“I would have been left with nothing! Everything I worked for and saved would have been lost. You have to understand it’s only because I knew… it was a test of loyalty,” Marc insisted with desperate eyes. “They wouldn’t have hurt you. If I convinced them I trusted them enough to be family… they’d have… left you alone. I know Arko. He won’t force a woman...”
The bastard was still lying, even now. I clenched my fists. If he wasn’t in that bed already, I would have put him there for how he tried to manipulate the situation again.
The Pavlovs weren’t known for their mercy. They would have taken Alisa, no matter what.
And he knew it. Of course he did. Why else would he fear them so?
“You’re lying,” I said before I could think.
Marc looked over at me, and all I saw was anger. “She is my daughter. What would she be without me? If I were reduced to being no one… it was better for her…. Besides, there are worse fates in the world than being married to the Pavlovs. Alisa could’ve considered herself lucky…with their wealth…their power…”
“Papa!” Alisa went pale, as though she understood what I’d been thinking. Marc was a fool. Even with that vague, bullshit answer, he had said enough.
“I… had no other choice,” he repeated, clutching Alisa’s hand.
“There’s always a choice,” I added coldly. “You chose yourself. Every time.”
Alisa shot me a look, but it wasn’t one of anger. It was one of utter exhaustion, like she was done with it all.
“Oh, papa,” she said softly. “You should have gone to the police.”
“They would have put me in… jail… “ he began to sputter.
The monitors began to beep faster. Marc’s breathing grew more labored.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though whether he meant it or was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear, I couldn’t tell. “I never meant… for it to go this far.”
His hand tightened around Alisa’s, then went slack. The monitor flatlined, a high, steady tone filling the room.
“Papa?” Alisa said, her voice small. “Papa, no. No!”
I pulled her back as the medical team rushed in, starting CPR. But I could see in their eyes that they knew it was too late.
After several minutes, the doctor called the time of death.
Alisa stood frozen, staring at her father’s body. Then her legs gave out, and I caught her before she hit the floor. She turned in my arms, burying her face against my chest, and finally broke.
Chapter 22 - Alisa
The funeral was small, just the way I wanted. I invited a handful of some distant relatives who probably came out of obligation, and Dante being Dante, insisted he wanted to come for me. We decided to leave any colleagues out, because we had no idea who was evil and who wasn’t.
Nothing about my father’s career remained innocent by the end of it.
I didn’t get the chance to tell him how much that meant to me, for I knew of his family’s long-standing feud with my father. Of course, Dante didn’t come for him.
Dante stood beside me like a shadow the whole time, a quiet pillar of support. I watched on trembling legs as they lowered his casket into the ground.
And when the priest spoke about him as a man of justice returning to God? I hung my head in shame. I had racked my brain over and over again, hour after hour, relived every moment of my father’s life as I knew it all to in the hope of understanding what event exactly turned him this evil. But all I could think of was that maybe, he’d always had evil running in him, and I somehow convinced myself all fathers were that callous, that cold, that needy for perfection.
I felt numb the whole time. I hadn't cried since the hospital. Not when I chose his casket. Not when I greeted people at the service. I just felt... hollow. Empty enough to want to disappear with the wind.
"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry for your loss," an old aunt pulled me into a hug. “If there’s anything you need…”
"Thank you," I replied on autopilot with the same answer I’d given everyone else on repeat. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. I hated how they looked at me with pity. I hated how I couldn’t shed a tear because it felt like a betrayal to all the innocent lives my father ruined, and I hated how the attendants whispered and called it shock.
I shook hands of people as they left. Hugged some. My body moved on its own, like a puppet putting on a show. Dante often checked up on me with a hand to the small of his back, with his constant offers to get me water, with the occasional ‘are you okay?’
All I could do was nod.
