Page 116 of Hunted

“No, you have it all wrong. I'm not doing thistoyou, I'm doing thisforyou.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask, my hands clenching the papers I’m holding so hard they crinkle in my fist.

“Don't you see? This sets you up for life. All the money you could ever imagine. You can do anything. Think of everything you could accomplish at Titan Tech with the kind of money that this brings in.”

He still thinks I care aboutmoney? About power? All I ever wanted was to build something for myself, something real.

“I don't understand, why would you even bother with this? The Danver’s Group brings in enough money as it is.”

He chuckles lightly. “Oh, Son, don't you understand? Thisisthe Danver’s Group. There's nothing else left.”

I shake my head. “What the fuck do you mean? There’re hundreds of employees, if not thousands. I've been looking at the annual reports for years.”

“It's all falsified. None of it exists. I've been selling it off slowly over the years and moving that money into the more… shall we say,profitableside of the business?”

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. All of it.Fake.

“You mean human trafficking.” The words feel filthy in my mouth.

“It's not like we're taking people from their homes and selling them. Our men are professional; they find people who won't be missed.”

“And that makes it all okay?”

“Who’s to say I’m not making the world a better place? I’m taking people that are a drain on resources and finding them a purpose in life. In turn, you can use the profits to make your tech.”

He actually believes this. That he's doing the world a favor. That money absolves everything. I look at him, but I don’t see my father anymore. I see someone demented and twisted.

“And I suppose you don’t get anything out of this?”

“Isn’t the knowledge that my son is taken care of, enough?”

I narrow my eyes at him in disbelief until he eventually rolls his eyes. “I may take a small percentage for myself, but since I’m the one who organized this whole thing, I think it’s well justified.”

There it is. The truth in its purest, ugliest form. It was never about the family or the company or some twisted form of legacy. It was always abouthim.

And he’s in charge of everything.

The plane crashes.

The warehouse.

The mercenaries.

“You tried to have me killed!” I seethe at him. The rage rises so quickly it makes me dizzy.

“No, I was very clear about them not harming you,” he says with a frustrated frown.

I don’t know who I hate more in this moment, him… or the version of myself that ever trusted him.

“Oh, so you just hired men to kill my best friends in front of me and what? I’m just supposed to carry on with my life like nothing happened?”

He presses his lips together tightly, clearly frustrated with how I’m taking this. Well, he’s not the only frustrated one here. No, not frustrated,angry.

“I don’t even understand why you’re trying to have them killed?”

“They were going to find the warehouse; I couldn’t have that happen.”

“Yeah, well, we found it and shut it down, anyway. And you were in the clear, we thought it was all Frank. Why did you keep trying to have them killed?” I can’t make sense of any of this.