An odd expression twisted his face. “It wouldn’t have been too late,” he said, reaching up to rub his forehead. Was he in pain? Or sick? Well, beyond the obvious sickness of being a crazed lunatic. “He just wouldn’t listen to me,” Ronnie continued, seeming to speak more to himself than her. “If he’d just admitted the truth, then I wouldn’t have had to punish him.”
Her mouth went dry. That didn’t sound good.
“Is that why you kidnapped me?” She pressed against the wall, prepared to try to scramble away. “To punish my father?”
Without warning he chuckled with genuine amusement. Like she’d just told a funny joke.
“You don’t know anything,” he mocked.
“I already told you that.”
“Stupid girl.”
Carmen braced herself. Ronnie was becoming increasingly agitated. It was obvious in the jerky motions of his body and the muscle twitching beside his eye. She sensed he was ready and eager to hit her again.
Perhaps worse.
“How did you punish my father?” she asked, hoping to keep him distracted.
He hunched his shoulders, looking oddly vulnerable before he was deliberately stiffening his spine.
“I shot him.”
The words left his mouth and for a second Carmen thought it was the sort of delusional boast that a man would make who wanted people to believe he wasn’t a spineless coward. He could say he’d hidden in the bushes and used his BB gun to take a potshot at the lord of the manor. It wasn’t like her father was around to deny the lie.
Then the world tilted, and she was plummeting through darkness. Images streaked past her. Silvery threads of memory. A young girl crawling out of her bed and slipping through the shadowed house in search of her parents. Of that same girl fleeing in terror at the deafening blast of a shotgun.
Then the images shifted. Now she was in the kitchen where two broken bodies were crumpled on the tiled floor. A teenage Ronnie was standing in the center of the room with a shotgun in his hand, his grinning face splattered with blood.
The image began to crack. And then it shattered. Returning her to the chilled warehouse and the brutal awareness that everything she believed about her past was a lie.
And alone with the monster who was responsible for destroying her life.
“Are you saying that my father didn’t commit suicide?” she breathed, struggling to accept his words.
“Of course he didn’t.” Ronnie shoved his hands into his front pockets. “He was too arrogant to take his own life.”
“God.” She pressed a hand to her throat. Her heart was doing something weird in her chest. Beating too fast, and then forgetting to beat at all. It made it hard to breathe. “You killed him.”
Ronnie scowled, looking like a petulant child. “It’s not what I wanted.”
She studied him in horror. “Are you trying to claim it was an accident?”
“I wanted him to speak the truth.”
She shuddered. He was truly insane.
“Where did you get the gun?”
He shrugged. “I found it while I was cleaning the garage. It was in a cabinet with a box of shells.”
She slowly nodded. She had a vague memory of her father warning her never to play around the wooden cabinet. The gun had belonged to her grandfather, who’d been an avid hunter.
“How did you get into the cabinet?” she demanded. “It was always locked.”
“I found the key,” he said with a vague shrug, although it didn’t take much effort to figure out the young Ronnie had been snooping around the house until he found it. “As soon as I had it in my hands I knew I finally had the means to force him to acknowledge me as his son.”
She scowled. “By killing him?”
The twitching next to Ronnie’s eye accelerated as he gave a wave of his arms.
“No,” he sharply denied. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
A mixture of pain and fury erupted through Carmen, briefly muting her fear.
She wanted to tilt back her head and scream. Or better yet, leap to her feet and pound her fists into Ronnie’s face. She wanted him to hurt. To bleed like he’d made her parents bleed.
“What did you think?” she asked in harsh tones. “That my father would be overjoyed to confirm the fact that you were his son while you were pointing a gun to his head?”
His jaw jutted. “I wanted him to say the words, but he refused. He even denied that my mother had been his lover.” His voice didn’t hold one ounce of regret. Or guilt. Just an annoying whine, like he was the victim. “I hated him in that moment.”
She glared at him in disgust. “So you killed him.”
“I told you it wasn’t my fault,” Ronnie insisted. “He tried to grab the gun out of my hands. My finger squeezed the trigger in the struggle.”
Carmen’s hand moved up to touch her damp cheek. She hadn’t even realized that she was crying.
“He didn’t commit suicide,” she whispered, feeling something shift deep inside her. A fundamental truth that determined who she was and who she was yet to become. Then she drew in a shuddering breath, staring at Ronnie with an accusing gaze. “Why did you hurt my mother? She had nothing to do with you.”
“She must have been on the back terrace when the gun went off. I didn’t even have a chance to try to help our father before she ran through the back door and started yelling at me.”
Once again there was no guilt. In fact, he looked aggravated. As if her mother had been an annoying pest that he’d had to eliminate.
She curled her hands into tight fists. “You bastard.”
With a blur of motion, Ronnie surged forward, an ugly expression twisting his features.
“I’m not a bastard.” He grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the wall. “Don’t ever say that again.”
*
Griff held his Glock in his hand as Matthew swerved his car to a halt on a quiet side street. He’d grabbed the weapon before they’d left his house. He had a license to carry a gun, but he rarely had it out unless it was to take target practice with Rylan.
Now he kept it pointed toward the younger man.
Not because he intended to shoot Matthew. At least not yet. But if the idiot was plotting to lead him into a trap, then he wanted him to know he was going to take a bullet to the head.
At the same time, Griff ’s gaze skimmed their surroundings, taking a full inventory of any potential dangers.
It looked harmless enough. The area was dominated by square buildings with large windows covered by steel bars and flat roofs. He assumed they were mainly warehouses and small factories. There weren’t any local stores or residences. A stroke of luck that kept the midmorning traffic to a mere trickle.
Matthew pointed toward the two-story building across the street.
“That’s our warehouse.”
Griff frowned, studying darkened windows and the empty parking lot. “Where is everyone?”
“We close down our warehouses between Christmas and New Year’s Day.” Matthew shrugged. “Dad claims it saves us a bundle in salaries.”
The casual indifference in the man’s voice made Griff roll his eyes. Griff had built his own empire without any help from his father. Nothing had been handed to him on a silver platter.
Thank God. Clearly, being a pampered rich boy did nothing to encourage ambition.
“You don’t handle the budget?” he asked in mocking tones.
Matthew sent Griff a humorless smile. “Numbers give me a brain cramp.”
With a shake of his head, Griff turned his attention to the warehouse.
It was a two-story structure, built with red bricks and steel doors. It was old, but it looked as if it’d been kept in good repair. Meaning it wouldn’t be easy to enter without alerting whoever was inside.
His attention turned to the cement parking lot, which was surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence.
“There’s a truck parked at the end of the lot,” he said, trying to make out the gold emblem painted on the door of the vehicle.
“Probably the guard,” Matthew said. “We rent them from a local security firm.”
It made sense. The truck looked like a company vehicle. His gaze scanned the street, searching for any sign that he was on the right track.
“No van,” he finally muttered.
Matthew sent him a confused frown. “Were you expecting one?”