Page 79 of His to Destroy

And again.

And again.

Blood splatters across the wall.

Across my hands.

Across my soul.

He laughs through it all, weak and deranged.

"You think beating me changes anything?" Stark wheezes. "He's still mine."

"No," I growl, my voice so low it barely sounds human. "He was never yours."

I grab his throat and slam him down onto the ground, pressing my knee into his ribs until I hear something crack.

"You orchestrated the kidnap attempts, didn’t you?" I snarl.

He laughs again, broken and sick.

"If I had known how easy it was to make you dance," he gasps, coughing blood onto the ground, "I would've pulled the strings sooner."

I press harder with my knee, grinding the breath from his lungs.

"Answer me!"

He wheezes, body twitching beneath mine.

"I didn’t plan to bring in the Lombardis," he chokes out. "I was going to take him myself."

My heart lurches painfully.

That explains how Luca was able to be taken from home.

The mansion I put Almeria in wasn’t a strange territory to Stark. He’d lived with me there before. He knew the place inside and out – enough to guide someone to carry out a sick mission for him, like abduct a child.

"You were going to take Luca," I whisper, horror and rage twisting together into something monstrous.

He gives a weak, bloody smile.

"Thought I could raise him better," he croaks. "Teach him not to be weak like you. But... after the first failed grab, I knew I couldn't protect him alone. Had to make a deal."

I tighten my grip on his throat until he turns purple.

"What deal?"

He hacks out a laugh.

"I offered them a future enforcer," he spits. "In exchange for backup, weapons, safehouses. They wanted a loyalty bond. Blood for blood."

My stomach turns.

"You sold him," I whisper.

He grins wider.

"And you would’ve never even known it. He would have fared well with the Lombardis, you know. Much better than his mother had fared with her own family."

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