Page 73 of Forgotten Vows
I shuddered.
Hearing my father’s voice would never fail to disturb me. When I was a child, he’d scream and scold. Then when I was older, he lectured and nagged. Strict parents were always a drag, but a Puritan freak like my father was something else.
How did he find me?
Why is he contacting me in a damn email?
Why does he have to be alive?
A flurry of negative emotions kept me in a chokehold as he glared at me through the recording.
One eye was missing. The lids were sewn shut, and it looked like pieces of skin had been grafted to make up a continuous layer over his face. Some parts were stretched too thin with white scar tissue, and others were bulky and bumpy, pinkish and not in agreement with the surgeries he must have had to go through. He looked grotesque, frightening, even. He’d never loved me and I wouldn’t ever wish him well. But seeing the evidence of his having suffered from that fight or war he’d instigated years ago, whatever it was that he’d done with the Cartel to have started the rumors that he was dead, I was glad. I was secretly gloating at the fact that he’d suffered.
If only he’d died, too.
I ground my teeth together, physically reacting to the news that he was alive. Unless this was some AI rendition or a deep fake, it was him.
Back to haunt me.
Rooted in place, immobile and frozen in shock, I could only stare as his summons played.
“I am contacting you with no other message than to let you know that you are nothing but a pathetic waste of a daughter.”
I exhaled a shaky breath through my nose, too livid, too stunned to react.
“I am ashamed to have ever called you my daughter. A wanton, slutty whore of a girl who spread her legs for the filth of the Dubinins.”
I shook, letting the anger vibrate through me.
He was wrong. Iknewhe was wrong. I never flirted with anyone. I never even spoke to a boy or man. He kept me sequestered under his surveillance. I was never able to even look at a person of the opposite gender without the fear that he’d accuse me of being an embarrassment.
Because I was a thing to him. A piece of chattel, like Gabriella had ended up being for her father.
I had been a virgin when I met Ivan that summer, and it was with a rebellious spirit of knowing that one summer would be my only chance to live without my father watching, before he told me to come back home after the one single semester he’d allowed me to have in university.
I’d chosen a college overseas to get as far away from him as possible. I plied the one Petrov guard with so much booze and so many hookers that he left me alone and never watched me. And I lived. For the first time, I allowed myself to live. And to love.
This horrible monster was wrong.
And I would never let anything he said matter.
I knew better now.
“If you can manage to spare yourself a second away from the depravity you insist on living with, listen to me now. Hear me well, you stupid whore, and understand that this ultimatum is a favor for you.”
I shook my head, needing to react even though he couldn’t see.
“You will have one message from me, bitch. One ultimatum you must heed. If you don’t, your Dubinin filth will suffer.”
That settled it. He was alive. And he thought he had a score to settle with Ivan’s family. With the people I was coming to see asmyfamily. This wretched man had fallen out of power from his own mistakes and affinity for stirring trouble he couldn’t survive. All this time, he had to have been hiding and aligning with any enemy of the Dubinins that he could find. He’d probably contacted the Riveras to attack me, seeing me or my son as a weak link to the Dubinins. He was likely behind those moles who’d tried to kidnap and harm Lev at school.
“With this ultimatum, I intend to reclaim the Bratva power that should be mine.” He scowled, but the expression was contorted with the numerous scars.
I shook my head again, refusing to believe him. He was owed no power. He’d lost it himself from all the fighting he’d caused.
“I intend to punish Ivan Dubinin for ever daring to take my daughter.”
I’m not your daughter anymore!
