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ADELINA

T here’s too much to unpack, and I feel like I’m going crazy.

My own father had me wrestled into a chair and it’s taking every last ounce of my strength not to panic at the tightness of the handcuffs one of the guards threw around my wrists to keep me down. I’m not going to tell them why it’s terrifying to suddenly be bound and trapped in a room full of mostly strange men because the most important thing is my father.

I no longer feel safe around him.

So I’m not going to show him a drop more of my trauma.

“He’s twisted your mind, Adelina,” he says, placing my phone on the table in front of him. “Where is my spirited girl who shared the dream of greatness for this family?”

“She grew up.” My words are as sharp as knives. “She realized there are more important things.”

“Ah. Like your precious hospital.” Suddenly, he can’t look me in the eye. “We’ll put an end to that.”

“Like hell you will!” Surging forward, metal catches on my wrists and my shoulders jerk backward. “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my money.”

“Soon to be my money,” my father replies. “Just as soon as we take care of one little thing.”

“Papà, please?—”

“Enough, Adelina. I’ve heard enough.” He taps the screen, and the subtle bubble of ringing fills the air. Then a click.

“Adelina?” Raffaele’s voice comes through crystal clear, and my heart soars. Tears immediately spring back into my eyes just at the sound of his voice. “Adelina, are you alright? Sweetheart, are you safe?”

“Raffaele!” I surge forward once again, and a heavy hand lands on my shoulder to keep me seated.

“Adelina!”

“Raffaele.” My father cuts in, and the call goes deathly silent.

Then Raffaele speaks. “Pascal.” There’s such cold venom in his tone. I’ve never heard him sound like that before. Ever.

“I’m sure by now, you’ve worked out more than you were ever supposed to know,” my father—no, Pascal—says.

“Who called you?” Raffaele bites out. “Was it Hank?”

“Indeed.”

“Spineless fucker.”

“You should have killed him, Raffaele. That’s so unlike you.”

Raffaele growls, and even through the phone, his fury is enough to charge the air around us. “If you hurt even one hair on her head, I will carve you up like a Sunday roast and keep you alive just long enough to witness the destruction of everything you’ve built.”

“You’re hardly in a position to be making threats,” Pascal replies with a smug cockiness that I’ve never seen from my father before. The mask is truly gone and he stands before me as he really is. A cold, calculating man greedy for power.

“You have no idea what position I’m in.”

“I think I do. It’s simple, Raffaele. You will hand yourself over for a quick death if you want to keep my darling daughter alive and unharmed.”

“He’s bluffing!” I jump in quickly. “Raffaele, don’t listen. He won’t hurt me, so don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Adelina.” His tone is infinitely softer when saying my name. “Please, be careful. Your father is more dangerous than you could know.”

“Are you trying to turn her against me?” Pascal mutters. “You should know, Raffaele, that this isn’t a negotiation. I have my daughter back where she belongs, and you will come and hand yourself over to me. That’s it.”

I roll my eyes, fighting a shiver of fear that worms across my shoulders. Pascal’s own actions have turned me against him. Nothing more.

“Really? Do you think she will just slot back into the mold you carved out for her?” Raffaele snaps. “She’s her own woman. But why don’t you see how well that little trick will work after you tell her what you did to Carlos?”

“What?” A pulse of coldness radiates from my chest, chilling my limbs, followed by a rush of goosebumps down my back.

“Tell her how you killed him. Tell her how you’re responsible for the deaths of Serena and your own fucking wife!”

Pascal slams his hand down on the phone, ending the call and leaving Raffaele’s words to haunt the silence left behind.

My heart is pounding so hard my head hurts, and my vision swims from unshed tears as I look from the phone to my father. “What… What is he talking about?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Pascal snarls.

“What does he mean? Carlos and–and Mother ?—”

He reaches me swiftly and slaps me hard across the face. Heat and pain bloom across my cheek as my head snaps to the side, and I gasp, finally letting the tears spill down my cheeks.

“I said don’t listen.”

“Tell me!” My head whips back around and I glare hard at him. “Tell me the truth! What did you do?”

Pascal’s lips part briefly, then he steps back and rubs at his chin as if debating what parts of the truth he can tell me. “It won’t matter now. None of it will matter,” he says stiffly. “Once I kill that maniac, the rest won’t matter.”

“That maniac will be on his way here,” I grind out, shaking my head against the ache of his slap. “Do you really think you can kill him before he tells me the truth?”

“The truth is what I say it is!” Pascal yells, pointing at me with a stubby finger. “Remember that, Adelina. I am your father and I know what’s best for this family. I have always known what’s best.”

“Really? Because it sounds like your best has been useless until the Irish stepped in,” I sneer, then I straighten up slightly and draw back. “The… what… what is it you do for them?”

“Hmm?” Glancing at his own phone, he frowns deeply at my question.

“You told me the Irish had a problem that you fixed. What… What was the problem?”

Pascal’s shoulders rise up like he’s inflating, then he grumpily stuffs his phone back in his pocket and faces me. “Fine. You want to know the truth so fucking badly? The Irish have a toxic waste problem and I took care of it. They needed someone to transport it and dump it, and I was perfect for it. No one looks twice at my trucks traveling across the city because they think they’re filled with counterfeit goods like bags and shoes. But they’re not. They’re filled with all the toxic runoff from the Irish power plants.”

My heart pounds harder and harder. My father has been dumping toxic waste for the Irish ? The Irish are famous for their claims of being able to work oil in the safest way possible without being a threat to anyone.

So why did Raffaele mention Serena? And my mother?

Unless…

Serena was sick. I remember Raffaele telling me just how sick she got and no one knew the cause. Then she passed away and left him heartbroken about ten years ago. And my mother?

“Where?” I ask, my voice tight and wispy through the strain of keeping myself under control. “Where do you dump the waste?”

Pascal sighs and leans back against the table. “In the reservoir.”

“The one in the hills?”

“Yes.”

“The—the one that feeds into the entire west side of this city?”

“There’s only one reservoir, Adelina.”

“But that’s madness . Why would you do something like that? Surely, you’d have to know it would poison people?”

Pascal doesn’t reply.

“Answer me!” I raise my voice, rocking forward in my chair. “Tell me the goddamn truth for once!”

“Fine!” Something in Pascal finally snaps and he rounds on me with fire blazing in his eyes. “I’ve been dumping their toxic waste for years. Technically, we’ve been burying it, but it seeped up through the soil and got into the water. Small amounts, so it hardly mattered, but over the years, it got worse. And your fucking fiancé worked it out because he wouldn’t move on from his sister’s death.”

“Carlos?”

“Exactly. That shit stain got cocky. I think because he was marrying into our family, he thought he had enough weight behind him to back up his investigation, but then he connected the dots to me and he was furious. Threatened to tell you, to tell the world. We couldn’t let that happen.”

“No…” Carlos was a good man. As decent as one could be in this line of work, if a little boring. “You killed him?”

“I did,” Pascal admits with glee. “I killed that little rat. With the Irish’s help, it was easy to steal some of Raffaele’s drug shipments and direct his killing spree toward a family who had betrayed him.”

Fat tears well in my eyes, falling silently down my cheeks. Raffaele wouldn’t have known better. All he would have seen was a family threatening his livelihood and the livelihoods of everyone he tried to protect. He would have killed them without mercy, and I don’t blame him. Not anymore.

“We dumped Carlos’ body there after the carnage, and that was all taken care of.”

“You held my hand,” I whisper hoarsely. “At his funeral. You held my hand and comforted me. You were as sad as I was.”

“I was relieved,” Pascal corrects. “He’d been digging too deep and had to be dealt with. Plus, his moral take on everything was suffocating. Sure, a few people were getting sick and dying, but it’s minuscule compared to the homes and businesses that rely on the energy the Irish pump out of their plants. And they keep the cost of gas down.”

“And…” I’m almost too sick to ask. “Mom? Did she find out the truth too?”

“Your mother?” He scoffs as if he never shared a single affectionate moment with her. “She was collateral. But Adelina, you have to understand that she already had cancer when she got sick. She probably would have died regardless.”

“You bastard! You twisted, twisted bastard! You don’t know that!” I surge up in my seat, dragging the chair with me as I lunge at my father with hatred twisting in my veins. “We could have saved her, we could have gotten her help. You even could have taken her somewhere else, away from the fucking water. Why did you let her die? Why? Why did you kill her?”

Several guards rush forward and drag me back when I’m an inch away from my treacherous leech of a father. Despite my struggles, I’m unable to free myself.

My heart pounds so hard that my teeth throb. My skin is hot, and my clothes suddenly feel like they’re made of coarse straw with how they scrape against my body.

“She was an unfortunate death,” Pascal replies, adjusting his clothes as he steps back. “But as I said, these are necessary deaths in order to keep cheap energy flowing for thousands.”

“Is that why you don’t want me working at that hospital? Were you worried I was going to find out?”

“Something like that.”

“I was wrong,” I sob as I fall back into my seat, my wrists inflamed from my struggles against the cuffs.

“Once I take care of Raffaele, I will show you what I mean. Can you really stake a handful of deaths against the livelihoods of thousands?”

“I was so wrong about you.” I weep brokenly. “I was wrong about Raffaele, about you, about everything. I hope Raffaele kills you. I hope he kills you slowly.”

“Come on, Adelina.” Pascal approaches, and for a moment, he looks as if he truly expects to see a daughter’s understanding in my eyes. “There’s no way you actually have real feelings for that man? You can’t possibly love a monster like that.”

“He’s not the monster,” I hiss between gritted teeth, lifting my head and glaring venom at my father. “You are.”