Page 84 of Hell of a Mess
Alpheus’s eyes went wide, and his face turned red. “That is breaking and entering! I will have you arrested! Do you know what I do to people who stand in my way?!” he shouted.
The click of several guns as they were all pulled out and pointed at him made me smirk. I hadn’t pulled mine out because I didn’t trust my finger not to slip and put this bastard six feet under.
His face turned ashen as he took a step back, and the gun behind him, pressing into his spine, had him freezing.
“What is it you want? Hush money? I can pay you whatever your price is.”
The pompous bastard thought his money could shut us up.
“I’m afraid that this doesn’t have a price tag on it,” Linc said, then nodded his head toward Mal. “That man right there? He’s family. And Lace is his biological daughter. He wants vengeance. He’d love nothing more than to put a bullet in your head right now and take you out of this world. But we need information, and I’m going to do my best to keep him from killing you. But you need to stop with the bullshit and tell us why you’ve had Lace act like her sister for all these years. Just so you’d have a daughter to marry off for money? Claiming your daughter drowned with her mother, then locking her in a basement until the day came that you could use her for your gain—what monster does that?”
“I didn’t lock my daughter in a basement!” he said with a mock look of horror on his face.
“No, you locked mine in one,” Mal snarled.
“The girl you saw in the bedroom isn’t Dalia,” he said, shaking his head. “Dalia is a beautiful woman and uses her beauty to control men, persuade them.”
I was done. It took only a few long strides, and I was in front of the son of a bitch with my Glock pressed between his eyes as I seethed.
“I’ve been told I can’t kill you,” I told him, then leaned down close to his ear. “But I don’t follow the fucking rules. I want your blood on my hands, you sick motherfucker. So, say one more goddamn word about Lace, call her Dalia one more time, and I will blow your brains all over this tacky-ass living room.”
“Luther,” Linc said as if he were talking to an uncontrollable child, “we agreed you wouldn’t do this.”
I let out a sadistic laugh. “I changed my mind,” I replied as I glared at the man. “I saw the basement. The cardboard she slepton. I loathe every breath you take.”
His breathing was coming in fast and short, and there was no color left in his face.
“Might be a good time to start confessing,” Thaddeus warned him.
“Okay,” he said. “It was Dalia in the room. She…” He let out a sob. “She has a severe psychiatric condition. It was diagnosed when she was younger, but she only got worse. None of the medications they tried helped. They wanted to admit her. I couldn’t have that. She was my daughter. Mine.” His eyes darted toward Mal, then quickly away. “She had a life ahead of her, one I had planned for her. But she began growing more and more uncontrollable. She would go from a catatonic state to hysterical. I hired a nurse to stay with her, but she wasn’t always able to control her. One night, she sprinted from the house.” He stopped and sobbed again. “She got on a horse and was thrown. Her head hit a large rock. I thought we were going to lose her. And we did in a way. But I believed she’d come back to us. I was just going to use Lassandra as long as it was necessary. Not let the world know what had come of my beautiful girl.”
“Lace,” I said, interrupting him. “Lace was seven when her mother drowned. Seven when you told the world that she’d drowned too.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“WHY?!” I shouted when he didn’t say more.
“Be-because I was afraid she’d tell someone. Tell them that her mother had been having an affair. I couldn’t let her ruin her sister’s life.”
“Back away, Luther,” Linc ordered as my body twitched from the rage hammering through me. “LUTHER!”
“He’ll pay, Luther. But not yet.” Mal’s tone sounded as if he was struggling to contain his sanity.
“I’ll see you bleed out, watch the light go from your eyes, afterI’ve carved you up, listened to you scream,” I told him before taking my gun from his head and lowering it as I took a step back.
“Now, what you’re going to do is tell us the story from beginning to end. All of it. Or I’m going to let Luther carry out his plan for you,” Linc said calmly.
“Dalia has been promised to Arun Al-Bahrani, and his father is a powerful man. If she—Lassandra—doesn’t marry him, he’ll seek his vengeance on me and all of you,” Alpheus warned.
One of the Louisiana boys chuckled, and I could see Forge grinning from the corner of my eye.
“Let him come on back to Southern soil, and we’ll see who seeks their vengeance,” I told him. “That’s another bastard I want to carve up.”
“I can’t pay him back the money they gave me up front for Dalia!” he cried. “I don’t have it.”
“Why did he give you money for Dalia?” Linc asked.
“Arun has a lover. A male lover. His father is against it and refuses to allow him to take over without a wife. One who comes from wealth and a family in the oil industry. One he can be proud of.”
