“Michael Monroe,” He says, drawing out my name to save every syllable. “You grew up.”
I force myself to keep my shoulders loose and my chin lifted. I refuse to show fear of him. “That’s what happens when you eat food,” I reply with my smart ass remarks.
“Always did have a sassy mouth on you.” He tsks.
I look him straight in the eyes. Now it’s time for business. “You asked. I showed.”
He chuckles softly.
“Oh, you showed,” he murmurs. “Ten years late, but I suppose we can overlook that… given the circumstances.”
I don’t like where this is going. My instincts haven’t screamed this loud since the night Kai found that bastard on top of our mother and beat him to a pulp.
“What do you want from me?” I growl.
De Luca lifts his chin, and two more men step out of the shadows behind me. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
“I want my daughter.”
My heart stops mid-beat.
He steps closer, “You took something from me, Michael. Years ago, you took a life that wasn’t yours to take. And recently…” He tilts his head and looks at me, “You took my Julia.”
“I didn’t take her,” I bite out. “ She was living on her own. And your men were using her, for their own sick pleasure, and then beating the shit out of her.”
He laughs, a soft, dangerous laugh. “My people do nothing without my permission.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You think my men showed up at the bar by chance?”
A pause.
“You think they just took it upon themselves to hurt her and fucked her?”
Another pause.
“No, ragazzo. Everything that happened to Julia was ordered by me.”
My stomach drops.
He steps closer to me, the dim light showing off the sharp lines of his face.
“She was getting… sentimental… rebellious and forgetting her place. She was spending time in the wrong districts, with the wrong friends, and making the wrong choices.”
He leans in slightly, “Girls like her need correction, structure, and discipline.”
I clench my fists so hard that my nails draw blood on my palm.
“And what’s your solution?”
“Well, marriage, of course. She was promised years ago to a powerful family. A lucrative partnership. It was an arranged marriage she had been promised to since birth.”
My vision goes red.
“You can’t just…”
His hand snaps out faster than I can react. He has a fistful of my shirt and yanks me forward until our faces are mere inches apart.
