Page 107 of Merciless Sinner

"Absolutely."

We spend the rest of the evening watching films and I take care of her until she goes to sleep. Then I make my way to my office. I want to touch base with the guys.

I switch my computer on. Then the phone rings. It's my cell phone. I pull it out of my pocket and see it's Borya, my father's advisor. He rarely ever calls me for anything. Of course, I've been ignoring my father, so I'm tempted to ignore this call. But I answer.

"Hi Borya," I say.

"Virgo, I have bad news." He speaks in a hurried voice.

"What's happened?"

"Your father has been shot."

ChapterTwenty-Eight

Virgo

“Your father is stable,” the surgeon says. “But there are some complications you need to know about.”

I clench my jaw and stare back at him, deepening my gaze.

“What are they?” I'm not sure which emotion I'd use to describe my voice. It sounds somewhere in between shocked and numb. Both come from a place where I've always believed that my father is untouchable.

“The first is, he'll be with us for a while. The bullet to his chest was only two millimeters away from his heart. He's lucky to be alive. But the bullet to his back severed his spinal cord, meaning he's going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life.”

The numbness inside me increases, expanding to my core.

I can't imagine my father paralyzed and not being able to move around the way he always does, or fly from country to country, commanding his empire.

“When can I see him?” I ask.

They've been in surgery for six hours, so I'm not sure how he'll be for visitors.

“You can see him now,” the surgeon replies. “But just bear in mind, he'll be in a coma for some time. I can't say when he'll wake up, or even if he will. That is a situation.”

I nod. My father was found unconscious in his office at home, shot twice. It was Borya who found him.

Apart from the guards, he was alone at home, as my mother is away on a spa retreat in Switzerland. She's been notified of what's happened to him, and is on her way back.

“Thank you,” I tell the surgeon.

“I'll keep you updated along the way. If you head to the nurse's office, they'll show you to your father's room.”

I give him a curt nod, and make my way to the nurses, who then take me to see my father.

It was only the other day that I saw him.

As usual, he stood tall, proud, and strong.

The man I'm looking at now looks like a shadow of the one I know. He’s attached to so many wires and tubes and machines that I can’t tell which is doing what. He's only sixty, but the man in the bed looks like he could be a hundred years old.

I don't know what this incident means in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know if it means that I was initially right about him, and he didn't have anything to do with the O’Ridian murders.

Or if this is an isolated incident that has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with how despicable my father is.

Conveniently, the surveillance didn't pick anybody up, or anything out of the ordinary. The guards also saw nothing. Those parts aren't actually a surprise because my father has secret passages into the house. It does however tell me that the person who used them, which it looks like they did, is someone he knew very, very well.