Page 118 of The Heir

I clench my jaw hard, fisting my hands at my side to hide the trembling, but yet I feel it anyway despite my best efforts; a hot tearslides down my cheek as Joaquin just stares at me. His facial features tighten and he looks to the side, shaking his head slowly.

"Fuucckkk." He exhales on a frustrated groan. "This isn't something simple to navigate. And my brothers… there's much to discuss. King, this won't be a short process. We can't hope to get her back tonight, or even anytime soon. I need a minute to get my affairs in order, but I'll work as quickly as I can."

Joaquin gives me a hard look but it's a little lost on me as his words process, and I make a choking sound, not realizing I was holding my breath. His eyes widen before he steps forward with his arms outstretched. I gasp, hitting the floor with my knee hard, groaning as he sinks down to my level and pulls my head to his shoulder as I break down.

"Thank you," I choke out. "Thank you, Joaquin."

I'll spend the rest of forever paying him back if we make this out in one piece.

"I don't know what you're thanking me for."His voice comes out so rough and gravely that I can tell he's choking back emotions of his own. "Because you're going to be right there next to me. I'm not going into that shit alone. But we'll get her back, friend."

I grunt, rather offended. I wasn't going to let him do all the dirty work. "As long as you promise to let me have the fucker that did this, I'll walk side by side with you into any hell, friend."

Joaquin pulls back and gives me a slow smile. "Does this mean you'll be joining us…"

"No!" My brow furrows."Now let's go get my wife."I rise off my knee and turn, heading to my study with them following behind me.

God help everyone if I don't get her back. If anything happens to her. God help them, because I'll burn the world to the ground.

Chapter twenty-eight

Good Luck

Waking up I gasp, inhaling through my nose hard as all the sensations hit me at once as I come to. Immediately feeling that I'm on a hard floor, I tense. Cracking my eyes open, I see the plain, dingy concrete wall. My lids are heavy as I work to flick my eyes around seeing I'm in a basement, a small one with no windows. Only lit by a singular, very dim florescent lightbulb. Thank God because my head ispounding.

Feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up for the second time, I'm cognizant enough to feel I'm not alone.

Raising my head weakly, my eyes widen in shock and I pale at the sight in front of me. A whimper escapes into the gag pressed tightly against my chapped, swollen lips. I blink, the vision in my right eye tinged pink with blood that has trickled into it.

I barely register the sting as he walks to me slowly. Lowering to his haunches and reaching forward, he plucks at the knot against the back of my head, loosening the gag. I cough, licking my crackedlips.

"Dad?"I whisper through the burn in my throat.

He looks back at me, just the same as I remember from vague memories, made even more foggy with all the time of two decades between the last time I saw him until now. But… it's him. His bright red hair has dulled with age, the features in his face made sharp and weathered with time. There are crinkles in the corners of his eyes, and a scar marks his left temple, curving down to his cheek in a white slash against pink skin.

He's lived hard, obviously.

"Why are you doing this?" I whisper. My arms move to wrap around my stomach, but my hands are bound behind my back.

"Oh darling, do you really have to ask that question?" He tilts his head as his gray eyes bore into mine. He has dead eyes. No emotion other than indifference reflects back at me, causing my own eyes to narrow as the haze of the drug begins to fade, and the awareness that my father is the one who has captured me fills me with hate and disbelief.

"I'm your daughter, yousick fuck."

He tsks, shaking his head. "You should know better than anyone that I care for no one but myself. You're just a means to an end, Calliope Isobel Sophia Maniotti."

Just like that, a memory from when I was five comes back to me.

"Calliope, get off that table before you crack your head open,"dad yells, looking at me from his spot in the living room, having come around the corner and seeing me up on the table trying to reach for a flower in the vase.

A shuddering exhale leaves me. "What do you want from me?" I snap.

He's a mere foot away. The urge to bite him fills me, and the blood rushes to my face as anger quickly seeps into me, stealing my commonsense. Rearing my head back I spit in his face, making him turn his head to the side to wipe it off.

I bite back a yelp as he slaps me across the face hard, making me topple to the side and squirm against the binding. "When I get out of this, I'm going to kill you!" I shout at him.

In my struggles I feel myself grinding into the filth of the dirty concrete, but still I persist. Squirming and scraping my raw wrists against the floor, hoping to loosen the rope.

"You won't because you will be indebted to me. You are to be married to Lucious Scogmigilio, brother to the head of the Balducci family." He stares at me like I'm nothing more than dirt at the bottom of his shoe. "You were betrothed to Joaquin Balducci, but he declined the proposal years ago, and it took me alongtime to secure another husband for you." His eyes narrow as a sick look enters his eye. "And when I deliver you over, I'll be made advisor and the right hand man to the Scogmigilio family. Finally."

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