Chapter 36

Brynnie Bear.

I'm shocked, to say the very fucking least, as I look at my father before me. His hair is slicked back, and he's in swimming trunks that are pink with green palm trees on them. The gold watch on his wrist is something in direct conflict with the way my father dressed. But it's him. There's no mistaking him.

"I know you're confused. And likely upset. Had I known you were in the basement, I'd have come for you sooner."

I wince at him. I'm starving and cold, and a cough started this morning from all the must and mold beneath his lavish home. "What the fuck do you mean? I assume you are their leader, though I have no fucking clue how you are because the way I remember you is not…" I wave my hand between us. "This."

He smiles, and even though I'm trying to remain steady, my insides twirl. I never thought I'd see that smile again.

"I gave the order to find you, monitor you, and report back. Not to take you," he says earnestly.

"Well, one of your baboons stepped out of line," I growl, crossing my arms over my chest.

Dad shifts his eyes between the two currently standing with us. The one of them who had his gun pinned to my back holsters it.

"Well, explain."

One of them clears his throat. His blond hair and bright blue eyes say he's not a part of this family, rather he's likely a soldier, recruited as Slate told me happens in organizations such as these.

"It's my fault, Boss. I saw she was packing her things. She was going to run, so instead of having to chase her again, I figured that I'd just bring her home."

Home.

As if this could ever be my home.

I don't even know this man, I realize, and step back a pace. He notes it but doesn't move towards me.

Instead, he lifts a towel from the end of the lounger, raises a gun that had been lying beneath it, and shoots the blond man between the eyes. He topples over. His blood splatters me and the other man standing near him, but neither of us moves.

My ears ring for a moment before I realize it's my scream filling them.

Dad lifts the gun in innocence, placing it back down and backing away from it. "I mean you no harm, Brynne, but men who don't listen to orders can't remain in this family."

"Who are you?" I sob, wiping at my face.

"Your father, my love."

My entire body is shaking as I come to terms with everything happening around me. "No. You're not. I don't know you. My dad went missing on an expedition."

He laughs, and then realizes I'm breaking before him, and stops. "That's what she told you?"

She.

Mom.

I nod. "She knows about this? She knows the real you?" I ask.

He inclines his head, waving off his remaining man.

The man bends and drags his fallen comrade off as he goes, a trail of blood staining the concrete.

"She knows, Brynne. She knew our entire lives. She was my one true love, and you…" his eyes brim with tears. "You were my reason for living."

"But you left me," I choke out.

He nods. "I did. And I did what I thought was right for you two. Though I've kicked myself for it every day since."

He removes the gun from the chair, motioning for me to sit. He sits on a lounger next to mine, setting the gun on the ground between us. Almost as if it's the slightest offering between us. It would be easy enough for either of us to grab for it and kill the other. And it gives me a slight sense of power over the situation.

"There was a war going on when you were around the age of…" He thinks back, furrowing his brows.

"Twelve." That was the age he'd left, so it was a guess.

He sighs. "Yes, you'd have been twelve. We'd had a break-in. One of the rival families had gotten men into our home. They'd tied up your mother and were about to remove you from the house when my men and I got there. Just in time. You had been drugged, and your mother…"

He closes his eyes, tears tracking down his cheeks. "She'd been raped in our bed. I wasn't there to stop any of it. Not until it was too fucking late."

My own eyes give over to emotion. The things my mom has carried all these years have had to be so heavy. So hard to deal with. Guilt throbs inside me at the way I've acted toward her a lot of that time.

She lost her love in such a gripping way, and then lost me too, because of it.

"I couldn't stay, Brynne. I had to be far away from the both of you," he admits, and I understand it. It's why I'd run from Slate. Fear of death and fear of the unknown while beside him.

Suddenly, it all feels so stupid. Yes, this life is hard, and it's dangerous, but I lost out on so much with him. And Mom? Fuck, she's been a shell of what she once was since his loss.

She's been grieving a man who was only fifteen miles away this entire time. Not worlds away, as I thought before.

"You broke her soul," I tell him, and he sobs, covering his face with his hands and taking my words, taking his lashing. "You broke mine."

"I know," he admits. "I know I did."

I'm shaking my head in disbelief and shame because I did the same thing my father did. I ran from Slate. I broke him.

"Why now? Why come for me now?" Realization crashes into me all at once, and I gasp. "Because I killed your men."

He shakes his head. "We have had eyes on Ardesia Ricci for a while now. War has been brewing between the two families. Then, one day, you were spotted on his property. When he took you, I had to find out more because my men here in Florida didn't report they'd lost sight of you. They'd been too afraid of what I'd do. So, I had no idea it was you out in the wilderness. Not until they recovered the footage of you shooting him. You shot Ardesia with your crossbow. I can't tell you how many times I watched you close one eye and pin him in your sight. You did it just as I taught you."

"You didn't come for him, did you? You came for me." My heart is beating through my chest.

He nods. "The first team was going to draw him away from you. The second was going to retrieve you safely. Bring you home."

I cover my mouth, sobbing as all the puzzle pieces fit together too rapidly for my brain to keep up.

"But you were having none of it, were you?" He smiles.

I shake my head. "My gut said something was wrong."

"And I taught you to follow your gut."

I agree, head nodding frantically. "I killed them," I confess.

He moves to the lounger I'm on, pulling me into him and shushing my cries. He rubs my head absently as he lets me get it out.

"You did. It was the moment I saw myself in you, Brynne. The very moment I knew that even though I left you, that you were mine through and through."

I pull back and look into his eyes. "The survival stuff was all bullshit?"

He sighs, turning and looking out over the pool. The small waterfall near the steps churns the waters, so small ripples are dancing on the surface, while the waning Florida sun is setting in the skies.

"No. It was the only way your mother would let me teach you to survive. The only skills she'd let me give you. It was a hobby of mine and my dad's, surviving outdoors. The only time I got to spend with him outside the city, and it was something wholesome I could teach you that would also teach you to shoot and protect yourself."

When he looks back at me, pride is filling his features. "And boy, can you ever protect yourself?"

"But there was a second team there? Why didn't they come out? I only killed the first one?" I ask.

"I called them off, Brynne. While you were with Ardesia, I knew you were safe. But I knew I'd have to get you away from him eventually. I let it lie for that moment. I underestimated you."

"Why? Why did I need to get away from him?" I know the answer, but I want him to say it. To admit that my running from Slate had been the right move.

"Because he's the Grim Reaper of New York City, Brynne. You didn't even know whose company you were in. He's who every man in the five families is afraid of. The one man I needed to take out before I moved in on his brother."

My brows lift in question as my heart pounds in wonder.

Had he spent the last six weeks hunting my Italian brute?

Suddenly, my brain remembers the gun on the ground, but I stay stark still as I wait for him to go on.

"His brother has been stealing from us, taking from our trafficking business, and profiting off our backs."

Trafficking.

"Like, trafficking of women?" I ask.

"I know you won't understand. This is a different life than you're used to. But you didn't mind when you were living off the spoils all these years, did you?"

Is he fucking kidding me?

But I haven't been, I realize. My mom wouldn't give me a fucking penny to live off. Now, it all makes sense. She didn't want me living off his money. Didn't want me to have to atone for who my father was if I ever found out.

"But I didn't live off you. I've been struggling in my small apartment for years. I worked for every fucking dime. I was making my own fucking way," I tell him, moving as quickly as I can to bend, grabbing the gun off the ground.

My world as I know it tilts off-axis as I grip the gun tightly, my finger ready to pull the trigger. If I do this, if I kill him, my old life as I know it is over. The life that Slate lives will be the world that's left for me. The one I'll need to step into fully to survive. And as I grapple with the weight of that thought, I try to see myself without Slate in my life. Because shucking this world, turning my back on what my dad has been doing, and leaving my father alive, means leaving him behind too. And it feels too soul-crushing.

Even though it's going to be hard, I know my decision.

When I turn on him, he raises his hands. Again, pride crosses his face. "A true Bianchi."

"My last name is Howard," I tell him on a growl.

"No, it's not," he says simply.

I look around, knowing there are probably men surrounding me, but not caring.

"You can't kill your father, Brynne. Give me the gun." He puts one hand out for me to hand him the gun.

There's a silencer on it, and it makes it longer than it should be, so I back it away from him, knocking the lounger backward across the concrete, the scraping of metal on concrete giving me something to latch onto.

"You want me to go on with the knowledge you've been trafficking women and selling them to the highest bidder? That's my legacy? I already have blood on my hands, and if I let that go, Dad, I'll have even more on them. So much I don't know how I'll sleep at night."

He rolls his eyes. "So much of me is in you, but also, so much of her."

Even though it seems as if he loves my mother, there is an edge of disdain when he speaks of her. Like she might've been part of the reason he'd left.

"You're not a good man," I tell him.

"Neither is the one you love," he counters.

It only stops me for a heartbeat. "You shouldn't have offered me a weapon," I mutter.

"I can see that now," are his last words.

My finger pulls the trigger, and the muted shot is quick. When my father's eyes find mine, they're filled with fear. Something he probably hasn't felt in a long time.

The imagery of him possibly killing the only man I've ever loved and the thought of all the women he's trafficked, were my bedfellows in darkness as I did what I had to.

"Boss!" a man shouts, coming to my father's aid as he falls off the lounger.

He looks at me, and my gun is trained on him, shaking in my hands. But I keep my insides steeled for if I need to take another shot.

He crouches down and presses two fingers to my father's throat. Then he stands, and his eyes connect with mine. "What would you like me to do with his body, Boss?"

It takes a full moment before I realize he's speaking to me.

Before I answer, I creep toward the body. Giving one more look of disgust at who I'd been mourning all my life, I crouch down and swipe my fingers through his wound. With fingers coated in his blood, I wipe them across my face. In shame and honor.

"Dispose of it," I order. It's the first order I'll give from my father's position as head of this family.

I don't know if it'll be my last.

I'm a changed woman, born of blood.

And I don't know if I can go back to life as I knew it.

Not now that I've been made.