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Behind us, Ricardo coughs. "You are one fucked up person, Ford. And I've seen some shit, but this right here...this takes the cake."
"Please, DeLuca," Ford pleads. "I've never asked you for a single thing, other than sparing her life. If you tell her everything. It will kill her."
"I'm counting on it," DeLuca sneers.
I can feel Alyssa stiffen behind me. "Do you or do you not work for DeLuca?"
"Technically, yes," Ford answers. "But I didn't always. I am a member of the FBI first and foremost."
"Yeah, he's what we like to call a flipper-flopper. You know, when it suits him," Ricardo adds.
"Why, Ford?" she questions. "How could you do that after you saw what he did to my father?"
"Because I became too powerful for him to keep trying to take down," DeLuca interjects.
Ford's face pales. "I couldn't beat DeLuca. So, I had to join him. There was no other way."
DeLuca takes a step forward and his face hardens. "Go ahead, Alyssa. Ask him what his first job for me was."
She shakes her head and points her gun at Ford. My heart breaks for her because I know what it's like when the man you've always regarded as your savior, turns out to be your a
"No," she shouts. "You wouldn't do that to my dad. He was your best friend. You grew up together. He loved you. You wouldn't set him up to get killed."
"I'm so sorry," Ford whispers. "I had no choice."
"There's always a choice!"
DeLuca grins and I feel sick to my stomach because I know he's about to go in for the kill. The emotional kill, that is. He's still having too much fun torturing her to go in for the physical one.
"And what a choice it was," he starts. "He obviously chose to save his own ass. He came to me, worked out a deal and gave up your dear old dad in the exchange. You know, he was the one who suggested we do it right here, too. He said your dad liked the water." DeLuca chuckles. "He even set up the two gang members to take the fall for it. I'll admit that was brilliant."
"You're fucking sick," Alyssa says, her voice cracking.
"I won't deny that," Ford says. "But I love you, Alyssa. You know that I do."
"No, what I know," she begins. "Is that you were on the phone with me when it happened. You heard me cry my heart out. You heard my screams as DeLuca took my father from me. You picked up that scared and destroyed little girl and held her in your arms like she was your own. You held her like you would protect her...all while knowing you did this to me. To him! How could you?"
I can't hold back the tears that are forming in my eyes because...and I never thought I'd say this...but I identify with her.
Although our situations are different...they're similar in the fact that we put our trust and love in two men we thought would protect us.
Two men that turned out to be monsters.
A cry rips from her throat and DeLuca laughs. "And that's not even all of it."
"What else could there possibly be?" I question.
I gasp when I realize. What an asshole.
DeLuca smirks sinisterly. "Alyssa? Besides your father dying, can you think of anything else that might have ruined your life?"
"Shit," Ricardo mutters.
"You were behind the sex tape, Ford?"
The spineless bastard stays silent.
"Answer her, Ford." DeLuca directs.
That's when Ricardo chimes in. "You tell her the truth now. It's the least you can do, you fucking scumbag."
"DeLuca promised Gaffney that he would win the run for mayor if his son Dean did it," Ford starts. "However, it was my idea in the first place. I paid the Gaffney's off and promised that Dean would never get busted on a DUI charge if he fucked you and filmed it."
I swallow down the ball of revulsion making its way up my throat because I know exactly who Gaffney ran against in that election.
Alyssa recoils. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that to me?"
"I needed to do something to—" Ford pauses and DeLuca grins before he chimes in. "To make sure your pretty face would never end up on the evening news. Where you could slip up and tell the whole world what I did to your daddy. Live from New York. You know, you really should have chosen a different major at NYU."
His eyes blacken and I fight back a shiver. "I run this city," DeLuca shouts while taking a step forward. "It's mine. My greed, my hunger, my money...but most of all my control and power. I let you live as a courtesy to Ford; after certain assurances were put in place, of course. But, I wasn't going to have your stupid fucking ass mess up what I worked so hard to build. I couldn't take that chance." His lips turn up in a snarl and he winks. "However, I would like to thank you for being such a willing participant. Nice tits by the way."
Alyssa looks at Ford, her expression absolutely crestfallen. "The way you treated me after it happened. I went to you for help and you—"
"Made her believe she was nothing but a whore. Broke her trust in everyone and everything. Hurt her beyond all repair. And this was all after you had already ripped her heart out. You really are one despicable motherfucker," Jackson's voice booms out of nowhere.
"No," Alyssa says while pointing her gun at Ford. "He's one despicable dead motherfucker."
"No!" Jackson shouts, halting her. "Don't do it, Alyssa."
My heart beats in my chest like a ca
I can hear Jackson and Alyssa talking in the background but I can't focus on anything they're saying because I'm too focused on Ricardo.
And DeLuca...who's currently pointing his gun at Jackson.
"No," Ricardo barks.
In one fell swoop Ricardo grabs me right before DeLuca presses the trigger.
"Don't you even think about it, Babbo," Ricardo says as he brings his gun to my head.
The irony—I've had guns pointed at my head multiple times today, by multiple people...and the only time I feel anything is now.
But it's not because I'm scared...I know Ricardo would never hurt me, let alone kill me.
It's because I'm looking at DeLuca for the last time.
I'd like to say this is a pi
Because the only thing I feel—is the deep and dark storm brewing inside me, spi
The fact of the matter is—I've already let DeLuca go.
My love for him no longer lives inside my heart anymore...but all the anger and pain that he caused me still lives inside my soul...and it's burning like an inferno.
This man has taken everything from me.
He turned my once damaged goods into fragments...sharp and shameful pieces that can never be put together again.
He's trapped me in a room full of broken mirrors that can only reflect the shattered girl staring back at me...because it's all that's left now.
The girl he turned me into.
Bruno DeLuca once told me that damaged people were the most dangerous, because they're survivors.
But he was dead wrong...
Broken people are the most dangerous...because they just don't give a fuck.