I lock eyes with Bella, and I can feel my face sagging with disbelief and disgust at myself for being so stupid and my dad for being so cruel. She mouths, “It’s okay,” but it doesn’t feel that way. Especially because we’re both probably going to die here, and it’s entirely my fault.
I think back through the last few days, through everything that has happened, and one thing still doesn’t make sense. “Why did you try to kill me? The shooters at the hotel, the explosion at the house. What did I do?”
My father tips his head to the side, his smirk fading into a disappointed grimace. “You fell in love with the senator’s daughter.”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but as soon as I see Bella standing behind him—her long black hair tangled around her shoulders, her cheekbones even more pronounced from days of exhaustion and being on the run—I know he’s right. Of course I love her. Everything I’ve done in the past week (aside from kidnapping her) proves that. I was drawn to her from the moment I saw her, and I’ve been drawing closer to her every moment since.
“I could no longer trust your loyalty to me,” my father continues. “The longer I went without being able to track down Senator McNair, the more likely it was that he would contact his daughter and tell her the truth. And after that, it would only be a matter of time before you found out the truth. And I couldn’t have you telling the rest of the family.”
The cold way he explains the logic behind my death sends a chill down my spine. “You would kill your own son for money?”
He wrinkles his nose at me. “Don’t sound so surprised. People do worse things for money all the time.”
I’m staring at him so hard, doing my best to burn a hole through his head with my eyes, that it takes me a moment to notice Bella trying to catch my attention. She’s shifting from one foot to the other, her eyebrows raised, and when I finally look at her, she tips her head slightly in the direction of my dad. I wrinkle my brow. I have no idea what she’s trying to say.
She does it again and then clears her throat. “Where is my father?”
My dad rolls his eyes and spins around. “Someone should have taught you not to interrupt. Maybe instead of being an inefficient leader in the government, your father should have tried his hand at being a leader in his own home. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t be waiting in a cell to die right now.”
“You found him?” Bella asks, taking an inadvertent step forward. “Where is he?”
The men around the edge of the room lift their weapons to protect my father from the imminent threat they believe Bella is, but my father waves them away. “You are starting to bore me, girl. Better to be seen and not heard.”
Bella looks over my father’s shoulders and gestures again, and finally, it clicks. Not wasting another second, I take two long strides and throw myself on his back, wrapping my arms around his neck.
The entire room erupts at once, but no one knows what to do. My father is clawing at my arms around his neck, desperate for breath, but they can’t shoot me without hurting him. And my father is far too busy fighting for air to give them any direction. So, there’s shouting and shuffling and the rapid loading of weapons, but no one steps forward to do anything, and I think I might actually be able to kill him. Even if his men still kill us afterward, I might get to end my father’s reign of terror before it gets worse. Though, since his men are employees motivated by money rather than loyalty, I might be able to kill him and then pay them off. Between Bella and myself, we have more than enough money to pay them all handsomely. I just have to squeeze the life out of the traitor who called himself my father, and I’ll figure out the rest later.
But then, one man steps forward, wraps an arm around Bella’s chest, and presses the muzzle of his gun to her temple.
I release my father at once, pushing him away from me for good measure. He stumbles forward, his neck and face changing colors faster than I can keep track of, and gasps for air.
“I’m done,” I say, lifting my hands in surrender. “Don’t hurt her.”
My father turns around, his top lip curled back in a sneer. “Take them both.”
The man holding the gun to Bella’s head lowers it, but quickly subdues her, pinning her arms behind her back. I lunge forward to try and do something, anything, but three men surround me and kick my legs out from under me. My chest collides with the floor, knocking the wind out of me, and when I look up, Bella is gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bella
The man pulls me towards the door just as Yuri is thrown on the cement floor. I cry out, but then the door slams between us, and I’m being dragged away. I thrash and kick, but it isn’t doing anything other than exhausting me, so I decide to go limp instead.
“Stand up,” the man complains, shaking me like a sheet. “Walk.”
I sag against him, forcing him to carry me to the cell. It’s childish, but it’s the only kind of rebellion I’m capable of at the moment. It also might be my last rebellion as I have no reason to believe I won’t be dead before dawn. But I push that thought away as he unlocks a metal door and pulls
