“I did what was right for her.”
“You have no balls. You should have left her to die. I would have.”
I grin like el diablo. “And now she comes for your head.” I tilt my head when she looks surprised. However, she quickly tries to hide it. “You don’t know do you? The person that set me free said I could tell you goodbye before Cherone is set free to end your sorry pequeña vida sucia.”
Grissel lifts a hand and shoulder as if she has no fear, but I see it in her eyes. “I may allow her to live. I hear that your plan for her worked out after all. She is ruthless bitch you wanted. The Russians broke her and made her savage that you set out for.”
Anger threatens to scorch the hair on my head. I sat in the bowels of that rat-infested prison for years not knowing if Roni was alive running the family or if she had a similar fate to mine. I was only to disappear to give her some responsibility and allow her to learn the real world and empire I had built. To make her hard in a world that would see her as soft. A year or two tops.
What my sister planned for me instead almost made me lose my mind. If she were anyone else, I would have slit her throat from the moment I walked in. She deserves nothing less.
“Almost five years,” I roar. “I meant for this to toughen her skin, not break her completely. This all belongs to me and my daughter and here you sit as if it’s your throne. You were to help prepare her for the Alliance not try to take what’s ours.”
“You have always been weak,” she screams. “This is why I killed her mother.”
The room goes silent. It’s as if I’m in a tunnel and a bomb has just exploded. I’ve been suspicious about this for years.
“Enough,” Irina Krupin shouts. “I’ve not come for this. You have family problem you solve on your time. My job is to find out who Pérez family will be loyal to. Me or nephew. He’s becoming too strong. You forget Alliance, I give you back family business.”
“What?” Grissel gasps, causing me to grin.
“You have made mess at every turn. It is time we end partnership. You and boy toys are not worth trouble,” Irina waves her off.
“What makes you think I need you or her?” I say tightly.
“My sister’s and I are ready to put pressure on coup that has started. Only matter of time before all implodes and we crush them like bugs they are. Choose right side.”
“What about all I’ve done?” Grissel hollers.
“What have you done? Send your men and mine to California to be slaughtered. What did you accomplish? My nephew has been like dog with bone since. Your friends, Serbians were useless. Again, too worried about young men you are fucking to get job done,” Irina says dryly. “You and García’s are pointless and are now problem for me.”
“If I side with you, my daughter must never know about this,” I say.
“Why should I grant this silly request?” Irina replies, turning up her nose in disgust. “I should kill you where you stand. Your family has no loyalty in you.”
I laugh. “I am loyal to the options in my favor. That used to be the Alliance.
“From what I hear now, you are at a pivotal point. You are the one with a nephew that wants your entire family dead. I have an ear to the ground that Cherone has a foot in the Alliance. This will be how we take them down,” I say.
“But there’s one problem.” I spin to face the voice at my back. Standing before me is my little girl all grown up. Her eyes are hard, she looks more like me than ever. “I now know everything.”
Roni
He has the nerve to look at me with a smile as I round the table moving closer to Grissel and Irina Krupin. My own father. That’s where this all came from. He wanted to make me tough? That’s his reason.
I would never do something like this to my baby girl. Not even if it was only to toughen her up. The cruel bastard never showed me love. Not like a real parent should. Is this how they would have taught me to raise my child? So much deception and deceit.
“What is this?” Irina says going to lift from her seat.
“Sit the fuck down,” I bellow.
For good measure Val places her gun to the back of Irina’s head. John moves behind two of the guards, placing his gun to the head of one and pulling the trigger.
Just as swiftly, he shoots the other in the leg, before pulling a knife and slicing his throat. Uri makes quick work of taking care of the last of Irina’s men.
“Give me reason,” Val hisses close to Irina’s ear as she watches in horror as her men lie lifeless.
“Do you know who I am?” Irina seethes.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I say, without taking my eyes off my father.
The two guards I assume to be my aunt’s, go to draw their guns as my aunt signals them. I pump two in each of their chests. Moving behind her lightning fast, I holster my guns and pull my knife. I don’t even blink as I open this woman’s neck as if she’s nothing more than a stranger to me.
She is.
“Roni,” my father says, with a mixture of hurt and disbelief.
“Your mission was accomplished,” I say as I begin to move around the table in his direction. I stop before my father and look at him impassively. “They tortured me until I felt nothing. I was broken mentally and physically.”
“Roni, I wanted you prepared for anything that would come your way—”
I cut my hand across my throat. “Silence. You have no idea,” I bark, my chest heaving. I tilt my head as I glare at him. My voice fills with so much emotion as I think of the biggest cost of the ordeal I went through. “My daughter…my daughter almost didn’t make it. My insides were so broken from the torture, I wasn’t able to hold her full term. Do you understand what I just said? Years later I’m still suffering from what happened to me. You did this to me.”
“I’m sorry, princesa.”
“Don’t call me that. You never treated me like a princess. You don’t know what that word means. I’ve only ever been a possession that you’ve held this warped sense of protection over. For what? Money? Power?”
“It was the right thing to do. Look at you now. You are stronger than me.”
“You’re motherfucking right. I don’t trade lives for power or comfort. I don’t sell my own for a means to an end,” I challenge.
“Roni—”
I move swiftly to slam him down on the table. In the next breath, I cut his ring finger right off. His screams fill the room. “I hope I’ve finally met your expectation, Papi. See you in hell.” I pull my gun and blow his brains out.
Irina jumps in her seat, reminding me she’s in the room. I lift my gun to put a bullet in her forehead. “Net, this one is mine. My blade will be the one that starts the war.”
I turn to find Misha standing there with a sinter grin on his lips. He’s looking at Irina like she’s the prey he’s been waiting to catch all his life. He continues to speak as he unbuttons his suit jacket to reveal a vest of blades.
“We good?”
“Da, but you should be one to take gift box to LaSalle in Ireland face to face. I told him you would make the right choice. He thought you would bring him finger of your aunt and allow father to breathe. I warned him you are one of us.”