Page 82 of The Lies We Tell

Rubbing her sweating palms on the thighs of her jeans, she stepped into the alley’s cavern and surveyed the narrow space blanketed entirely in shadows. A few paces away was a rusted dumpster, garbage bags piled as tall as the metal bin itself on one side. Rats scurried along the building’s perimeter, and water dripped from a drainage pipe into a dirty puddle.

“You’re late. I’ve been waiting almost twenty minutes,” her father lied, making a show of checking his watch.

“It took me longer than I anticipated to get Matteo to agree to let me drive myself instead of being chauffeured. Sorry.”

Well, at least they were both lying now.

“You said you had documents for me.” He scanned her empty hands with a raised brow. “Where are they?”

Shit. In her mad rush to break out of her jail cell and sneak out, she’d totally forgotten she’d baited her father with documents that didn’t exist. She didn’t expect to ever actually need to produce any. If things hadn’t gone so horribly wrong, it would be Matteo and his men confronting her father right now, taking him prisoner, killing him slowly.

“It was too much to carry. They’re in the car.”

Her father’s eyes lit with greed, and he rubbed his hands together while Tomaso’s gaze flicked to the parking lot at her back.

“And it’s enough to end him?”

She shrugged. “In the right hands, I guess. His international contacts, some business deals, and a piece of property he owns in Belgium.”

Waiting for some kind of recognition to spark in her father’s eyes, Tessa cocked her head when there was nothing. So her father probably wasn’t even the one who attacked Matteo in Belgium.

“Excellent. Let’s get this over with then, I—”

“What happens to me once I give you Matteo?”

He sighed loudly, flicking an irritated glance at Tomaso, who wouldn’t even make eye contact with her.

“You’ll come home, of course. I’ve arranged some better matches for you this time around.”

“That’s it? After all this, my reward is to come back to the very life I was trying to escape from?”

“Don’t be greedy, Tessa. I’ll give you your mother back, as I said, but I need some stronger ties to an ally than money can buy after what Matteo has done to me. And this one will drag you kicking and screaming down the aisle if he has to.”

She shoved down the rising anger when he mentioned her mother. That he would still use her as a bargaining chip when they both knew she was gone. Death really would be the only way to ever escape from him. His or hers, did it even make a difference who at this point?

Shaking her head, she took a step back, hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“I hate you.” The words were a whisper almost lost on the wind, but there was no less venom in them.

His grin was sharp, and he took a step forward. “What would you prefer? I leave you with the Bianchis and let them kill you instead? Let you get caught in the crosshairs?” He dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand.

“At least Matteo would kill me quickly,” she spat.

The idea of dying by Matteo’s hand twisted sharply in her chest, but anything would be preferable to a slow wasting away over decades married to a man her father had chosen only because it afforded him the wealth and power he thought he deserved.

He leapt forward, gripping her by the throat and shoving her up against the wall of the alley, the gun digging into the small of her back.

“Is that what you want? A quick death?” He squeezed, satisfied when she coughed and sputtered.

“Fuck you,” she said through clenched teeth.

His grip tightened painfully, cutting off her air, and he leaned in until their noses were nearly touching. When her vision wavered, she dug her fingernails into the stone wall at her back. If he was going to kill her right now, at least it would all be over. At least she’d finally get to see her mother again.

A single tear slipped free, and her father grinned, releasing her and taking a step back.

“If you weren’t worth something to me, you’d already be dead. You’re mine until you cease to be useful. Until then, I need you very much alive. Now stop wasting my time and give me the documents,” he demanded. “I have better things to do than stand here and listen to you whine.”

She took a deep breath, swallowing around the rough ache in her throat. Sliding her hand around to the small of her back, she wrapped her fingers around the butt of the gun. This was as good a moment as any. Even if Tomaso killed her, at least her father would be dead too.

---