Page 107 of Reckless Woman
I feel like I’m back in that crashed SUV and sinking fast. Underneath the gasps and the splutters, there’s the bones of a voice that I recognize. It’s rising up from my past—from the kind of childhood I will never subject my own children to.
There’s a low humming noise and one of the shadows starts gliding toward me. As the darkness slowly peels away his disguise, my sinking SUV hits the bottom of the Hudson with a resounding thud.
It can’t be.
Eve.
Fucking.
Killed.
Him.
“Hello, brother,” Emilio rattles, his grin snaking over what’s left of his mangled face. “I’ve been expecting you.”
He’s sitting hunched over in a silver wheelchair—a shrunken pile of shit and vengeance—spewing hate at me from the one eyeball that still remains in his skull.
“You don’t look as well as I remembered, Emilio,” I say dryly, clawing back some of my composure.How the fuck is this happening?“Perhaps you should have stayed dead in Miami.”
“Perhaps you should have checked whether I was dead or not.” His words dissolve into a fit of frantic coughing and gasping, giving me a shard of hope that he’ll be dead for good in the next few minutes anyway.
“As you can hear, I’m dying again, brother,” he rasps in disgust. “But I’m planning to take you down to hell with me.”
“Not today,” I answer coolly. “I have a plane to catch.”
“Oh, but you have to play along. Otherwise, you don’t get to learn the fun secret.”
“That you’re the cunt behind Vindicta and all the other shit that’s been happening over the past few months?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I think you figured that out for yourself. No, I have a much better secret than that. But first, we need some entertainment…Igor, if you please.”
The wall of TV screens flickers into life. There are twelve in total. Eleven are playing live security feeds from different rooms in my newly rebuilt compound in Africa. The twelfth one is still flickering and unset.
In mounting anger, I watch Eve and Thalia moving about the kitchen, while Sofía and Ella are playing on the floor in the nursery…
My home. My heart. My everything.
“Youmotherfucker.” The only thing running through my veins now is ice.
“Wait,” he cackles. “The family isn’t complete.” The twelfth screen finally flickers into life. “We couldn’t miss Viviana out now, could we?”
It’s no cozy family home viewing for her.
Instead, I watch in mounting revulsion as she’s forced over a desk by Benni Morozov. I turn away when he starts to rape her, the Russian’s vicious grunts driving nails into my ears.
Thank fuck Rick gave him the murder he deserved.
“You’ve got the family tree all mixed up, Emilio. You really are a twisted man for letting Morozov do that to your own daughter.”
He wheezes out his biggest laugh yet, coughing and barking his way to a mechanical humor orgasm. “So now we get to the good part.”
“I swear to God, if your men lay one finger on Eve or my kids—”
“You’ll what?” he taunts. “Kill me?” He wheezes off into more hysteria as my fists clench around the bars. “Let me tell you a story of two girls, Dante. Two dark eyed, dark haired girls. One was my daughter, born to a useless whore, and the other was yours, born to another whore who you murdered with your own hand.” My fists clench harder around the cold steel. “They were so perfect and pretty you’d think they were sisters, and they fitted Sevastien’s specifications perfectly. Both our father and I agreed.”
“I don’t want to hear about your sick fantasies, Emilio,” I growl, but his grin only widens until his whole face is a leering mass of scar tissue.
“They were enjoyed, until one became unruly. She had the audacity to bite the faces of the men she was born to serve. There was a devil running through her veins that couldn’t be suppressed.”