Chapter 64 #2
“I tried to end the problem before it became unsolvable. But, as I said, my stupid daughter got in the way.” Leandro presses the gun tighter. “I’m going to kill you. And end this once and for all.”
My heart stops. The world compresses into the space between the barrel and my husband’s head, and for one fraction of one second I forget about the blanks, forget about the plan, forget about everything except the image of the man I love standing in front of a loaded gun held by the man who made me.
“Now,” Eero breathes into his radio.
Aric slowly steps back as Nikos’s men come out from every corner of the room, emerging from behind pillars, rising from behind overturned furniture, stepping out of darkness that a second ago looked empty.
Five guns. Six. Every one of them aimed at Leandro.
He wavers, his face drains of color, the smirk collapsing, the confidence crumbling.
Then comes the look I’ve been waiting for—the moment he realizes what’s happening.
His eyes—those cold, calculating eyes that have been lying to me for twenty-two years—dart from face to face, searching for an exit that doesn’t exist. There is none.
Six guns. Every one of them trained on him.
And then he scoffs dryly. “You think this changes anything.” His voice comes out low, almost calm.
The arm in which he’s holding the gun steadies.
“You’ve already taken everything. The seat.
My name. My freedom.” His gaze slides to Aric, and his mouth curves into something that isn’t a smile.
“I have nothing left to lose. So I’ll take the one thing that ends this the way I want it to end. ”
“Leandro—” Aric speaks, but it’s as though my father doesn’t even hear.
“At least I’ll die knowing I finally put you in the ground.”
It happens too fast for anyone to stop. My father’s arm snaps straight, the barrel finds my husband’s chest, and he pulls the trigger.
The gunshot cracks through the room like the world splitting open.
Every particle of air leaves my body in the same instant the sound does, because all I can see is the man I love taking a bullet to the chest at point-blank range.
I reach over the ledge. “Aric—”
My heart is racing, but Aric remains exactly where he is. Unbothered. Standing at his full height before my father like death itself. He rolls his shoulders, smooths a hand down his jacket, and fixes Leandro with a look I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
“Blanks,” Aric says, and the word hits my father like a bullet.
His eyes widen with confusion, disbelief, then drop to the gun in his hand as though it has betrayed him.
Then I see the way his expression shifts as he realizes that every second of this was staged.
That the weapon was never real. All of it was theater, and he walked into the center of the stage and performed his own damnation for an audience he never knew was watching.
“You—” His voice comes out cracked. Hollow. “It wasn’t—”
“Loaded?” Aric’s head tilts. “No. Nikos handed you that gun this morning. I swapped the bullets myself. Every round a blank.” He takes a single step forward, and my father takes one back.
“You were never going to kill me tonight, Leandro. You were only ever going to tell the truth. And you did. Every word.”
My knees almost buckle as I’m walking to the edge of the balcony where the staircase leads down, and I descend, one step at a time, into the room where my father stands surrounded by men who will kill him if he breathes wrong.
Aric’s eyes find me the second my foot touches the top stair. Eero follows me down. One step behind. Close enough to catch me if I fall.
Leandro sees me, and for the first time—the first time in my entire life—I see genuine shock on his face.
“I heard you.” My voice comes out steady. I don’t know how. I don’t know where the composure comes from or how long it will last. “Every word. You killed Luca.” I take a step toward him. “You tried to kill my husband.” Another step. “You—” My voice fractures. “You killed my daughter.”
“I didn’t know you were pregnant—”
“Would it have mattered?” I look at him without the filters of love and duty and the desperate, childish need to be his daughter, and what I see is just a stranger. A monster wearing my father’s face.
Turns out monsters don’t hide only in the criminal world. They walk in daylight, in palaces, and are bowed to.
“I used to wonder,” I say, and my voice is quiet now, “why you never seemed to love me the way other fathers loved their daughters. Why there was always this distance. This coldness.” I press my lips together, forcing the trembling to stop.
“I told myself it was cultural. I told myself you just didn’t know how to express affection.
I told myself so many lies. Because the truth was too terrible to face. ”
“Ayanna—”
“The truth was that you didn’t love me because you couldn’t. Because I was never a daughter to you. I was just a piece on your chessboard.”
“Ayanna—”
“My name sounds wrong in your mouth.” I look at this man, and I feel nothing.
Nothing at all. “Everything about you is wrong. Everything I thought I knew is wrong. My whole life—my whole childhood—it was all just preparation. Grooming. You were shaping me into the perfect tool, and I never even saw it.”
I take the last step toward him.
“You killed Luca because he threatened your plans. You tried to kill my husband because he got too close to the truth. You killed my daughter—your own granddaughter—and you treated it like she was just collateral damage. An acceptable loss.” My voice drops to a whisper.
“And then you came to my home. The home where I’ve been dying piece by piece since I lost her.
And you held my hand. You told me how sorry you were.
You poisoned me against the one person who’s been trying to protect me this whole time. ”
I step back. The distance between us is less than a few feet, but it feels like a continent.
“I’m done being your daughter. I’m done being your pawn. I’m done carrying your name and your legacy and your poison. You’re nothing to me now. Just a stranger who shares my blood.”
Leandro’s teeth clench as he hisses. “You ungrateful little—”
“Careful.” Aric cuts in. “You’re talking about my wife. One more word in her direction and I won’t care about the consequences. I’ll kill you right here on the spot.”
Leandro raises his chin as though with pride, even now when every gun stays trained on him.
“Take him,” Aric orders.
Two of Nikos’s men step forward and their hands close around Leandro’s arms, and pull the gun from his grip.
“If you think you’ve won”—Leandro laughs, his eyes moving between Aric and me—“you are so far from the truth it’s almost funny.”
Aric raises a hand, and the men holding Leandro pause.
“I’m not the villain you think I am.” Leandro’s voice is steady now, the laughter gone, replaced by something harder. “I was a means to an end. One of many.”
“Barry Thorne,” Aric says, his brows twitching slightly. “He suggested the alliance. Farida told me the name of his mistress, the one Luca told her to remember. Was he part of your scheming before he died?”
Leandro’s forehead creases, as though he can’t quite make the pieces line up. Then his mouth curves into something almost like satisfaction.
“You’ve all been looking at the kings,” he drawls, as though he has all the time in the world. As though he isn’t the one held between two of The Gods’ men, waiting to be tried. “While forgetting the one card that never follows the rules. The joker never left the deck.”
He starts to laugh, a sound that is hysterical and triumphant in equal measure, and Aric gives a nod to Nikos’s men. They lead my father out, his terrible laughter echoing off the walls until he’s no longer in sight.