to be terrified that something would happen to him. Now I’m being told it is and I feel nothing but curiosity to know what it is that will take him from this world.
“Brain tumors,” he says tapping the side of his head. “I look good now but in eight months I doubt I’ll look anything close to this. I wanted to sort everything out while I still had the capacity.”
I stare back at him with nothing to say.
I feel nothing. No compassion whatsoever. Not even the natural familial sympathy a person would be compelled to feel because he’s my father.
“You very nearly ruined me, Isabella. It’s almost poetic, my own creation turned against me like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“That’s what you think I am?” I counter thrashing against the restraints. “I’m not the monster here. You are.”
“To me the monsters are anyone who support the Syndicate. That is what you have done. Whether the Syndicate exists as one man or many it is a threat because of the power. It’s too much. I welcomed the union I took with others to eradicate them and at the time I believed I’d have Ricardo Balesteri on my right hand. I believed I’d have control. But it didn’t happen that way. At least now I know what they’re up to and believe me I plan to fight back. I’ll deal with you first though.”
“I’m not marrying Dmitri,” I balk.
“Marriage? Oh no it’s gone past that I’m afraid. You are no longer worthy to be part of my life for what little remains of it, nor my group. The only thing you will be good for is the example I’m going to make out of you. You will receive the same punishment your mother got. You are exactly like that whore and history has repeated itself.”
“You’re… going to kill me,” I breathe, barely able to get the words out.
“Conspiring with the enemy, sleeping with the enemy, and like your mother carrying the enemies child.”
My mouth drops open and shock slams through my body making my head feel lighter than it already was.
“What? What did you say?”
“You’re pregnant. We had you checked out to make sure you didn’t have any trackers on you and that’s what we discovered. And the way I hear it Tristan D’Agostino did not force himself on you. You gave yourself willingly to a man who was planning to kill your father. I will not allow such an abomination. Like your mother you will die.”
“That’s why you killed her?” Now I’m more taken aback by that than my own situation.
“I loved that woman more than anything. More than life. She was the most important thing in the world to me and you were the result of that love. Then she betrayed me. Alfonse Belmond was the man who informed me of her betrayal. She was having an affair with James Mazzone Sr. a syndicate member. She got pregnant. So I killed her and I killed him too.”
My heart squeezes as everything falls into place. I have answers now for everything, all of it. All that happened in the past.
“Like her, I will kill you,” he adds. “We’ll head back to Rhode Island and at noon tomorrow I will invite the senior Shadow members to watch me cut the child out of you. I will kill my own daughter as a symbol of my loyalty to our cause, then Dmitri will burn what’s left of you whether you’re alive or dead when I’m finished with you. We will show that disobedience will not be tolerated in the Circle of Shadows. You will not get away with this.”
The tears fall down my cheeks making my vision blur. The drumming in my heart takes over my thoughts and fears.
He looks me over and walks away and as the door closes darkness overwhelms me inside and out. I’m dead.
I’m going to die here.
I’m pregnant and my father’s going to kill me.
Tristan…
He’ll never know.
I’m sure by now he must know I’m gone and he won’t think I escaped. Not with Nick watching the place. Nick was shot. He’ll find him and I’m certain the first thing he’ll think is that my father got to me.
He’ll know the plan is off. It only worked with the element of surprise and I was their leverage. They don’t have that now and I have nothing.
He wouldn’t come just for me.
No one will.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tristan
I gaze out the kitchen window feeling like a lost soul.