body, the controlled rhythm of his breathing. He hasn’t spoken since we took our positions twenty minutes ago, but his hand rests on my arm as if a reminder that if I start to fall, he will catch me.
“Breathe,” he murmurs, barely a whisper. “In and out. Stay with me.”
I try. In and out.
Nikos’s men are already in position below us—four, maybe five, I’ve lost count in the darkness. They’re so still they might as well be part of the walls. Weapons drawn, waiting for a signal. Waiting for a confession that might not come.
My heart is hammering so violently I’m certain Eero can feel it through my arm.
Because this confrontation means I lose one of them.
If my father confesses, I lose the man who raised me. The man I call my father, though, right now I’m not certain he can be called one.
If he doesn’t—if Aric is wrong—then Aric submitted himself to trial for a false accusation, and I lose the man who threw his car across a road and dropped to his knees and said live for me like it was the only prayer he knew.
Either way, I lose. Either way, something in me dies tonight.
“He’s here,” Eero breathes, and I go rigid as the door opens and I hear my father’s measured footsteps. The same rhythm I’ve known since I was small enough to recognize my father’s walk before I could see his face.
Then he steps into the light, and I can see him.
He’s dressed impeccably, as though attending one of the royal meetings in Monsera and not appearing to carry out an execution.
His face is composed in that expression I’ve seen a thousand times across a thousand rooms, but his right hand hangs at his side, and I can see the shape of the gun beneath his jacket.
Aric turns and his face shifts into something that might pass for surprise if you didn’t know him the way I do—a flicker of the brows, a fractional widening of the eyes.
“Leandro.” His voice carries up to me, low and steady. “I didn’t expect you. I was waiting for—”
“Nikos.” My father finishes the sentence for him. “He isn’t coming. He sent me.” He takes a step forward. “To kill you.”
Aric looks at my father for a moment as though assessing him. “And why do I feel…” his head tilts in that signature way, “like this is giving you pleasure?”
My father scoffs, and with it, the mask drops, and what’s left underneath is a man I’ve never met. A man with cold eyes and the kind of smile that makes my blood run to ice.
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this,” he drawls before he points the gun at my husband. “Any last wishes?”
My heart plummets.
My father is aiming at my husband with the kind of look on his face that tells me everything I’ve ever believed to be true was a lie. All of it.
Aric nods. “Since it’s my last night breathing,” he says, and his tone is so measured, so calm, that it takes me a moment to realize what he’s doing, “I just want to know if I was right. About all of it.”
My father’s mouth curves. “Well,” he says, and the smile widens.
I feel Eero’s hand tighten on my arm probably because he can feel me shaking.
“Since no one is coming to save you,” my father drawls, satisfaction curling through every word, “and you’ll never speak again, I might as well tell you. So you die knowing exactly how badly you failed.”
My fingernails dig into the stone ledge.
“Luca,” Aric says. “That was you.”
“Luca was a loose end.” My father waves the gun dismissively, so casual, so unconcerned, it makes my stomach lurch.
“A sentimental boy who couldn’t accept that Ayanna belonged to someone else’s plan.
He found out things he shouldn’t have found out.
And then the stupid boy had the audacity to threaten me,” he almost spits, as though speaking it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “So yes, I handled it.”
Handled it. The same words Naomi overheard.
“And the gala,” Aric continues. His voice hasn’t changed. Ice over iron. “The shooting.”
“That was supposed to be clean.” For the first time, something flickers across my father’s face.
But it’s not the remorse or guilt I’d expect, but rather irritation.
Annoyance. “You were the target. One shot, one death, one problem solved.” He shakes his head, and the spitting comes again.
“But my stupid daughter got in the way.”
Eero’s arm presses harder against mine, and I swallow my disappointment and pain.
“Can you believe that?” Leandro—because I no longer call this man my father—continues, and there’s genuine incredulity in his voice, genuine bewilderment, as though my choice to shield my husband with my body is the most irrational thing he’s ever encountered.
“She threw herself in front of a man she was supposed to despise. A man I gave her to. I designed every piece of that marriage to keep her dependent and resentful, and instead she…” His head angles as he scoffs, looking at Aric. “Instead she loves you. Pathetic.”
Aric’s fingers curl slowly into fists at his sides. The muscle in his jaw turns to stone. “It was you,” he hisses. “All along. Luca’s death. The shooting. The bullet that hit my wife.” He takes a single step forward and barely speaks through clenching teeth. “The baby we lost.”
Leandro remains as indifferent as when he walked in here, ready to kill my husband.
“The baby you killed, Leandro.” Aric’s tone hardens, darkens. “Your granddaughter.”
“She was eight weeks,” Leandro says dismissively.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until I taste copper, trying to remain standing, trying not to break, not to run to the man below and scream in his face how much I despise him.
“You sold your daughter to me like livestock.” Aric’s voice does something to steady me.
“Then you tried to kill me. Then you killed the boy she loved. Then you killed our child. And through all of it, through every betrayal, every murder, every moment of calculated destruction, you kept playing the concerned father. Kept pretending you gave a damn about anyone other than yourself.”
“Careful, Vold. I’m the one pointing a gun at you. Not the other way around.”
“You sat at her bedside.” Aric continues like he hasn’t heard him. “You held her hand while she grieved a baby you put in the ground.”
“Yes.” Leandro lifts his chin. “I did all of it. Every piece. Because that’s what men like us do. We take what we want, and we destroy anything that gets in the way.”
“Men like us,” Aric repeats with a scoff.
“Don’t pretend you’re any different.” Leandro’s lip curls as he scoffs. “You’re a killer. A monster. You burn people alive and call it justice. The only difference between us is that you inherited your empire, and I had to build mine from nothing.”
“The difference between us,” Aric says coldly, “is that I would die for the people I love. You would kill them.”
Leandro’s jaw tightens, fury writing itself all over his face.
“Ayanna was never supposed to love you. She was supposed to be my leverage. My way into The Gods. My daughter, positioned at the right hand of a God, feeding me information, influence, access.” He paces around Aric, the gun still pointed.
“My own blood. My own daughter. And instead she looks at you like you’re something special.
Defending you against her own family. Throwing herself in front of bullets for you.
” He stops. “It’s pathetic. She’s pathetic.
Just like her mother. Weak, sentimental, unable to see the bigger picture. ”
Weak. Sentimental. Pathetic.
Eero’s hand tightens on my arm again, holding me together the way his brother would if his brother weren’t standing in a room below with a gun aimed at his heart.
I am shaking so hard my teeth are chattering, and the tears streaming down my face are silent, because I will not make a sound.
I will not risk the whole confrontation burning down because I was too weak to hold my tears back.
“Help me understand,” Aric says. “Why? The seat at the Gods, that’s all you ever wanted. You had it. You were this close. Why risk it?”
“Because I was this close.” Leandro’s voice rises. “Because I couldn’t lose it. Not when I’d come so far, sacrificed so much. Luca was threatening me. The little bastard found out that I was seeing a woman. Vivienne. She made me lose my focus for a while.”
Vivienne?
My heart skips a beat. That’s the same name Farida told Aric. I’m sure Aric has caught it too, but he doesn’t give anything away and lets my father speak further.
“God knows how he discovered it, but he did, and he was going to expose it. Tell Ayanna. Tell you.” The man I refuse to call my father jabs the gun toward Aric’s head now.
“And I couldn’t let that happen. Ayanna would’ve hated me.
I would’ve lost her loyalty, and without her loyalty, I would’ve lost your support, because The Gods have that absurd rule that marriages are sacred. ” He sneers the word.
“And me?” Aric’s head tilts. “Why try to kill me?”
“Because you were getting too close!” he hisses. “Weeks of investigation. Your IT people combing through financial records. You were circling, Vold. Getting closer every week. It was only a matter of time before you found the thread and pulled it.”
“So you tried to have me shot.”