She grabs my hand and pulls me up the stairs and out of the basement. Before I know it, I’m dragged all the way back up to my room again, this time without a key to escape. She shoves me inside and clutches the door while staring at me.
“You’re going to stay here until you finally learn not to disobey me,” she says.
Fear coils around my heart as my fate becomes bleaker by the minute.
I shake my head. “Please, don’t do this.”
I don’t want to resort to begging, but if I must, I will. She was my mother once, after all. She must have some feelings left inside her heart for me.
“I’m sorry I tried to escape,” I plead. “I just wanted—”
“What you want is irrelevant,” she interrupts. “You’re in my house, and you will learn to respect the rules.”
I’ve never seen her this off the rails before. But maybe I never truly knew her to begin with.
“You disappointed me.” She sighs. “Just because you are my daughter doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on you. That I’ll pity you.” She scoffs. “And don’t for a second think you can try those antics again.”
So I was right. Being forced to witness that execution was a warning after all.
Could she have it in her to hurt me?
To have me killed like she did that man?
I swallow hard, and my hands instinctively reach for my belly, but I stop midair.
My mother’s eyes travel along with mine, narrowing along the way. Her fingers tap against the door.
Did I give myself away? Could she know? She couldn’t possibly, right? There’s no way. I didn’t tell her about my pregnancy, and now that I’ve seen how she can react … I definitely won’t be.
But I don’t know how long I’m going to be trapped here, and if it’s too long … she’s going to find out regardless.
“Make no mistake, Harper. You are my daughter. Whether you like it or not,” she says, her voice so sharp and serious that it brings goose bumps to my body. “And you will tell me everything I want to know.”
When she attempts to close the door, I hold up a hand. “Wait!”
She pauses, raising a brow.
“If I give you what you want, will you let me go?”
Her lip twitches. “I’m not going to bargain with you.”
Damn. Well, it was worth a shot.
“But if you won’t tell me exactly what Marcello has been up to, maybe you’ll tell him instead.”
Him? Who is she talking about?
Suddenly, she slams the door shut, and I’m left with more questions than answers.
I run to the door and bang on it a few times to no avail.
“Mother! Let me out!” I scream. “You can’t keep me here forever! Do you hear me?”
I don’t know where I get this sudden spike in defiance, but I know I won’t get anywhere by waiting around like a sitting duck and doing nothing.
What kind of mother would do this to the girl she raised?
None. Because she isn’t my goddamn mother, and I should’ve known.
My face contorts as I stare at the wooden door in front of me, which has now become the symbol of everything I once loved so dearly … everything I now despise more than anything.
My mother is nothing more than a lying, thieving, conniving murderer.
While I was searching for their killer, these people were happily living their lives, oblivious to the pain they’d caused.
My fists ball up against my side.
No more.
I refuse to let this woman shatter my heart any further.
She is no mother to me.
I only have one mother, one person who actually, truly cared about me: Andrea.
And I will make it my life’s mission to see her again just so I can tell her how much I love and appreciate her.
Within minutes, there is a ruckus on the stairs, and I quickly step away from the door so it doesn’t slam in my face. I’ve been listening and waiting for something to happen, but I don’t recognize the sounds at all.
The door bursts open, and in rolls a wheelchair, guided by guards panting heavily from having to drag it all the way up the stairs. But that isn’t the reason my jaw drops.
It’s Frank, my not-so-dead, fake father.
“Oh my God …” I mutter as he rolls inside and stares at me point-blank. “I thought … I thought …”
“You thought you’d killed me?” he says, the look on his face thunderous.
He nods at his guards, who quickly leave to stand beside the door, but they don’t leave us alone. Probably because he knows I can run past him quicker than he can wheel to chase me.
But why is he in this wheelchair to begin with?
“Nice way to greet your father, Harper,” he says, his jaw tensing.
I don’t move an inch, even though I’m in the middle of the room. “You’re not my father.”
“I gave you a home,” he growls.
“I didn’t belong to you nor Molly,” I spit back.
“Yes. You. Did,” he says through gritted teeth. “We loved you like you were our own.”
“No. No parent would do that to another,” I say.
He makes a tsk sound. “Don’t pretend you cared about Igor.”
“I couldn’t because you killed him! I didn’t even have the chance to get to know him!” I yell. “I never even knew he was my real father. Until it was too late.”
My father’s face darkens. “No one misses that old fool, and you shouldn’t either. He didn’t deserve you.”
“Oh, but you do?” I scoff. I can’t believe this.
“Apparently not enough for you not to want to wish me dead,” he retorts, staring me down.
A pang of guilt shoots through me as I watch him move with his wheelchair. It’s only then that I notice one of his hands doesn’t move quite like it’s supposed to … And half his face doesn’t appear to work either when he talks.
“What happened to you?” I ask, curiosity overtaking me.
“What do you think?” he asks, parking himself in the middle of the room, right in front of me. “What do you think happens to a person’s brain when the body is drowning?”
A lump forms in my throat, and no matter how many times I try swallowing, it won’t go away.
“When my car hit the water thanks to your sudden attack, I lost consciousness. While you were being rescued by your knight in shining armor, I lay there in the water, dying.”
I shake my head. “They couldn’t find you.”
“Because my own men had already dragged me out by the time your precious Marcello even had the guts to come looking!” His voice is filled with pain. “Now I’m in this chair for life.”
When the pain becomes too much to look at, I look away.
“LOOK AT ME!”
The sheer rage in his voice forces our eyes to lock.
“You’re looking at a man who can’t ever walk again. All because you couldn’t just stay quiet and be a good girl until we got home,” he mutters, shaking his head as much as I am. “You did this to me.”
“No …” I murmur, but I know he’s right.
I did.
I was the one who wrapped my hands around his neck, hoping to stop him from dragging me back to a place I didn’t want to go. Hoping that I could fix the mistake I’d made by coming along for the ride while Marcello was defending his property. Hoping that I could make Frank pay for what he’d done to my real father.
And I knew then that it would come back to bite me in the ass.
Because I am guilty.
I tried to kill him.
“Good thing you didn’t succeed.” Suddenly, Molly comes waltzing back inside, and she stands behind him, clutching the wheelchair’s handles with confidence and pride.
My eyes widen. “So you … knew?”
She doesn’t seem surprised one bit. “Of course, I knew what you’d done to my sweet darling. Do you think my own people wouldn’t tell me what happened to my husband?” She snorts. “You’re too gullible and naïve, Harper. No wonder you ended up in Marcello’s hands.”
My muscles tighten at that remark. “So all that time, you were just being nice to me to trick me.”
“Trick you?” She raises her brows. Frank reaches up to grab her hand, and the two share a moment like he needs to calm her down because she’s been offended or something.
“Your mother has tried to ease you into the idea of staying, but you refused to play the good daughter,” Frank says.
“Look, I’m sorry for what I did—”
Frank raises a trembling hand. “Stop. I don’t need your excuses.”
“What we need is our daughter back,” Molly adds.
I hold my breath, unsure of how to respond.
“And we’ll do anything to make it happen,” she says, lowering her gaze as though she wants to show she means it.
No wonder she locked me up in here.
If she can’t have me by being nice, she’ll do it by force instead.
“So you’ll have me hate you instead,” I say.
“If that’s what it takes,” Frank responds.
My face turns sour. “Then I take it back. I’m not sorry.”
He smiles at me like some twisted motherfucker. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you failed.”
That hits me hard.
“Because not only did I survive … but you’re also in Irish hands now. And that was my goal all along.”
Frank looks up at Molly, who gazes down at him lovingly before leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead, and it makes me nauseous.
But then she glares back up at me along with Frank, both of them instilling a certain kind of fear that not even Marcello could make me feel.
“All we need to do now …” Frank balls his only properly working hand into a fist. “Is to destroy Marcello.”
