Page 84 of Dangerous Deception

“You should have killed him, Raffaele. That’s so unlike you.”

Raffaele growls, and even through the phone, his fury is enough to charge the air around us. “If you hurt even onehairon her head, I will carve you up like a Sunday roast and keep you alive just long enough to witness the destruction of everything you’ve built.”

“You’re hardly in a position to be making threats,” Pascal replies with a smug cockiness that I’ve never seen from my father before. The mask is truly gone and he stands before me as he really is. A cold, calculating man greedy for power.

“You have no idea what position I’m in.”

“I think I do. It’s simple, Raffaele. You will hand yourself over for a quick death if you want to keep my darling daughter alive and unharmed.”

“He’s bluffing!” I jump in quickly. “Raffaele, don’t listen. He won’t hurt me, so don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Adelina.” His tone is infinitely softer when saying my name. “Please, be careful. Your father is more dangerous than you could know.”

“Are you trying to turn her against me?” Pascal mutters. “You should know, Raffaele, that this isn’t a negotiation. I have my daughter back where she belongs, and you will come and hand yourself over to me. That’s it.”

I roll my eyes, fighting a shiver of fear that worms across my shoulders. Pascal’s own actions have turned me against him. Nothing more.

“Really? Do you think she will just slot back into the mold you carved out for her?” Raffaele snaps. “She’s her own woman. But why don’t you see how well that little trick will work after you tell her what you did to Carlos?”

“What?” A pulse of coldness radiates from my chest, chilling my limbs, followed by a rush of goosebumps down my back.

“Tell her how you killed him. Tell her how you’re responsible for the deaths of Serena and your own fucking wife!”

Pascal slams his hand down on the phone, ending the call and leaving Raffaele’s words to haunt the silence left behind.

My heart is pounding so hard my head hurts, and my vision swims from unshed tears as I look from the phone to my father. “What… What is he talking about?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Pascal snarls.

“What does he mean? Carlos and–andMother?—”

He reaches me swiftly and slaps me hard across the face. Heat and pain bloom across my cheek as my head snaps to the side, and I gasp, finally letting the tears spill down my cheeks.

“I said don’t listen.”

“Tell me!” My head whips back around and I glare hard at him. “Tell me the truth! What did you do?”

Pascal’s lips part briefly, then he steps back and rubs at his chin as if debating what parts of the truth he can tell me. “It won’t matter now. None of it will matter,” he says stiffly. “Once I kill that maniac, the rest won’t matter.”

“Thatmaniacwill be on his way here,” I grind out, shaking my head against the ache of his slap. “Do you really think you can kill him before he tells me the truth?”

“The truth is what I say it is!” Pascal yells, pointing at me with a stubby finger. “Remember that, Adelina. I am your father and I know what’s best for this family. I have always known what’s best.”

“Really? Because it sounds like yourbesthas been useless until the Irish stepped in,” I sneer, then I straighten up slightly and draw back. “The… what… what is it you do for them?”

“Hmm?” Glancing at his own phone, he frowns deeply at my question.

“You told me the Irish had a problem that you fixed. What… What was the problem?”

Pascal’s shoulders rise up like he’s inflating, then he grumpily stuffs his phone back in his pocket and faces me. “Fine. You want to know thetruthso fucking badly? The Irish have a toxic waste problem and I took care of it. They needed someone to transport it and dump it, and I was perfect for it. No one looks twice at my trucks traveling across the city because they think they’re filled with counterfeit goods like bags and shoes. But they’re not. They’re filled with all the toxic runoff from the Irish power plants.”

My heart pounds harder and harder. My father has been dumping toxic waste for theIrish? The Irish are famous for their claims of being able to work oil in the safest way possible without being a threat to anyone.

So why did Raffaele mention Serena? And my mother?

Unless…

Serena was sick. I remember Raffaele telling me just how sick she got and no one knew the cause. Then she passed away and left him heartbroken about ten years ago. And my mother?

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