Chapter 4
482words
"Scarlett?" His voice trembled.
I nodded frantically, tears and blood streaming down my face.
The color drained from Leopold's face. The cold Don was gone. In his place was a father who had just seen his daughter broken and bleeding.
Rocco, still clueless, stepped forward to take credit. "Don, this woman had the nerve to claim she was your daughter. I've already taught her some manners..."
"Manners," Leopold repeated with a cold sneer. Then he drew his gun.
BANG!
Rocco screamed and collapsed, blood gushing from his thigh.
"Tell me," Leopold said, the barrel of the gun now aimed at Rocco's head. "What did you do to my daughter?"
The word "daughter" hung in the air. The faces of Julius, his parents, and Rocco went white.
"Boss, I didn't know—" Rocco shook his head, too terrified to answer the question.
But if he wouldn't talk, his men would. Faced with the Don's fury, one of them started babbling.
The cigar burn. The dislocated jaw. Everything.
Leopold's jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it would crack. He wanted to tear Rocco limb from limb.
Another shot. BANG! This one hit Rocco's other leg.
"These are the rules," Leopold said, his face a mask of stone. "You lay a finger on my daughter, I hurt you a hundred times worse."
Rocco was losing too much blood to even scream anymore.
Leopold tossed the gun to a guard behind him, then shrugged off his suit jacket and gently wrapped it around me. His hand touched my cheek, and when his fingers brushed against my wound, they were shaking.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice raw as he lifted me into his arms. "I'm so sorry, my baby."
I gripped his shirt, my knuckles white. I hadn't forgotten the real monster, Julius. My dislocated jaw only allowed me to make broken, guttural sounds.
Leopold understood.
"Don't you worry," he promised me, his voice low and deadly. "I will make them regret being born. I swear, they will suffer a thousand times more than you did. Ten thousand times."
He carried me towards the door. As he passed Julius, he stopped.
Julius's parents had wet themselves.
"Don, we didn't know, I swear we didn't know she was your daughter... Please, spare me, I'll never do it again..."
Julius was banging his head on the floor, over and over, leaving a bloody smear. He tried to appeal to me. "Scarlett, please... for the sake of our three years... I was good to you, wasn't I? I'll do anything, just spare my life..."
I turned my head away, unable to look at his pathetic face.
Leopold looked down at him like he was an insect.
"Cherish the time you have left," he said calmly. "Because soon, you're going to wish you were never born."
