Page 38 of Clean Slade
KING
Ididn’t fight it. There was no point.
He’d found me. I didn’t know how or why or when, but he’d found me.
So much for hiding.
I knew it was going to be pointless. I should have left. I should have gone to Boston, gotten my emergency cash, and flown off to Europe or something.
At least Mac wasn’t here. At least he hadn’t gotten her, although it was probably a matter of time.
My father’s men put a hood over my head and shoved me into the trunk of a car, and I curled up there, waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for payback for what I’d done to the “family.”
I embraced my fate. There was nothing else I could do but that. I was a dead man. And my daughter would soon be in the hands of her grandfather. He’d teach her the ways of the familia and make her give a blood oath to never betray it.
He’d throw her in a cell with some giant and make her stay there until she could beat his ass like he’d done with me. If she survived, she’d become part of the inner circle. He’d show her how we did business. How we handled traitors like her father. He’d convince her I was a monster because that’s what anyone who betrayed the family was. A dead monster.
Or he’d shove her in a kitchen with my grandma and have her teach Mac how to keep a home because that was her role in society while he taught her that her father had never loved her.
Why had I stayed here? Why had I even stayed in the States? I should have fled to Europe a long time ago. Gone somewhere we’d fit in, like Spain or Portugal. Not Italy.
I should have made nomads of us. Bought us an RV and traveled the world, gotten lost in the noise.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
There were a million things I could have done differently, but whatever they were was immaterial.
I hadn’t done them, and now we’d both pay the price.
The car buzzed under me, and soon the warmth build-up suffocated me. Maybe this was their plan. To leave me in here until I ran out of oxygen.
But no. I wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill drug dealer that had opened his mouth one too many times. I was the black sheep. The heir to the throne. He wouldn’t leave it to the goons or chance. He’d finish the job himself.
I wanted to keep a sense of time or direction, but it seemed impossible, so when the trunk opened again, I had no idea how far we’d traveled or if we’d even gone over water or not.
I was half-carried, half-dragged through endless paths, and eventually shoved into a chair, the unmistakable squeakiness of cable ties cutting the air as much as they did the circulation on my wrists.
There were footsteps and commotion, and it wasn’t long before I was left alone. Or at least I assumed I was alone.
I waited and waited, but nothing happened. And still, I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but suddenly, the hood was ripped off and a bunch of men stood around.
I must have dozed off again. The room was dark. Actually, it was less a room and more an abandoned warehouse.
The windows were black. How many hours had passed? How long had they left me in here?
“Well, if it isn’t Antonio Ferraro Junior. Or I’m sorry. You go by Kingston Moore now. How…cute.”
The last word was said with so much disgust it made my own stomach turn.
The men before me parted to the sides, and the one person I’d been running from for a decade stepped through with a wicked grin and equally sinister eyes.
“Father.”
He watched me in silence for a moment before he spoke.
“I’ve been looking for you for so long. Is that all you have to say to me after all this time?”
“What would you like me to say?”
