Page 89 of Wicked Mafia Beast
I look past him to my father. Declan Malone. Half in shadow, shoulders hunched, trembling like a man standing in his own grave. He looks a decade older than the night I climbed out my window. The silver at his temples has gone full white and thelines around his mouth have carved themselves into permanent grooves.
"Dad." The word tastes like copper. "Here to watch? That's usually your role, right? Standing in the corner while Seamus does the dirty work."
He flinches. His wet eyes find mine and the shame in them is so heavy it presses the air out of the room. His mouth opens, closes, chews on words he's been swallowing for decades.
Seamus reaches into a cardboard box beside the chair and pulls out a stack of papers. Manila folders, printed documents, pages covered in my handwriting. That cramped, hurried script I used during late nights in my old bedroom, documenting every crime, every connection, every rotten thread I could pull from the Malone empire.
My investigation files. The ones I stashed behind the drywall when I climbed out my window and ran.
Six months of work in his manicured hands.
"Looking for these?" He fans the pages so I can see my own handwriting, my own annotations, spread across his fingers like a card trick. "Found them in your room. Behind the drywall. Clever. Not clever enough."
He drops them into a metal drum in the center of the warehouse. Strikes a match. Tosses it in. The flame catches the edge of a page and my work starts curling into ash. Heat from the drum reaches my face and the acrid, bitter smell of burning paper fills my nose. Six months of my life reduced to smoke.
"All that effort." He watches it burn with satisfaction. "And all for nothing."
The loss settles in my chest for about half a second before I remember the truth and almost laugh.
"You think that matters?" The laugh comes out harsh and real and it makes his smug expression waver. "Burn it all. Every page. It doesn't change a damn thing."
"Excuse me?"
"You think those were my only copies? Burn it." I lean forward against the zip ties and hold his gaze. "Your shipping routes. Your shell companies. Your trafficking network. Every body you've buried and every cop you've bought. All of it. Documented, verified, and sitting in the hands of men who make you look like a hall monitor with a god complex."
The color drains from his face. "The Syndicate."
"Every file Luca Valentina built on you. Every dirty secret you thought was untouchable." I let my bloody smile spread wide. "You can burn my notes. The Syndicate has that and more. And trust me when I say you will not survive what is coming for you."
His hand connects with my face before I can brace for it. The backhand snaps my head sideways and stars burst behind my eyes. Fresh blood fills my mouth from my split lip.
The pain is sharp and clarifying. I've been hit before. This is nothing new. What's new is the rage building behind my ribs that says I am done being the person who takes the hit.
"You will be on a container ship by morning." His voice goes sub-zero. "Destination: the middle of the fucking cold Atlantic. The doors open, you go in the water. No body. No evidence. No traitorous niece."
"Wanna bet Kon finds me before you finish getting your rocks off killing your own family, dear uncle?" I deadpan.
There’s a long pause I feel goes on forever before Seamus speaks again.
"Your Russian?" Seamus adjusts his lapel where my blood spotted the fabric. "My men put two bullets in him. He's bleeding out on a rooftop surrounded by his precious flowers." His mouth curves. "No one is coming for you, darling."
For one airless second, the doubt rushes in. Kon on his knees. The blood. The way he reached for me. I saw it happen. I know Seamus isn't lying about the bullets, but if Kon were dead, my uncle would have dragged his body in here to break me. The fact that he hasn't tells me everything.
No. I crush any thought of Kon being dead and bury it deep where this man can't touch it.
Kon is alive because the alternative doesn't exist. Not in any world I'm willing to live in.
I look at my father again. And his expression stops me.
His face changes. The hollow obedience drains away and is replaced with an expression I've never seen on my father's face before. His wet eyes lock on mine and his jaw starts to tremble.
His eyes dart between Seamus and me and then to the blood drying on my face. Behind the shame on his face and the trembling I watch his jaw set into a tight line of what I hope is defiance. It might be wishful thinking on my part at this point.
But I'm desperate enough to bet on it.
"Dad." I say it differently this time. I leave out the bitterness I feel for the man and go with the honest truth. I’m a daughter asking her father for the one thing he never gave her. "Please. For once in your life. Choose me."
The warehouse goes quiet except for the crackle of burning paper in the metal drum and the distant lap of river water against the dock beyond the cracked side door. The guards shift their weight, glancing between Seamus and my father.
