“He defied my orders. No one defies my orders,” my mother says.
One flick of her fingers is all it takes to make the guy scream.
BANG!
The gun goes off.
I close my eyes.
Not in time to avoid seeing the bullet fly straight through his brain, lodging into the wall to the right. When I open my eyes again, the man’s body slumps sideways, still attached to the chair.
Panic unfurls inside me, and I swallow my vomit as it rises.
I can’t stop staring at the man in front of me who was tortured and then killed, regardless of his answers. At the man who probably didn’t deserve this fate that’s worse than a quick death.
And no one did a thing to stop it.
She had this man killed without showing an ounce of remorse.
My mother steps toward me, her lips pursed as she inches closer to my ear. “That’s what happens … when you betray me.”
My body begins to shake.
This wasn’t just an execution.
It was a threat.
Not to that man … but to me.
Harper
She grabs my hand and pulls me up the stairs and out of the basement. Before I know it, I’m dragged all the way back up to my room again, this time without a key to escape. She shoves me inside and clutches the door while staring at me.
“You’re going to stay here until you finally learn not to disobey me,” she says.
Fear coils around my heart as my fate becomes bleaker by the minute.
I shake my head. “Please, don’t do this.”
I don’t want to resort to begging, but if I must, I will. She was my mother once, after all. She must have some feelings left inside her heart for me.
“I’m sorry I tried to escape,” I plead. “I just wanted—”
“What you want is irrelevant,” she interrupts. “You’re in my house, and you will learn to respect the rules.”
I’ve never seen her this off the rails before. But maybe I never truly knew her to begin with.
“You disappointed me.” She sighs. “Just because you are my daughter doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on you. That I’ll pity you.” She scoffs. “And don’t for a second think you can try those antics again.”
So I was right. Being forced to witness that execution was a warning after all.
Could she have it in her to hurt me?
To have me killed like she did that man?
I swallow hard, and my hands instinctively reach for my belly, but I stop midair.
My mother’s eyes travel along with mine, narrowing along the way. Her fingers tap against the door.
Did I give myself away? Could she know? She couldn’t possibly, right? There’s no way. I didn’t tell her about my pregnancy, and now that I’ve seen how she can react … I definitely won’t be.
But I don’t know how long I’m going to be trapped here, and if it’s too long … she’s going to find out regardless.
“Make no mistake, Harper. You are my daughter. Whether you like it or not,” she says, her voice so sharp and serious that it brings goose bumps to my body. “And you will tell me everything I want to know.”
When she attempts to close the door, I hold up a hand. “Wait!”
She pauses, raising a brow.
“If I give you what you want, will you let me go?”
Her lip twitches. “I’m not going to bargain with you.”
Damn. Well, it was worth a shot.
“But if you won’t tell me exactly what Marcello has been up to, maybe you’ll tell him instead.”
Him? Who is she talking about?
Suddenly, she slams the door shut, and I’m left with more questions than answers.
I run to the door and bang on it a few times to no avail.
“Mother! Let me out!” I scream. “You can’t keep me here forever! Do you hear me?”
I don’t know where I get this sudden spike in defiance, but I know I won’t get anywhere by waiting around like a sitting duck and doing nothing.
What kind of mother would do this to the girl she raised?
None. Because she isn’t my goddamn mother, and I should’ve known.
My face contorts as I stare at the wooden door in front of me, which has now become the symbol of everything I once loved so dearly … everything I now despise more than anything.
My mother is nothing more than a lying, thieving, conniving murderer.
While I was searching for their killer, these people were happily living their lives, oblivious to the pain they’d caused.
My fists ball up against my side.
No more.
I refuse to let this woman shatter my heart any further.
She is no mother to me.
I only have one mother, one person who actually, truly cared about me: Andrea.
And I will make it my life’s mission to see her again just so I can tell her how much I love and appreciate her.
Within minutes, there is a ruckus on the stairs, and I quickly step away from the door so it doesn’t slam in my face. I’ve been listening and waiting for something to happen, but I don’t recognize the sounds at all.
The door bursts open, and in rolls a wheelchair, guided by guards panting heavily from having to drag it all the way up the stairs. But that isn’t the reason my jaw drops.
It’s Frank, my not-so-dead, fake father.
“Oh my God …” I mutter as he rolls inside and stares at me point-blank. “I thought … I thought …”
“You thought you’d killed me?” he says, the look on his face thunderous.
He nods at his guards, who quickly leave to stand beside the door, but they don’t leave us alone. Probably because he knows I can run past him quicker than he can wheel to chase me.
But why is he in this wheelchair to begin with?
“Nice way to greet your father, Harper,” he says, his jaw tensing.
I don’t move an inch, even though I’m in the middle of the room. “You’re not my father.”
“I gave you a home,” he growls.
“I didn’t belong to you nor Molly,” I spit back.
“Yes. You. Did,” he says through gritted teeth. “We loved you like you were our own.”
“No. No parent would do that to another,” I say.
He makes a tsk sound. “Don’t pretend you cared about Igor.”
“I couldn’t because you killed him! I didn’t even have the chance to get to know him!” I yell. “I never even knew he was my real father. Until it was too late.”
My father’s face darkens. “No one misses that old fool, and you shouldn’t either. He didn’t deserve you.”
“Oh, but you do?” I scoff. I can’t believe this.
“Apparently not enough for you not to want to wish me dead,” he retorts, staring me down.
A pang of guilt shoots through me as I watch him move with his wheelchair. It’s only then that I notice one of his hands doesn’t move quite like it’s supposed to … And half his face doesn’t appear to work either when he talks.
“What happened to you?” I ask, curiosity overtaking me.
“What do you think?” he asks, parking himself in the middle of the room, right in front of me. “What do you think happens to a person’s brain when the body is drowning?”