Page 89 of Fallen Heir

"So it was you," I said, voice cracking. "You killed my parents."

He let out a dark laugh. "You think I’d stoop that low? No, Savannah. I had someone murder them. I didn’t need their blood on my hands."

I swallowed hard, bile rising. My legs were trembling, but I stood my ground. For the innocent souls behind me. For myself.

"You bastard," I hissed.

His eyes flashed, and suddenly the smile was gone. In its place was rage.

"The only bastard," he spat, "paid off my family to claim their small-time drug trafficking business. Then he married you off to me—to keep me in the business. To keep me under his thumb. To keep me from making anyone else money but him." He stepped closer, the barrel now pressing into my temple. “The onlybastardwas your father.” I tried to remain calm.

"But you're right. He wouldn't sell women and children. That's why I ended him. Before he ended me."

The confession knocked the air out of me.

I tried to steady my breathing. The children were behind me. I couldn’t fall apart. Not now.

"You just had to run away, didn't you?" Bruce sneered. "You had to fuck everything up. I needed that money, Savannah. All the money you never deserved. Never even knew about. I would've been unstoppable."

My heart slammed in my chest. Images of my father—the kind smile, the late nights at his office, the way he kissed my mother’s forehead when he thought no one was watching—they fractured like glass.

"He was more of a man than you ever will be," I said quietly.

Bruce's voice lowered, almost conspiratorial. "He was a drug lord, Savannah. The legend that ran the Southern Mafia. Empire rooted in real estate, laundered through construction, enforced through blood. He wasn’t innocent. But he was a fool. A man who refused to evolve. And I? I evolved."

I shook my head, tears stinging but not falling. Not yet.

"And my mother?"

“Yourmother,” Bruce said with a shrug, “was the real threat. She had connections outside. Political ones. The kind that make entire crime families vanish overnight. You know, it’s ironic that most of myprized possessionsweren’t even mine.”

His tone darkened, the smug grin returning. “They were stolen. One by one. Over the years. Someone had been hunting my drops, my shipments—freeing them. It cost me billions. Years of work.” He leaned in, voice lowering with venom. “And now I know who.”

I felt the world tilting. The truth was burning through me, and I didn’t know what to hold on to.

But I knew one thing.

I wouldn’t let him win.

Not again. Not this time.

He circled me slowly now, gun dragging lightly along my shoulder.

"You could’ve had it all, Savannah. You and me. Power. Wealth. The empire your father never dreamed of."

"You call this power?" I said, voice hardening. "You sell children. You beat women. You lie. You kill. You're not powerful. You're pathetic."

His hand twitched on the trigger.

I didn’t back down.

Let him shoot.

Because for the first time in what felt like years, I remembered who I was. And I wasn’t afraid anymore.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed, his lips curling into a bitter sneer as he stepped closer.

“Tell me,” he barked. “How’d he do it? Huh? How’d heknowhow to get to me?” His voice rose with each word, the veins in his neck straining. “Was it your mother? Did she tell him? Or did your father already know what I was doing—trying to wash his hands of the filth I was staining on them?”