Page 66 of Fast Vengeance

“No.” She met his eyes, her inner strength shining through. “I’m here, as promised. Where is Agent Hamilton?”

“Nearby.”

“You agreed to release him immediately if I came to you.” She raised her chin, her whole being radiating a defiance that had him hiding a smile. She had more of him in her than she probably wanted to admit. “I honored the terms of our agreement. Now let him go. You promised. I need to see you do it.”

He nodded. “I will within the next hour or so.”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “No. Now.”

Suspicion took root. “What is he to you?”

She faltered for an instant, caught off guard by his question. “An acquaintance.”

She was lying. “He must mean more to you than that, given your reaction.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Your men tortured him,” she said in disgust.

Manny didn’t react, though his conscience squirmed a little under the censure in his daughter’s gaze. “I’m not involved with any of that.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “They’re your men. And no matter how involved you are or aren’t, you didn’t stop it, either.”

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair. He’d been hoping to delay this conversation until later, but it was clear they had to have at least part of this out here and now. “Whatever they told you, there are many things going on here that you don’t know about. Things you don’t understand.”

Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder why that is?”

“I was trying to protect you. You were just a little girl.”

She shot from her chair, hands knotted into fists at her sides. “No. I haven’t been a little girl in a long time. You were trying to control me. Keep me ignorant of everything that was going on. Hiding the truth from me as much as possible, and, stupid me, I believed it all. My entire life has been a lie.”

SHE WAS SHAKING inside, slowly coming apart at the seams, stitch by stitch.

None of this was going according to plan. Oceane had expected some deviation, but not this. Not arriving at the wrong house and Brock still being held prisoner.

Was the tracking device still working? She wasn’t even sure this place was in the same neighborhood as the house she had shown Taggart and the others, and without the tracker the taskforce would never find her.

Nieto’s expression was so damn calm she wanted to scream at him. “I know you’re upset. And I understand it’s my fault.”

“You’re damn right it’s your fault. It’s all your fault.” Now that she was here before him, she couldn’t keep the acidic words inside her any longer. If she didn’t let them out, they would eat her alive.

Nieto drew in a deep breath, held up a hand. “Look. I realize there are a lot of things we need to talk about. But I need you to know that everything I did, everything I hid from you, was for your protection. I did everything in my power to keep you safe, and even that wasn’t enough in the end. When I heard that you and your mother had been attacked at home, I thought…”

He stopped, seemed to struggle to hold onto his composure before continuing. “I feared the worst. And ever since I found out you had fled to the States, I’ve been working to bring you back here the whole time, so I could explain everything where I know you would be safe.”

She shook her head, emotions ripping through her in a chaotic torrent. Betrayal. Rage. Grief. A deep, aching sadness that would never go away. “You had a tracking device implanted in my mouth without me knowing. You hunted us down in D.C. because you were afraid we had betrayed you, and then you killed my mother.”

He blanched and shook his head, emphatic. “No. No, I swear it. I sent Arturo to get you, bring you back to me. Juan was supposed to locate you with the tracking device and have his men provide security during the extraction, that was all.”

All? Oceane stared at him, her heart imploding.

The tears she had been battling were too much to hold back any longer. They dripped down her cheeks and she angrily swiped them away. Her voice shook as much as her body as she responded. “Those men raped her, do you understand? They violated her. Then they butchered her with knives. I was there. I saw her stumble out of the house, naked, bleeding from all the wounds.”

She sucked in a breath and jabbed an accusing finger at him, wished it was a gun instead so she could shoot him in his black, evil heart. “I had to sit there by her side, hold her hand and watch her bleed to death. There was nothing I could do to save her or ease her pain. My mother, the person I loved more than anyone else in the entire world. Do you understand that?” She screamed it, all the pain pouring free after being bottled up for so long.

A terrible silence engulfed the room as he stared back at her.

“Yes,” he finally said, looking ill, his jaw flexing and his hands balling into fists on his desktop. “Believe me, Juan will pay for what his men did. I will see to it.”

Did he really believe that would make anything better? He was insane. “She’s dead because of you. And now you’re dead to me too.”

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