Beautifully broken? She’d been assaulted, tortured, raped. She’d had her skin flayed from her flesh and acid drip over her muscles and blood cover her being. There was nothing remotely beautiful about everything that she had survived.
“So, had it been any other innocent girl, she would have been tortured and raped and killed?”
“Yes.”
He was sick in the head.
Absolutely sick.
Amara felt acid from her stomach rising in her throat. “And Dante’s mother? You killed her for the same reason you had me taken? That she overheard a conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear?”
He smiled, a warm smile that made Amara’s skin crawl. “Do you have any idea how vast, how deep our organization is? There are some very powerful people connected to some very powerful places with us. That’s why we have a simple policy to protect ourselves – no witnesses. Anyone who’s not working with us knows nothing about us.”
“So you’ve killed other innocent people over the years?”
“Of course.”
Amara swayed on the spot as the entirety of it hit her. She was just one in a line of many. Dante’s mother had been just one in a line of many. There were many who died and no one even knew a thing. Who the hell were these people?
She felt Dante put his big hand behind her, holding her just on the curve of her waist, and she leaned into it, glad to have the support.
Once she was steady, he got up, pushed her into his vacated seat, and walked to the side towards another chair.
“I want to kill you, Xavier,” Dante told the man who had sired her calmly, pulling up that chair next to hers. “I want to kill you for what you put my mother and brother through. I want to kill you for what you put my woman through. I want to kill you for what you’ve put so many innocent people through.”
“But you won’t.” Xavier relaxed back in his chair.
“But I won’t,” Dante agreed. “A few years ago, I would have. Now, you are more useful to me alive than dead. The day you stop being useful to me? You’ll perhaps go to sleep and never wake up. Or maybe you’ll pour yourself a glass of water and instead drink acid that melts your organs from the inside. Or maybe you’ll wake up tied to a chair with knives in your skin. Or hell if I’m in a merciful mood, maybe you’ll go to the grocery store and have a terrible accident. I mean, who knows?”
Damn, he was good. Amara saw her father stiffen a bit at each word, even as he stayed silent.
“Are we clear?” Dante asked, taking his jacket off.
“Yes,” her father said quietly.
Dante nodded, slowly folding the sleeves of his shirt over his forearms. “Now, let’s talk like adult bad guys. The kids my father sent twenty years ago, where are they?”
Xavier shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was just a foot soldier then here in the Outfit. They promoted me to the ranks afterward.”
“Can you find out?”
“Possibly, yes. But the young ones rarely survive.”
“Hmm,” Dante finished rolling up his sleeves, looking back at Vin. “Hand me the gun please.”
Vin quietly went to the table and picked up a gun, passing it over to her man.
Dante placed it on his lap and took out a cigarette. “In that batch of kids, there was a three-year-old redheaded girl,” Dante began. “I want her and you will get me her information.”
Her father stayed silent.
Dante blew out a puff of smoke. “Why kidnap us a few weeks ago and take us to the same location?”
Xavier looked down at his hands. “It’s a place we started using again a few years ago. She wasn’t supposed to be taken, just you. The guys thought she was collateral.”
Amara’s disgust was probably plastered all over her face because Xavier looked at her and said, “I was never meant to be a father. Some men just aren’t.”
“That’s your excuse?” her tone was disbelieving.
“It’s the truth. Children become what their parents are. Nerea had a shitty mother who left her with me, and she grew up hard; you got a good mother who raised you, and you grew up kind. Me? I was raised by a monstrous man, so that’s what I became.”
Amara shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. “We are not our parents, Xavier. Children are… like wildflowers. They may be planted in one place but they grow where their hearts lead. It’s not where we’re planted but where we bloom that defines us.”
A laugh escaped the man. “Oh, you naïve girl. What a luxury that innocence must be. Yes, you’ve been through hell, but my dear daughter, hell is much bigger than you ever thought it was. This world is much bigger, much deeper, much darker than you thought it was. The places I’ve been, I couldn’t be anything else but who I am.”
A shiver went down Amara’s spine at his words.
Xavier grinned at seeing her shudder. “Let the sleeping monsters lie, girl. They already have their eyes on the Outfit because of Lorenzo’s death, which they’re writing off as an internal thing. These people have no conscience. No humanity. You will unleash something upon your family I don’t think you truly understand. You’ll see when your child-”
A wave of protectiveness crashed over her so intensely it made her heart stutter.
Amara took the gun from Dante’s lap, her hand gripping it hard. She wanted to shoot him. She wanted to shoot him and remove his essence from a world where her child would be born. But doing that would lose them a lead. He could give them information that could save countless other children. But he didn’t deserve to live.
The indecision between her maternal instinct for her child and her protective instinct for other children warred inside her. Amara put her nose on the gun, breathing in and out, trying to contain the rage his words unleashed inside her.
This man had made so many people suffer, and she couldn’t make him pay because he had the power to stop others from suffering.
Win. Dante always said when dealing with his father – lose a battle, win the war. She needed to lose this.
Amara straightened her arm, her eyes flickering to Dante once to see him watching her, and she unlocked the gun as Vin had taught her, and pointed it to the man grinning at her, her arms slightly shaking. The proximity to him allowed her to aim better, and she pulled the trigger over his kneecap.
The loud shot and the recoil hit her hard, pushing her back into the chair as Xavier screamed in pain, clutching his knee.
“That’s for fifteen-year-old me, you bastard,” she rasped out, the satisfaction of watching the blood leave him acute in her. Dante didn’t say a word, just watched her like a hawk as she watched her father, her chest heaving.
Aiming to the other knee, she blew it out too. “And that’s for Dante’s mother and countless other innocent people you’ve destroyed.”
She stood up, walking to the chair he was howling in and pointed the gun to his head.
“Listen to me, and listen well, Xavier,” Amara said, her voice firm, bringing his attention to herself. “Your organization has spies here? It’s time we plant our own there. You will help us plant a spy in your ranks. You will help us find the missing kids. You will give us answers. And you will keep your mouth shut about it. If at any point, you betray us and bring danger to my door, if anything you do directly falls on my family, forget anyone else,” Amara stated, digging the gun into his forehead, seeing his eyes widen slightly. “I will make them hurt you, over and over and over, and I won’t let them give you death until your skin is flayed from your bones. Am I clear?”