“Dant—” I tried.
“Ssh!”the voice hissed.
Darkness swallowed the room.My eyes adjusted and I traced movement — a shape shifting in the black.Then a face stepped out of the gloom, and my chest did something that nearly killed me.
“D—Dad?”I breathed.
He emerged fully from the dark: hair plastered to a sweat-slick forehead, his suit a ruined thing, the lines of his face sharp and tired.He looked like someone who’d walked through a thunderstorm and kept going.He glared first, then softened a fraction when our eyes met.Relief unfurled in me like a warm blanket — if Alessandro couldn’t find me, maybe my father could.Maybe this horror would end.
“It’s me,” he said, voice low and wrapped in a smile that did nothing to hide the danger under it.
I clung to that smile and the memory of him leaving a week ago for America burned in the back of my mind — he wasn’t supposed to be here yet.I shouldn’t have felt surprised to see him, but the way he looked now made something scream inside my ribs.
“Dad, what the hell’s going on?Why are we hiding?”My words came out fast and thin.I wanted out.I wanted home.
“Not now.I’ll answer later.”He cut me off with a growl.
“But—” I started.
“Shut the fuck up!”His hand clamped over my mouth like a vice.Pain rolled through me as his fingers dug into my jaw.I stopped, choking on the fear and the bile.
Footsteps crept closer to the door.My father watched the wall like a man expecting a landmine to spring.Then he turned back to me.His palm on my face tightened until I could feel bone through skin.
“Ariana,” he said quietly — the voice of the man who’d raised me, coated in steel.“You know I won’t tolerate childish behavior.I’m your father.You respect me the way I taught you.”
I nodded because my throat wouldn’t work right.He kept my mouth covered so I couldn’t call out, so I couldn’t warn Alessandro that I was alive.The words sank in like poison.
“You will never see Alessandro ever again.You will stay away from him.Is that understood?”
It hit me in the chest like a fist.Not just a command — a verdict.My heart splintered and started to rain shards.I’d known he hated our relationship; I’d known he’d try to stop it.I hadn’t believed he’d go this far.I’d never pictured him smiling as he did it.
Tears came hot and sudden.I felt my father’s thumb press into my jawbone until the world blurred.All I could do was roll down into a whimper.
“I said shut the fuck up, Ariana.Shut.The.Fuck.Up.”He spat the words, venom slow and precise.
Then he slapped me.Full force.I went down hard, cheek burning as if branded.I vomited from the shock, clawing at the floor with nails that slid in blood and dust.
I tried to crawl away, but everything fired with pain — a sharp, aching burn in my lower stomach that made me double over, a shudder that was more than fear.I couldn’t breathe.I couldn’t think.I could only cry and plead until my voice was a raw thing in my throat.
Then a gunshot cracked the air — a single, ugly sound from the other side of the wall.It ripped through me like a guttering flame.My heart jackhammered.I stilled, listening for the aftershocks.
My father laughed.A low, wet sound that oozed satisfaction and something worse.It felt like ice poured down my spine.
I hauled myself to the door and pushed it open with every ounce of strength left in me, sliding onto my stomach to see.
A body hit the floor with a dull thud; blood blossomed like a dark flower.For a dizzy second, everything in me screamed that it was Alessandro.My hands went to the ground, palms pressing into the grit, and I groped toward him, stupid, blind, begging for proof that this nightmare would end.
My father’s laugh cut through the haze again, closer now, full of the kind of sick pride that made bile rise in my throat.“Sweetheart,” he cooed, all sickly affection, and I hated him for the warmth in that voice.I ignored him and crawled toward the figure on the floor.
Before I could reach it, his grip like iron locked around my arm and yanked me back.He turned me until I met his face.Up close, his satisfaction was a thing that showed in his eyes.
“This bastard is gone,” he said, slow and final.“I finished him.”
The words dropped inside me like stones.I stared at my father and then at the body again, the world tipping.A tear fell, hot and unbelieving, and for a fragile second I refused to let the finality of his words take root.
“You won’t see him — not in a million years,” he said, voice hard as a tombstone.“He’s fucking dead.Do you hear me?”
I heard him.But hope — stupid, stubborn, dangerous hope — whispered that this couldn’t be true.I pushed myself up on shaking arms and went to the body again, hands trembling, desperate for something, anything, to prove me wrong.
