“She’s not safe with you, either, Misha. Only a minute after she met you at the mall the other day, she was kidnapped. So don’t go pointing fingers at us,” Joe snarls.
“Kidnapped?” he mutters, his entire body going rigid with fear.
“She’s fine,” Joe sighs.
“What happened? Are you sure she’s okay?”
“Yes, we got her back. She’s at home.”
“Cut him loose. He’s useless to us, and he’s lucky he’s Maria’s brother. Otherwise, I would have slit his throat,” I huff.
“Why the hell are you guys so protective of her? Why not just give her back to me?” Misha groans as Joe cuts him free and removes the cuffs.
“Because you don’t deserve her, Misha. She’s happy with us, and we will do literally anything it takes to protect her. Including getting rid of you if we need to.”
Misha stares at Joe, trying to read his expression.
After a while, he nods. “Fine. I’ll agree to your terms,” he murmurs, not happy about it.
“Get out,” I snarl. “I’m sure you can find your own way home.”
Misha scoffs and shakes his head. He throws me one last glare before he leaves.
Kaz goes to make sure he’s off the property.
Joe turns to me and sighs. “It’s my father.”
“I know. We’re going to have to rethink everything and come up with the new attack plan.”
Joe watches my face for a while. “You okay?” he asks.
“I thought it would be satisfying…to take revenge on him. To hurt him…”
“And?”
“And all I could think about was that I would be hurting her. I wondered what she would think of me if she saw me doing that to her brother….” I groan, rubbing my hands over my face.
Joe chuckles and places his hand on my shoulder.
“What do you think it means?” he asks, smirking as though he knows the answer.
I sigh, chuckling too. “That I love her?”
He laughs. “Yeah, man. That’s exactly what it means.”
He heads upstairs to find Kaz, and I stand alone for a moment, staring at the empty chair where my enemy sat only a few minutes earlier.
I love her.
I laugh again, shaking my head. “I fucking love her.”
Chapter 28 - Joseph
Once we removed Misha from our suspect list, it was easy enough to see who was really behind everything, and how my father carefully crafted puzzle pieces of evidence to pin on Misha so that he could come closer to taking us down without being caught.
A distraction that we fell for.
But not anymore.
