“Where am I?” I demanded.
As he started to approach me without a word in answer, I prepared myself to jump at him, using surprise to my advantage, but then someone else entered the room and I froze completely.
“Hi sis,” Gia mocked as she strode into the room like she owned it. She was dressed in jeans with a black leather jacket and killer heals. If it weren’t for her young face, she’d look every part the stereotypical villain I was sure she was trying to play the part of.
“Gia?” I gasped. “What is this? What are you doing?”
“Taking control of my own life,” Gia answered flippantly as she stopped just inside the door.
“Where are Callan and Arran?”
“Alive. For now.”
“What does that mean? What are you playing at? Do you have any idea how worried Rafe has been about you?” I gasped breathlessly.
This was just getting worse. Wherever I was, whoever had pulled me from that car wreck, they had my sister too, and possibly Cal and Arran. How would I get any of us out of this? Especially when Gia seemed to be acting as if she belonged there.
“Fuck Rafe! I’m done with him. I’m done with this whole fucked up family. I had a plan to get out…we did! Me and Mum, but you couldn’t let her go, could you?” she spat bitterly as she looked to me with more hatred than I had ever seen from her. “She told me…warned me. She said you’d never let her come for me. You killed her, didn’t you? It was you! You found out about our plan. Just admit it!”
“No. Jesus, Gia. No! What plan? Our Mum was a liar and a manipulator. Whatever she told you, it was bullshit. All she wanted was money. That’s all she ever wanted – drugs, or money to buy drugs. That is all she ever cared about.”
“Shut up! You didn’t even know her! She despised you. She told me what you did to her, how you treated her! You’re the manipulative little bitch! Maybe everyone else has fallen for your act, but I know what you are.”
“You do, huh? So what’s this big plan? I assume we’re here because you decided to do it without your adoring mother at your side?” I snapped angrily.
My mother had been gone for weeks, and yet she was still there, destroying my life. Now she had succeeded in taking my sister from me and from Rafe, with her lies and games. I didn’t know what she had told Gia, but I could imagine, and it had obviously been very convincing because Gia seemed to be fully brainwashed by the bullshit lies.
“Do you know who your real father is, Cara?” Gia asked after seeming to take several moments to calm herself.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s actually pretty important. You see, there’s a power struggle going on over the docks Rafe believes he owns right now. The Russians and the Armenians have been fighting for each other’s turf, all in preparation for one of the families to take the docks from Rafe,” she began to lecture.
“Totryand take the docks. They wont succeed,” I interrupted confidently. I knew the De Santis were still one of the most powerful families in London. Rafe had ensured that, in order to protect his family and his men as much as he could.
“That’s where you’re wrong. The Russians are going to succeed because they just got their hands on the trump card – you,” Gia sneered, almost giddy with self-satisfaction.
“Rafe won’t give up shit in return for me!”
“He will, and so will Adamian – the leader of the Armenians. They’re both going to give everything to the Russians because we’ll leave them no choice.”
“We? So you’re working with the Russians, are you?” I scoffed.
“I made a deal with them. We did – me and Mum. We sold you to Dmitri Kozlov. Mum set it up, proved to him who you were and what your significance was.”
“And who am I?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I’d already worked it out.
“You are Grigor Adamian’s daughter. He won’t risk fucking with the Russian’s once he knows that, and Rafe won’t oppose them taking the docks if we prove to him just how badly we’ll hurt you if he doesn’t.”
“The Kozlov’s are dead. They were taken out in retaliation for kidnapping you, you idiot!” I cried angrily.
“Oh, that,” she laughed. “They never kidnapped me. I was there willingly, to lure you there, but you fucked that up too.”
“I saved your fucking life!”
“My life was never in danger, you bitch! Jase would never have allowed anything to happen to me, until you shot him!” she wailed so shrill, I wanted to cover my ears.
It was clear, from her extreme reaction and the rage that came with her screamed words, that she had loved Jase, and believed that love was reciprocated. And suddenly it all became clearer to me, why Gia’s anger towards me had escalated so rapidly since that night I thought she had been kidnapped. She had watched me kill Jase, and whatever Isabela had led her to believe about me, had all been cemented in that instant, in her head at least, because I was the monster who killed the man she loved.
