“Forgive me my lack of subtlety,” Victor says, smiling without mirth. “Yes. I’m your father. But don’t confuse biology for affection. Blood doesn’t mean loyalty. It means ownership. Ownership means I get what I want.”
All the world becomes very small and very loud. Memory is slippery, but the truth snaps into place like a trapdoor—everything aligns until I can see the pattern. I am the product of his power in a way I never understood. I was always collateral. I was always property.
“Why?” The question is useless and huge. My heart is a hammer. “Why would you—if you were my father—”
Victor cuts me off with a laugh that could have been tenderness. “Why keep the heir close only to place him in the dark? So he learns hunger. So he learns to be useful. So he grows teeth and knows the taste of what I want. I gave you the chance to be good at being necessary. You failed. Figured you’d take pity instead.”
I want to vomit. Shame soaks through me hotter than the blood. I think of every time I’d followed his orders, of every compromise I’d swallowed. I think of Jamie bleeding on a roadside because I thought loyalty was worth his life. I think of Chloe, and how naïve I’d been to think she was some clean thing in a world built on dirt.
“Victor,” I manage. “I’ll get you the money. I’ll do whatever. Just—her. Let her go. Please.”
Victor’s hand is steady when it pushes my head down, a small, deliberate gesture that says he owns the moment. “Go fetch it, Rico,” he says, as if the order is the only reasonable thing he’s done all night. “Take the blue duffel from the back of the van. It has all the papers I will need to get money from her trust, seeing as her father, as collateral put the fate of her life in my hands. It’s less than the money I would have gotten from the Ashford trusts, but it is better than nothing. Don’t you think? I just need her to sign the form and that’s it.”
Rico’s jaw tightens. There is no pride in the way he moves. He goes because he must. He goes because he is a man who knowshis place in Victor’s small, efficient cosmos. He goes because loyalty is a commodity Victor trades in, and Rico owes a debt he cannot pay any other way.
“Wait,” I croak. My voice is a thread pulled taut. “If you get your money—”
Victor’s cigar glows. “Then the two of you will be taken somewhere quiet. There will be no parade, no funeral or poetry. Just two bodies in the dirt—close enough to teach the next fool that love is a weakness.” He taps the cigar ash into his palm and smiles like a man pleased with a blueprint.
I laugh then, a sound that wants to be broken. “Romeo and Juliet,” I whisper, and bile crawls up my throat.
Rico steps back toward the open bay. The van’s engine hums in sympathy. Every movement feels like a countdown. He glances at me once, the barest flicker of something—regret, maybe—before he climbs in. The back door slams, a gauntlet.
Chloe sobs again, quieter now, muffled by whatever fabric covers her mouth. I strain my neck as best I can to see her through the haze of pain and humiliation. Her face is small and wet and bright with terror. My chest wants to split open. I want to do anything. I want to punch Victor’s teeth out with my one good hand. I want to untie myself and run until my lungs give out. I want to cradle Chloe and promise her the world I never had.
Rico starts the van and pulls away, headlights cutting a white line across the yard before disappearing into the night. Theecho of its tail lights is a punctuation that leaves the warehouse sudden and vast. Victor watches the glow die and then turns to me, expression unreadable.
“You remember this,” he says, each syllable precise. “You remember that you chose this life. You remember where your loyalty lies. And you remember that the only mercy I give will be the kind that suits me.”
He spits the words into my face like a benediction.
There’s a long, cruel silence. Somewhere, far away, a siren wails and fades. I taste metal and smoke and the old, stale fear of a child who knows the world is against him. Part of me wants to curl up and let the darkness take me, to end the ledger with a clean line.
Instead I breathe. The pain anchors me to the moment. The sound of Chloe’s sob keeps me from caving into anything softer. There is nothing left to bargain for but time, and I intend to use every second of it. I will find a seam. I will remember the way the ropes creak. I will count the steps. I will track the van until it stops. My legs are weak but they exist. My hands are raw but they still work.
Victor lights his cigar again and the smoke swallows his features. He walks away like the man already imagining the grave he’ll order dug. The warehouse shrinks to the size of a mouthful of ash.
I am tied to the floor, failing and furious and suddenly, impossibly, aware that the ties that bind me aren’t just rope but history, lineage, the ugly inheritance of a man who calls himself my father. I am the son he never wanted and the son who will, one day, be the reckoning of that want.
For now, I press my forehead to the cold concrete and let the tears come. They are useless. They are necessary. They keep me human in a place built to strip that away.
33
Chloe
“Untieher,Rico.”
The rope loosen just enough to let me move my hands. My hands shake violently as I reach for the papers. My pulse is a jackhammer in my temples. Miles is slumped in the corner, bruised, bloodied, coughing, but alive. My stomach flips, guilt slicing sharper than the warehouse’s cold concrete.
Victor leans against the table Rico dragged in. His cigar’s still smoldering between his fingers, eyes gleaming with that cruel patience only a man like him can summon. “Ah,” he says, voice smooth like oil over gravel, “Time to make this easy, pretty thing. Sign here, and this is all behind you.”
I glance at the pen, the paper, my hands. My mind screams to refuse, to run, to claw my way out. But I need leverage. I need a weapon. I need to get Victor off me before he kills me or Miles.
I pick up the pen, slowly, deliberately, making sure he sees me comply. His smile widens, predatory, and he moves toward me, confident. “That’s my girl,” he purrs. “See? Cooperation is easy.”
“Where should I sign?” I whisper, voice trembling with fury I can barely contain.
Victor crouches close enough that I can smell the whisky on his breath. His hand grazes mine as he points at the line, and in that instant, something snaps. I ram the pen upward into his eye, hard, sharp, hot. His scream tears the warehouse apart, ragged and furious, and he stumbles back, clutching his face.
