Page 95 of His Deadly Lies

A small whimper from the left sounds before I have a chance to go straight into terror, and I jerk in that direction. Slowly, I blink through gritty eyes and refocus on a familiar face, just as tied down, just as fucked up as I am.

Alice.

And she’s clearly been here, crying, for a long time. Her mascara has run and stained the sides of her cheeks, dried in place. There’s blood beneath her fingernails, and her pants are stained with urine.

Her eyes plead with me to help her, but how can I help her if I can’t even help myself?

I try to send her a look of calm resolve, the kind that says I’ve got this when I so clearly don’t. Inferring from the way her eyes widen? She sees the truth.

She’s saying something beneath the frayed-edged rag stuffed between her lips. The words are too muffled for me to make out, but the way her knuckles go white where she grips the sides of the chair is unmistakable.

I shake my head, running my tongue over my teeth. No gag. Nothing but the pounding headaches and the ropes binding my wrists and feet to the chair.

Alice’s wrists are raw and red, dried blood crusted to her skin. How long has she been down here?

Her frantic words of alarm slowly shift into low sobs. There’s not a thing I can do for either one of us if I don’t know where I am. Through the pounding in my head, I crane my neck to take in the room. Our chairs aren’t bolted to the ground, and there are several large pieces of furniture pushed to the walls. Crates marked by shadowed stamps stack in a pyramid shape near an open door. Storage?

Where the hell am I?

Alice sucks in a breath and goes still, closing her eyes and hunching in on herself. Voices approach down the hallway and grow louder with each passing second.

“Trust me.”

A man laughs, the sound a rich and acidic baritone. “Trust you? When you’ve mucked things up beyond repair?”

Recognition remains just out of reach even as the voices swim out of left field. I struggle to turn my head to the side to get a clearer angle.

I know the tone, don't I? Something about it is intimately familiar. Moreover, my reaction to the syllables is familiar. Annoyance. The grating tone—

“Dad, trust me! We can make it look like we rescued her. Balestra will be so goddamn happy to have her back safe and sound that he’ll make me her fiancé rather than that pretty boy.”

Accardi.

Vincent and Hector arguing with each other only a few feet away.

“What is wrong with you?” Hector’s tone drops lower, the venom in each syllable enough to churn my stomach. “You didn’t think to run this by me before you went off half-cocked?”

“I thought you’d be proud,” Vincent argues petulantly.

“Proud? That you put a hit out on Mia Balestra? That you’ve been sending men to steal from them? You’re out of your mind!””

Dominoes clack together in my mind, gaining momentum, the situation clear.

“If you thought to come to me before this disaster, I might have been able to suggest a better alternative.” It’s impossible to peel my eyes open completely, but Hector is livid. Struggling to understand whatever it is his son has done.

“I’m the heir. The fucking heir! If you can’t trust me, then we’ve got no business in this game,” Vincent retorts.

They stop just outside of the room, someone’s back visible through the doorway. Alice continues to shiver as though the ropes are the only things keeping her seated, her movements violent.

“You’ve got no business in this game, Son. This isn’t going to work,” Hector replies. “You’re out of your mind!”

Vincent laughs. “I might be out of my mind, but at least I’m coming up with ideas, Dad. I’m the only one concerned about expansion and growth on any sort of large scale. Which makes it utter horse shit that Balestra didn’t pick me to—ah, there she is! Welcome to the party, Mia. Look who is finally awake.”

Vincent strolls into the room with his hands slid into his pockets, and his hair slicked back over the top of his head. Little rat fuck. His gun bulges in his pants. He ignores Alice entirely, even when she starts sobbing again, only reaching out to kick her chair with his left foot and sending her skittering away. His eyes are on me alone.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, but I promise you—” He breaks off to flick a glare over his shoulder at the barely visible figure of Hector. “I have things absolutely under control. Are you feeling okay?”

Despite every instinct, I force myself to pause and think.

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