Page 44 of Stolen Vows

"I have dozens of men up and down these roads," my father spits. "If you think you’re going to get away with this shit…"

"We’ve dealt with them," Veronica shoots back. Of everyone here, she looks the most furious, and I suppose she has reason to be. Her hand is pressed against the weapon at her side, just waiting for a chance to bring it out and wipe my father off the face of the earth. Given what he has done to her, it seems a miracle that he is still standing there at all.

She takes a step towards him, narrowing her eyes at him, a decade’s worth of anger boiling in her veins. I can practically feel it crackling in the air around us. My father stares back at her, though his face has paled slightly, as if he can tell that he is not going to get away with this, as if he knows that everything is finally crashing down around him.

"Do you remember me?” Veronica asks him.

Though her voice is quiet, I know everyone can make out what she is saying. It’s clearly a question she’s been waiting to ask him for a long time. My father shrugs.

"I’ve never seen you before in my life."

She lets out a short bark of laughter, clearly too shocked to manage anything else. Turning her back on him, she locks eyes with Max’s father.

"Do what you have to do, Mastroni. I’m finished here."

Max stalks forward, ready to deliver the final blow himself. My heart slams against my chest as he rests his hand on the gun. Is he going to kill him? Of course, I knew it was a possibility, but being faced with it right here and now is almost more than I can take...

"I don’t know what you told her," my father snarls at him, refusing to back down. "But if you think for a second that she is going to believe whatever brainwashing that you?—"

"We told her the truth, Leone," Max replies, his voice almost measured. "We told her what you do. What you’ve done. The harm you’ve caused. And you know what?”

He grins slightly, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

"She believes us. Because you were going to sell her to a husband she didn’t even know, just the same way you sold so many women over the years. She believes us because you gave her every reason to. You understand that?”

He doesn’t move a muscle. His eyes flick to mine. For a moment, I am sure I can see some kind of fear there, some kind of terror, as it clicks in his mind that they are telling the truth. I stiffen. No matter what has happened, no matter what I know about him, there is still a part of me that wants to defer to him, that wants to let him call the shots, as he has done my entire life up until now...

"Is that true?" he asks me.

And it’s as though everyone else around us has dropped away. It's just my father and me, standing here, staring at one another, as he tries to work out just how much of this I believe.

I nod. It almost feels surreal, defying him like this, but I can’t lie. I have seen him for the person he is, the person he has always been, and I am not going to let anything change that. Now that my eyes have been opened, I refuse to return to the version of myself that I knew before. I refuse to go back and pretend like I don’t know who he is. What is ahead of me might be terrifying, but it’s better than living in ignorance as he wreaks havoc on the city around me.

"You’re a traitor! Just like your mother," he snarls at me.

A flash of fury shows on his face, and he makes a move towards me, clearly intending to make me pay for what I have done. I tense and Max lunges forward, clearly ready to leap to my defense, but he doesn’t have to.

My father’s expression changes, anger giving way to something like resignation. His hands drop back by his sides again, like he knows it is pointless to try and hurt me. Or maybe there is a part of him, as twisted and foul and distant as it might be, who actually understands that I am still his daughter, some instinct of fatherly care still left there despite all he has done to me.

The expression on his face when he looks at me once more is different now, different from anything I have ever seen on his face, at least when it comes to me. Almost impressed. Like I have surprised him, and that’s the last way he expected this to go. I think he knows that he has raised a woman more capable than he ever could have imagined, and now, he is having to deal with what that means.

"You did this," he mutters. "You."

"Me," I breathe back, not taking my eyes off of him, not even daring to blink.

His shoulders slump. His lips part. And I know that, finally, he believes that I am the one responsible for what has happened.

That the very girl who was meant to usher in the key to expanding his empire through marriage is now his downfall.

Even despite it all, I feel bad. No matter what happens next, no matter how much I might hate him for everything he has tried to do, he’s still the man who raised me...

"So what is this? You’re going to kill me?” he snarls as he looks at Max once more. Max shakes his head.

"We’re not like you, Leone," he replies. "Much as I know there are people here who would take great pleasure in wiping you off the face of the map..."

He glances over to his sister, whose eyes are burning with such rage it’s a wonder she can contain it at all.

"We’re giving you the chance to leave. Get out of here, never come back, and you’ll live. You get a second chance, even if you don’t deserve one."

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