Page 83 of Vicious Vows

"No, I'm not."

"So why is it that you're so keen on doing business with the man who tried to rip you off in the first place?" Lionel squinted his eyes at my father.

I gasped and my head snapped in my father's direction.

No, he couldn't be saying what I think he was saying. So far, we'd only had a few guesses as to what our father was doing here. We thought he might have had a hand in trying to rip Kumar off, and then we thought he was just here to make us all look bad, but that was all we had—speculation and ideas.

Right now Lionel was making it seem like he had proof.

"You know what you're doing, little brother?" I hissed at him, praying that he wasn't about to come to Kumar with just the ideas that were running through our heads.

"You better start making sense and quickly, boy. I don't have time to sit back and entertain your imagination." Kumar took a step forward, and I stepped in between them.

"I do." Lionel smirked at our father before walking over to one of the crates where I assumed Antonio packaged up all the guns for Kumar.

Without saying another word, my brother struggled to get the top of the crate off and began pulling out the filling and the guns that lay within. He laid them on the floor, and everyone started to get a little antsy at being in the open with so much firepower. Hell, even I started to get concerned about what the hell he was doing. I didn't know what he was searching for, but after he'd taken out most of the guns and laid them on the floor, it didn't seem like he was going to find whatever it was he was looking for.

Just as suddenly as he started unpacking the guns, Lionel stopped and smiled wide in our direction, "Next time you decide to go against Dominic and me, maybe you should use your own packaging." Slowly, Lionel reached down into the crate that had not been moved from out of Kumar and My father's sight and pulled out a Polaroid of one of my wooden figurines along with a date written on the bottom.

It was the one of a serpent winding up the tree. He brought it over to me to see, and sure enough, it was my work. There's no way to copy it, especially since all of my figurines had a hidden signature at the bottom that was clearly visible in the photo. This was without a doubt a photo of my work.

"This is mine." I seethed as I looked up to my father.

These are the same boxes of guns I'd set up to be given to Kumar that were stolen. If my father was the one trying to resell them, that means he was the one behind them being stolen.

"Seems like you're doing business with a thief." Lionel looked over to Kumar, who now is shooting daggers from his eyes at my father.

Sweat beaded on my father's forehead. "That's ridiculous. I didn't know what was going on until I got here, and by then the drop had already been stolen. You must have just put that in there."

"We all watched him pull that out of the crate. You're a fucking thief." I snarled.

"I didn't know they had been stolen until I got here." My father barked back.

"That's a fucking lie, and you know it. I'd reached out to you the minute Dominic tried to set up a deal with me. You knew what was going down. Tell me something; you think I'm dumb enough to let you swindle me?" Kumar growled and took a step toward my father. All of his men with their hands on their weapons waiting for the signal from their leader.

My father looked at me. He expected me to help him, expected me to be the one to bail his ass out of this mess.

It wasn't going to happen.

Moving Lionel to the side I cross my arms across my chest and say, "I'll take this as your resignation." I hold my father's gaze and watch as disbelief crosses his features.

"You're an idiot; can't you see you're being played! You'll never fucking make it! You're being played!" My father screams at me and lunges in my direction, but both Yuri and Cole jump to my defense.

"That's just what you want everyone to think, isn't that right? You want them to think I don't know what I'm doing when it's you that can't see the writing on the wall. Your time is over, old man. Have some dignity and step down." I yelled back over Yuri's shoulder.

"No dignity to be had. I told you what would happen to the motherfucker who tried to rip me off. Did you think that wouldn't apply to your father?" Kumar replied and pulled his weapon before aiming it at my father's head.

Kumar was clear.

He'd told me he'd take out whoever it was that stole from him. For a while, I thought that bullet would be reserved for me. Now I was having to deal with the fact that the person he was going to kill wasn't me but the man who gave me life, the one who instilled this level of drive and bloodlust in me.

I was going to have to stand back and let my father be killed.

"May I suggest something a little more grand than just killing the head of our household in an abandoned warehouse?" Lionel speaks up.

What the hell did he have up his sleeve now?

"If you think I'm going to let him go, you've got another thing coming." Kumar huffed out a breath.

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