Page 91 of Dangerous Deception

“Not that you’d understand, but I had business and people to take care of. I do that, you see. Unlike you. You poison the people. You murdered Carlos for getting too close, putting Adelina through even more hell.”

“I did what I had to do.” Pascal spits at my feet. “I did everything I could to stop my family name from falling intoobscurity. And once you’re in the ground, I’ll be taking your place.” Pascal pulls his pistol from his belt as several of his men melt from the shadows.

“I’m not the villain here. I saved my family name. Sure, I had to make sacrifices, but we run in a cutthroat world where weakness gets you killed. I made sacrifices and in time, Adelina will understand.”

“Will she? You killed her mother. You killed her fiancé. And now you want to kill her husband,” I sneer. “You’re killing the only people who ever loved her because you certainly don’t.”

Pascal pauses his steps. “You love my daughter?”

I want her to be the first person to know it and hear these words, but I’m no longer confident I’ll get to tell her. “I do. I love her more than life itself. I love her like the flowers love the sun and the ocean loves the moon. I love her like she’s the very nectar of life because to me, she is. She is my life, and I’m going to kill you, Pascal. For hurting her. For stealing her happiness. For even daring to take her away from me.”

“She’ll only remember you as the monster she was forced to marry,” he growls, and then he smirks coldly. “Tell me, if you’re so infatuated with her, I have one question.”

My muscles grow tense as I take in Pascal and the handful of guards approaching. “Ask it.”

“Are you willing to die for the woman you love?”

“No,” I say, catching Pascal by surprise. “I’m not, actually.”

36

ADELINA

No.

Raffaele says no.

Bound tightly with rope and fabric in the shadows of the warehouse, I can only watch as Raffaele walks right into the trap set by my father. I’ve fought against him every day he’s kept me captive, but this new side of him is terrifying.

Although, it’s not a new side. This is who he truly is and he’s merely hidden it from me because he saw how he could manipulate me. His own daughter. It doesn’t feel real. How can the man who raised me, who baked cookies with me on Sunday mornings and called me Addie like I was the most precious gem in his eye… How can that man be false?

A made-up mask over a cold, cruel, calculating man.

A man who held no qualms about dumping toxic waste into the reservoir, making hundreds, if not thousands, of people sick. I asked myself over and over how he had no empathy for the people falling ill from contaminated water, but I already knew the answer.

He didn’t care when my mother fell ill, so why would he care about the lives of strangers?

He let his own wife die without an ounce of sympathy or regret. Did he ever feel a real, human emotion in his entire life? Or has he always been this cold and calculating, obsessed with money and reputation that means nothing?

And now things feel at their worst. The man I love strides into this warehouse with some kind of plan in mind, but that plan will fail because my father has always been one step ahead. Whether it’s using the Irish to maintain social status or planting me next to Raffaele to act like some unknowing spy, he’s always been planning.

Working and waiting to remove the people who got in his way right when it was most advantageous to him. Like Carlos.

Poor Carlos.

“No?” Pascal’s short, sharp scoff pulls me out of my anxious, wandering thoughts and I fixate on the scene before me.

Pascal stands with his gun raised right at Raffaele’s head, wearing a cold smirk that makes my blood run cold. Raffaele appears more relaxed with one hand in his pocket and the cockiest smile I’ve ever seen on his face.

He looks so handsome. Am I about to watch him die?

My pulse thunders in my ears, flying to a rhythm of panic and fear. Being restrained makes me fight my own mind to prevent being dragged back to the night I was kidnapped, but the rising hopelessness in my chest is making that a losing battle.

I can’t do this again. I lost Carlos. I lost Marie.

Not Raffaele.

Please not Raffaele.

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