Page 39 of Unwritten Vows

Derrick

I know I do it quickly, but it feels like it’s slow motion, like I’m outside of my body, as I aim and sink a bullet into my father’s brain.

There’s no sound for a while, no feeling as I drop the gun and back up against the wall. Casca is angry? At some point, I’m being beaten, pounded against the wall with the gun I just dropped, but I don’t feel a thing. I just stare at my father’s dead body. I did that.

“You’re going to wish you had gotten Mara out of here when you had the chance. I’m about to teach you a lesson that your father didn’t have the time to learn.”

That’s a strange thing to say. And a stupid one. “I just shot my own father so he couldn’t kill Mara, you idiot. You think I was keeping her here because I wanted to?”

I go back to staring at my father while my face gets pounded in.

I’m thrown to the floor, my trachea crushed under Cas’s boot, but I just don’t fucking care.

Cas yells more words at me, but I can’t register them, and this seems to enrage him.

Good, fuck him , I think, just before he picks me up again and throws me around some more.

I’m finally starting to see stars once he gets me against the wall and chokes me with his arm.

“Fight back, you little bitch!”

He wants me to fight him so he can feel better about his girl almost getting killed. Fuck him twice . I know what will really enrage him, so I say it. “No… point.”

I get choked out a moment later for that, before Mara finally gets his attention.

I don’t know if she’s trying to plead my case or not, and I don’t really fucking care.

She might not even remember anything I did for her down here.

If Cas wants to kill me, that’s just fine.

My very presence has put my girl—the only one I’ve ever truly wanted—in harm’s way from the day I first spoke to her, and I just killed my own father.

At this point, if Cas wants to end me, it is what it is.

Mara tells him something about me saving her life. “It’s true?” Cas asks me, gauging my response.

I roll my eyes back to Cas’s. “Yes.”

He blinks as the lightbulb turns on above his head. “You’re the one who called Andy.”

I nod with as much antipathy as I can muster.

“So what, I’m supposed to believe that you’re helping us out of the goodness of your heart?”

I feel something rolling around in my mouth and spit it on the floor. It’s my tooth. Okay, this kind of hurts now . “I don’t fucking care what you believe.”

He looks angry again, but Mara touches his arm and he melts like butter. “Derrick. Don’t be stupid.” And then she says the one thing that can cut through all of this shit, and it does. “Him and Liza.”

Hearing her name out loud makes the need to see her painful, whether she wants to see me or not.

Cas speaks again. “So your father wanted to betray the Bolyar and ally with Edoardo instead. But you fell in love.”

It doesn’t work. “Fuck you.”

“Derrick!” Mara admonishes me, but I’m not going to give either of them the satisfaction of seeing me pine for Liza. I’ll do it alone, or in front of her if I get out of this situation alive.

“You killed your father and saved Mara’s life just because you wanted to stay allies with Bolyar? I suppose it has nothing to do with greed or stealing your father’s power?”

I’m not going to let him make me into a villain so he can feel like some grand savior. “If I wanted power, don’t you think it would have made more sense to ally with Edoardo first, and then kill my—my father ?”

I can barely get the words out. I hated what my father became. I never wanted to be like him. But for some insane reason, I still wanted him to be proud of me. And I don’t think he ever was.

I gather myself to continue a moment later. “Don’t you think it would have made more sense to kill him when I could move up into the role of Bratva king, instead of the role of underboss? I guess not everyone thinks like you do.”

He finally gets called away by his men. He looks back at me, hesitating, still wondering if he should just blow my brains out here and now.

I can understand that. I kind of hate him, and who knows if I could make trouble for him down the line?

But in the end, he throws my gun back to me.

I try not to show my relief; apparently, my sense of self-preservation has come back to life.

“If you ever keep Mara from me again, your brains will be splattered all over the ugly Persian carpets throughout your father’s nauseatingly tacky mansion. Don’t try betraying me, either, or I promise, I’ll finish the job I started today.”

I don’t really give a shit about him , but I suppose I didn’t save Mara’s life to have it put in danger by a roid-rager. I get up and limp over to them, as he holds her close to him in his arms. “You sure you want to go with this psychopath?”

She laughs at me, and Mara isn’t really one to hide her feelings anyway. I know that all too well from my own experience.

“I’ll be in touch,” Cas says before lifting both himself and Mara up the ladder that his men throw down.

I give a huff. “You can have Mara call me. I’m probably going to hold a grudge for a while.”