Beside him are three large men, all fully armed, and each one likely strong enough to snap me in half with no problem. Now these men look like enforcers.
“Actually what?” the man asks, visibly shaking now.
I might see someone intimidating when I look at my father because I have known him all my life, but this man clearly sees someone terrifying, regardless of how well he knows Dad.
“Your men are all dead,” Dad tells him calmly, like he’s mentioning the weather.
“What?” the man hisses, his skin turning a shade of green so radically I’m positive he’s going to pass out at any second.
“I couldn’t have anyone knowing the layout of this place,” he explains, a sinister smile gracing his lips.
I have always known my father wasn’t a good man, but I never considered until recently that he was into murdering people. And by the way he states this so casually, it makes me fear this is common practice.
How many people has he killed? How many have died from his orders?
“But … But that was a dozen men,” he finally splutters.
“Well, perhaps a baker’s dozen.”
Before the guy can figure out what that means, Dad holds out his hand, and one of his goons passes him a gun. Barely pausing for a second, he holds it out in front of him and shoots the guy at point blank range.
“What the fuck!” I cry out, stepping back down the hallway behind me before Donny grabs my shirt and pulls me back to him.
“Oh, yes, my son,” Dad sneers at me, the gun still in his hand, currently pointed downward. How long before it’s aimed at me?
“Sir.” Donny keeps ahold of me, dragging me with him as we step closer to my dad.
“Donny, my boy, you did as I asked.” Dad nods at him, but there is an edge of anger still there.
“Of course, sir.”
“But you forgot to mention my son only went to one meeting,” he suddenly thunders out, the hand holding the gun twitching over the trigger.
The tense atmosphere turns even deadlier, if that is possible. Now I’m the one shaking.
Is my father really going to kill me? Is this how my life ends?
Even Donny seems unsure now.
So much for his plan of keeping me safe.
“Yes, well, I didn’t feel it was necessary for him to—”
“That hundred grand extra Vincent charged me is coming out of your money.”
Donny doesn’t look pleased with this, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut.
“Make the hit live on Newberry,” he snaps, and one of his guards reacts immediately, pulling out his phone.
“No!” I cry, to which Donny elbows me hard in my side, making me lose my breath.
“You disgust me. Don’t think you’re getting out of this unscathed, either. Fucking a man is disgusting enough, but to have it be my enemy? You fucked the bastard who helped lock me up?” Dad snarls, closing the distance between us before hitting me hard enough across the face that I swear I see stars.
“Sir, this isn’t—”
“You will not speak unless I give you permission!” Dad screams at Donny.
“But—”
Donny is on the receiving end of his fist this time.
Through watered eyes, I see the betrayal and shock filter over him.
“You both disappointed me,” Dad says, switching the gun in his grip to the other hand before he points it at me. “I had planned to keep you alive a while longer. I wanted your mother to be here to watch her son bleed to death. I wanted to see your face when you knew for sure that fucker Newberry was dead. But I can’t look at you any longer. I can’t breathe easy knowing my son is a disgrace.”
“Angus,” Donny gasps, only to be pistol-whipped by my dad.
The man who came down with us steps forward, reaching for his gun. Suddenly, the tension in the room, which I thought was at its thickest, gets even worse.
“You’re both a disappointment to me, but you can make it up to me, Donny. You can right your wrongs.” He turns to look at me, his upper lip curling in disgust. “There is no righting them for you.” He again points the gun at me.
I freeze, staring into my father’s eyes. I see nothing. His eyes are empty, void of any emotion. There is no second-guessing himself over the fact that he’s about to kill his only son.
He doesn’t give a shit.
“No,” Donny grumbles, stepping in front of me just as the gun goes off.
I gape, seeing even my father seems surprised.
Then Donny whips his arm around, now holding his own weapon, and suddenly opens fire, shooting my dad. I don’t see where he hits him, but it doesn’t bring him down.
As his men begin shooting now, Donny backs me down the hallway, firing his weapon while the man with us does the same. The man drops dead seconds later. Then pain sears through my shoulder and side when Donny turns a corner, leaving me unprotected.
He stumbles over to a large painting that is as big as most of the wall, smearing his blood as he pulls the frame back, revealing a hidden doorway. He types in a code, and once the door opens, he ducks in just as Dad’s men turn the corner and fire, hitting my calf before I stumble in after Donny, knocking into a chair and barely keeping my footing under me.
Donny slams the door shut, punching in a code on the inside, and then he slumps down the door, blood pooling down his front, his face too pale.
“Fuck,” he gasps.
I agree with him.
What the fuck just happened?
Chapter 20
“What the hell!” I cry, glancing down at myself to find blood smearing my shirt at my side, my leg, and I can’t see if it’s bleeding, too, but my shoulder fucking hurts.
Panic causes me to lose my footing and I fall to the side, unable to stop since my hands are still restrained. Whether it’s from the impact or the pain that was already there from presumably a bullet, I cry out.
I almost lose it completely, panic and terror settling deep inside my bones, but I hold my breath when there is a thumping noise from the other side of the door.
“They can’t get in. At least, not anytime soon,” Donny says weakly.
I glance over at him, seeing he is slumped over. Dark red blood coats the front of his shirt, pooling at an alarming rate.
“You need to put pressure on that,” I say, finally glancing around to see a mostly bare room.
Donny grunts, which leaves a wince on his face without moving an inch.
“You’re going to bleed out,” I warn.
He doesn’t respond to that, either.
I force myself to stand, needing to use my good shoulder and the wall for balance. I again glance around the room, looking for something helpful.
There is a desk with a computer on it, a landline phone, and a wooden chair. That’s all the room boasts.
“There’s a phone; if we can make a call, we can get help,” I mutter, trying to figure out how I can do that with no free hands.
“Line isn’t connected.” Donny’s faint voice dashes that hope.
“Then where is your cell?”
“Heard it drop when we were running.”
“Shit!” I yell, frustration getting the better of me. “You need to get these things off me.”
“Must have left my scissors in my other pants,” Donny hisses, chuckling for a moment before a painful cough bubbles out of him.
“What about a knife?”
He shakes his head. From how pale his face is getting, to the blood pooling in his lap, I worry he’s going to soon bleed out on me.
“You need to press the button on my watch. It’ll send out our location to Har …” I trail off, deliberating if bringing up Harvey will turn him off the idea. “To get us help.”
“What’s the point? I know I’m not surviving this,” he grumbles, his head slumping before he jolts it back up again.
“Right, and what about me? Don’t I deserve to live?”
“Not if it’s that fucker rescuing you,
” he mutters bitterly.
My hands fist behind me. I have the strongest urge to punch him.
“If you press the button, it will be you saving me, not anyone else,” I point out.
“I already saved your life today,” he says, his voice so quiet now I have to strain to hear him.
“Right, so you gonna let me die in here, instead? That sounds like you made a great sacrifice.”
He sighs, but I’m not sure if it’s because of me or his wounds.
“Come here.” He waves me over with a slight shift of his finger. I wonder if he will even have the energy to do this. “There is a condition.”
“Shit, Donny, I’m not fucking you or whatever else you’re gonna ask for,” I snap, unable to stop my anger from reaching the surface when I’m this stressed and freaked out.
He smiles now, blood pooling at his lips. My anger dissipates.
“No. Although, maybe later … if I’m not dead.” He says this lightly before his eyes shift away from me. Whatever he wants to ask isn’t easy for him. “Will you stay with me? I don’t … I don’t want to die alone.”
I almost call attention to the fact that it isn’t like I have a choice. I am stuck in this room. I don’t think that’s what he wants to hear, though.
“Of course I’ll stay with you.”
He gives a slight nod, his body sinking a little farther into the ground. “Come here.”
I lean over him, which is incredibly hard when my arms and hands are so restricted. Since I can’t see a thing, I assume Donny presses the button when he tells me I can move away.
“I wondered why you kept wearing that piece of shit watch.”
“Thanks,” I say, basically throwing myself against the door so I’m next to Donny. There isn’t much room in here, but I don’t think he wanted me across the small space watching as he dies. “So, what is this room meant to be?”
“It’s a panic room. There are a bunch throughout the house, plus a whole underground area that your dad could hide in for months if he needed to lay low,” he slowly gets out, the blood pooling over his abdomen now dripping over the side. I wince when I notice it coming for me.
“Shit, he really thought of everything here,” I mutter distractedly, moving my legs a little to avoid the blood.
“Been planning this shit for years. He knew he could eventually need to hide. He put the place in my name and told me to keep my nose clean,” he huffs out, his breathing sounding more like a rattle now.
“You didn’t exactly manage that,” I accuse, my thoughts immediately moving to Lola.
“You mean the girl?”
“Lola was her name,” I snap.
“She wasn’t worth shit. She was stealing from you, you know? She was skimming money. Plus, I saw her stealing food from the kitchens.”
I’m surprised to hear this, but I don’t even care.
“So, that meant she deserved to die? Her kid deserved to lose his mom? Her grandmother deserved to lose a grandchild?”
Donny coughs, the sound painful.
I hold in my anger. It doesn’t matter now. Lola is dead, and no arguing will change that, just like Donny is dying next to me. I doubt even if we made it to a hospital in the next five minutes that would change.
“Let’s not talk about this,” I say, looking down at my side and calf to see the stains, but they don’t appear to be leaking as badly as Donny’s. Maybe they weren’t direct hits.
“Yeah,” Donny agrees, an eerie smile gracing his lips as he stares out across the room. I doubt he’s truly seeing the empty wall there. “Remember the day I told you we were gonna be friends?”
“Vaguely,” I answer, sighing at the obvious and unwanted look down memory lane we are about to embark on.
“I saw you with your mom. She was giving you a hug, trying to hold back tears while she left you to your first day. Pretty sure your dad was glaring daggers, and he had to drag her away when she went in for another hug.” He coughs painfully, blood splattering over his lips and hand.
I look away from him, trying to recall the memory.
“I remember thinking I wanted that,” he mutters. “I had to walk myself to school that day. No one saw me off. No hugs, no tears. I watched you and decided I wanted what you had.”
I shake my head a little, knowing I’m lucky, but I also didn’t have a perfect life.
“And then, when your dad seemed to like me, when he made time for me …” His voice drifts off, and I look over to see if he’s still alive. He just looks lost in the memory. “I loved your dad.”
“I get the feeling he loved you, too. At least as much as is possible for him,” I say, wondering why I’m trying to comfort Donny. He doesn’t deserve it.
“I couldn’t lose that. Not even when you came out and I wanted to tell you that I felt the same way. After what he did, what he said, I knew I had to stay quiet.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” I tell him quietly. “You couldn’t have stopped him from hurting me that day.”
“But maybe things would have been different for me. Do you think …?” He licks his lips, blood pooling around them. “If I had left with you that day, do you think we could’ve …?” He trails off again.
When I glance at him, I watch as a lone tear slips down his face.
“Shit, Donny, I don’t know. You were so much like my dad by then, I doubt it.”
He winces, but gives a slight nod. “I never wanted to hurt you. I made plans that day. I knew your dad wouldn’t change his mind, but I knew I would take over one day. I was going to be so scary, so feared, that by the time you were at my side, no one would say a word.”
“It wasn’t just my dad being homophobic that put a wedge between us. I never liked him. He’s mean, cruel, and a shit human being. If he opened his arms wide to me right this second and said he wanted to welcome me back to the family, I would run in the opposite direction. I mean, he just tried to kill me!”
“He’s complicated, but—”
“How can you even defend him?”
“We’re not perfect, Nix. Your dad isn’t. I’m not.”
“I think trying to kill your son, killing another man in cold blood just to keep your hideout safe, and admitting to killing a dozen other people makes you far less than just imperfect. And that’s just shit that happened today!” I snap, unable to stop myself from getting riled up.
“We can’t all be like you.”
“Like me? As in, someone who has never killed another person before? Someone who doesn’t steal, cheat, lie, or bribe people for a living? I actually think that isn’t that hard to do, Donny. Most people are like me, in fact.”
“You had a choice; I didn’t,” he argues.
“You did have a choice! And you chose my dad.”
“It wasn’t so easy.”
“Why does every choice have to be easy? Some are hard, but they’re worth it.”
Neither of us say another word. Donny wheezes beside me, whereas I huff out my own breaths, trying to calm the fuck down.
This isn’t supposed to be some weird-ass therapy session. I’m not here to get out my feelings or lecture Donny in all the bad life choices he made. He’s dying, and we are both currently trapped here. Help could be coming, but it also might not. I need to chill the hell out.
“I messed up,” Donny finally whispers, his words barely audible.
I open my mouth a few times, ready to try to give him something he can hold on to, something that will offer even a small amount of comfort, but I don’t have it. Instead, I only have the stark, unforgiving truth.
“You did.”
“Will you …? Can you ever forgive me?” He shifts his head, finally looking at me, his pleading so obvious that it actually makes me feel bad for the answer I have to give him.
“You killed an innocent woman, Donny. You threatened Harvey for no other reason than because you were jealous of him. You set his office on fire and burned my restaurant to the ground. And that’s just in the past
couple weeks. Who the fuck knows what else you’ve done?”
Another tear streaks down his face, dropping from his chin and mixing with the blood over his lap. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
I sigh, torn between being honest and placating a dying man. Is it cruel of me to tell him there is likely no forgiveness for what he has done? Is it right to lie to him and give him something false to hold on to? Does he deserve that? Did he give Lola any peace when he brutally murdered her?
My shoulders slump, and my energy level lowers as adrenaline zaps out at the emotional weight of our conversation.
I don’t know what to do. I can barely think straight after everything that happened. I’m not ready for this conversation. I’m not sure I will ever be ready for it.
“Nix?” Donny pleads, his coughing sounding worse, as shivers rack his body.
“I can promise you that I will try to, one day, be at the point where I can forgive you,” I tell him.
“I get … brownie points for … stepping in front of … that bullet, though … right?” he huffs out, his speech beginning to peter off.
I scoff, even as the rising fear of being left here alone with a dead man tries to choke me. “Sure, you get a couple points.”
“Good.”
When he coughs again, I’m not sure he is going to come out alive, but his breathing continues to rattle out afterward.
“Don’t let … that asshole … treat you … badly. You are … worth …”
When he coughs again, I slide closer to him until my side is against his, uncaring now of the blood between us.
“I won’t,” I say softly as I listen to the last rattles of breath come out of my once friend before he finally slumps over and stills, dead.
Tears pour down my face, and I curse loudly at the world, at Donny, at my dad. I let myself feel sorry for myself and feel every moment of pain from my leg, my side, my shoulder, and my arms, which I fear are losing blood circulation. With my luck, they will drop off at any second.
Everything is so messed up. Even assuming Donny pressed the button and didn’t screw me over one last time, and assuming Harvey gets here in time, what happens if they can’t get into this stupid panic room? What happens if they can’t find it? What happens if my father kills anyone who comes near the house?
I Broke Into His Office (Love at First Crime Book 4) Page 27
