“Angel?” The phone was gone before I could say more. Had he set this whole thing up? I tried to lift my head, but it felt too heavy. I was little more than a tomb—dead and hollow.
Had Angel changed his mind about keeping me alive? I needed to tell him what I remembered before it was too late. I knew in my gut my dad didn’t betray and kill Art for his legacy. He killed him for fucking his wife. Art had been the one to betray my dad. Angel would have to see that.
“I’m sorry the accommodations are grossly unpleasant,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m afraid this was your boyfriend’s doing.”
Fear allowed me to finally lift my head. I took in the concrete walls with small windows too high to do me any good. The space was large and mostly empty except the chains that hung from the ceiling. It creeped me out enough to send a chill down my spine.
“What is this place?”
“This, I’m told, is where he keeps people on ice until the client who pays for them comes to collect or where he makes them disappear altogether. These bleak walls closing in on them are the last thing his victims’ eyes see before he closes them forever.”
“Who told you this?”
“I did, dear girl.” A voice I didn’t recognize echoed around the room. I heard footsteps as a man who resembled Emiliano Diez, only shorter, approached. Bea, who I noticed was also tied, shrunk in her chair.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Victor Castro. Eliana’s father.”
I may not have recognized his face but his name instantly resonated. “You were my dad and Uncle Art’s friend and Bea’s husband after he died.”
“Yes, well, I had many titles. Too many in fact. I was first Art’s best friend, and then merely his bookkeeper when your father came along. You can understand why I felt the need to shed the dead weight.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Well, let me enlighten you. I was Art’s only friend for fifteen years. I did as he asked, when he asked, and never questioned him. Your father rescues him once, and the years I put in are simply forgotten. Loyalty means nothing to a man with so much power. He would never have given that power up without death.”
“And you made that happen.”
“It wasn’t hard. A man’s wife… and her pussy… is something to kill for.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that Art didn’t respect you because you were weak? He treated you like an errand boy because… well… if it quacks…”
“So you think your father was better than me?”
“No,” I answered confidently. “He was a criminal the same as you. He was just better and stronger at it.”
“And where are two of Chicago’s strongest criminals now?”
“One is rotting in a grave and the other behind bars,” I answered, feigning indifference. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that I put them there.”
“What makes you think you put my father behind bars?” My heart beat faster when I witnessed the pride in his eyes.
“Who do you think told him about Art and Ceci’s illicit affair?”
It was impossible to keep a hold on my composure. Bea wept next to me, but the sound of her cries were muffled by her gag.
“Why?”
“Art was planning to announce his retirement the night of Angel’s birthday party. But that’s not all that was planned.”
“What else was there?”
His smile was cruel. “Your betrothal to his son.”
I repeated his words in my head, but they refused to make sense. I was never engaged to Angel. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Art convinced your father to save you for his son with the promise of you always having the protection of the Knight name and fortune. This was his way of ensuring Angel produced a suitable heir. Art was growing concerned over Angel’s insistence to stick his cock in every girl in Chicago. They signed a contract that only death could break. On your eighteenth birthday, you both would have married, and Angel would have assumed the throne.”
Suddenly, I was replaying Angel’s phone call on his birthday and his invitation to be by his side. It wasn’t because he wanted me. It had been a front for something he wanted more.
I was his ticket to power.
“Why would that make you betray them?”
“Because I was the one who put the idea of an arranged marriage in his head when he complained to me about his son’s whoring.”
My gaze was drawn to Eliana standing beside her father appearing just as enraged, and suddenly, it all pieced together.
“You expected him to marry your daughter. Not me.”
“My Eliana is closer in age and far more beautiful, yet he completely overlooked her.”
“How did you convince my father my mother cheated on him?”