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He leans back in his chair. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

I slam my hands on his desk, ready to throttle his throat. “Where the fuck is she?”

He runs his fingers against his bottom lip, a smug smile on his face. “So touchy over a kid you didn’t know was yours until recently.”

“Just tell me where she is, dammit.”

“She’s safe. I think your mother is with her at the park.” I go to interrupt him but he keeps talking, holding up a hand. “But you, on the other hand. You cannot follow orders. You do what you want. The Montfords, the Renzettis, then that Renzetti girl. You have no respect for me or anyone at our table.”

“I think you just don’t want me to take over. I think you crave the power too much. You want to be in control knowing you run the largest crime syndicate in the world. So you will do anything you can to get me to fall.”

He laughs as he leans toward me. “You have no idea what I want.”

“You think I can’t read you? Can’t understand you. After the last twenty years of you grooming me for this position. I know you better than anyone. You don’t want your seat taken away. You never have. I am your pawn. The queen on the chessboard that you control. That power feeds into the empty soul you have.”

“Enough,” he commands. I can see the twitch in his eye, see that I am getting to him.

“I’m not finished,” I say as I stand to my full height. “You are a weak man hiding behind the curtain. Controlling your puppets. Well, the curtains have been opened, your secrets revealed. You cannot control me. You’ve never had control of me. All these years I have been working for that seat. Making you think I don’t want it. But I do. I always have. And all those men who you think follow you, believe in your decisions, they don’t. They listen to me. They follow me.

“You’re blind. You have never seen all the things I do behind your back. You think I just blindly follow your orders. I’ve been growing this business for years. Clients, dealers, you name it, they have been coming on because of me. And the second you pull that trigger and kill me, it will be your head on the chopping block. And they won’t be so kind as to put a bullet between your eyes. They will rip you apart piece by piece.”

I can see the fury in his face. And I know he’s already called for backup. So I’m not surprised when the doors fly open and I’m tackled to the ground. The jolt of electricity through my body to torture me, keep me down. The sharp cut of zip ties on my wrist. The taste of blood on my lip from where my tooth cut as my head hit the ground.

I hear the click of my father’s wingtips on the hardwood floor as he rounds the desk and approaches me. “You think you know everything, son? You know nothing. You’ve been my puppet all along. Doing everything I orchestrated, you just couldn’t see it.”

He squats down in front of me, lifting my face so I meet his eyes. “And you are tied to my strings again. You did what I asked. Got my weapons back. Did you ever wonder why it was so easy? That Giancarlo would just hand them over to you. Did you ever think about that deal fifteen years ago? That maybe I was working my way back into their grasp. Those weapons were never my concern. I only wanted information. And you fed it to me on a goddamn spoon. Every move the Renzettis made, every piece of information you gave me about them, got me one step closer to infiltrating their business, taking over the Italian mafia. It started with Vanguard. I gave him Ezio Renzetti and Ezio did what he was supposed to do. He led him right into thinking he could be the Consigliere for Giancarlo. And Giancarlo played into it, let him believe what he wanted. Of course I had to kill Vanguard before he spilled all my secrets.

“I also got Luca Renzetti into Roland’s nightclub. Got him a meeting with Roland. Convinced Roland he was some big businessman from South America. Used him as a distraction so the Renezettis could take those weapons. All in a deal I made with them. And then when they weren’t looking, I would slaughter them all and take control of the biggest family in Italy. A family with even more connections in the States than we have.”

I strain to look at my father. “And what would that do? The rest of The Partners would never agree to any of this. Even with their bitterness toward that family after they took out Kane, they would never agree to any of this fucked-up plan.”

“I don’t need their approval. Not when I plan to have the Renzettis take them all out and their families. I don’t need the rest of those men. I have the power to control all of it.”

I laugh at him. “You would try to take over half the criminal underground. You would have the biggest target on your back. You would be dead within seventy-two hours.”

“Such a naive boy. You think you know what I’ve been doing, what I’ve been planning? You have no idea. Hajar and Kozlov are too busy dealing with problems on their side of the business they haven’t been paying attention. Not until I exploit Dean’s weaknesses and his son’s. Then take those two out after. It could have been you and me, Kilian. The most powerful men in the world.”

I kick against the men holding me back, which just leads to another jolt of electricity through me. “Why my daughter?”

“Because she can link us together. The true heir to the criminal underground.”

I curse at him as I struggle on the ground. “You will not turn her into a weapon.”

“She was born a weapon, my dear boy. And she will stay a weapon.”

I spit on his shoes and he pistol whips me across the face. I roll onto my side, wincing at the pain next to my eye, at the laceration I know is there as blood drips down my face.

“I’ll make sure she knows her father loved her.”

“Fuck you,” I growl.

“And I might be nice enough to let her mother say goodbye to her.”

Rage simmers through me. “Don’t fucking touch Mirabella.”

“I don’t know why you think I would agree to anything you say. Of course, I shouldn’t even call you a traitor anymore. The Partners will see you as one. But you secured my ticket to my plan by getting that Renzetti whore pregnant.”

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”