𝐕𝐈𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂 ❶

𝟒𝟎. ✭ 𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐘 ✭

Two shots ring out directly after I'd thrown my knife and I watch as Remy and Ram both simultaneously let go of Dani and fall to the ground. Brooks' shots weren't fatal but they'd done their job. Dani stumbles towards her wounded father but I pull her into me, wrapping a protective arm around her. Her father's eyes widen as she embraces me back with my name coming as a cry from her lips.

Dani is clinging to me in a manner that is anything but platonic or scared, for that matter. If me pulling her into my embrace, and the way she's holding me aren't enough to seal the deal, I definitely do with, "I've got you. You're safe now." I place a kiss on the top of her head with eyes holding Dedaj's the entire time. "I've got you, Dani. I always will."

"YOU?" When Dedaj goes to stumble toward me I whip the gun out of the back of my pants and aim it at him. He pauses looking equal amounts flabbergasted and pissed. A crashing sound of a body happens off to my right. When I look over I see Brooks has collapsed into the chair Dedaj had originally been sitting in. "How could you... You?" Dedaj growls out in front of me, bringing my attention back to him.

"Yes me." I hold Dani tighter into my body. "How could I? I have done everything you have ever asked of me. I have tortured, maimed, murdered for you, whatever you have asked me to do— I have done it. But I will not let you hurt Dani anymore. I love her." His nostrils are flaring at me, assessing the situation now that he knows exactly who I am to her. "And I will not let you get anywhere near our child. Because yes, you have your fucking answer— I am the father of your daughter's child. You want to fucking kill me? Good fucking luck with that." I move my gun up and down with a flick of the wrist to emphasize the point.

"You were like a son to me!" He's clutching his bleeding wrist furiously. "A SON!" He growls out some words in Albanian that I don't understand as he looks at Remy and Ram on the ground. "You will pay for this, Torey. Mark me. If not by my own hand then by Polat's. He will have you by the balls for this and I will have my daughter back!"

"Polat will have me by the nothing. You will never have the opportunity to even be in this close a radius of your daughter again. You want her back then you will have to pry her away from my cold dead fucking corpse because I will not hand her over to a man that beats her. Your daughter was my, is my," I correct myself, "everything."

He starts laughing, actually laughing as he looks over to Brooks and then back to us. "You've let your everything have herself fucked by another man?" He keeps laughing manically.

"I have done what I need to do to be the best man I could for you, Dedaj; always. I was first, and foremost, your man. I will not let you manhandle the mother of my fucking child again. It's not going to happen."

"She gave him away! She didn't want him!" He continues to laugh like I am playing some joke on him, all the while clutching his bloody wrist. "How can you even still want her in your arms when she gave away your child? She. Gave. Him. Away." The last words were enunciated in a vicious manner.

"She had no other option! Not with a sadistic fuck like you as her father!" I feel a painful pang in my chest at my next thought but decide to voice it anyway. "Not with a sadistic fuck as the father of her child. What should she have done— raise a child with murder in its' veins when she wants nothing to do with it!?" My words resonated with me in a much deeper fashion now that they'd flown out of my mouth. The reality of them hitting me deep in my core. Our child had murder in its' blood undoubtedly. It is in my genetics. It is in my son's DNA to be a natural born killer.

"She had every fucking choice, Torey!" He glares at me like I'm his worst enemy, hell maybe I am at this point. A man who'd thought I was like a son to him now hates me more than anything. I can see the angry betrayal all over his features. "I can't believe it was you, my right-hand man, fucking my whore of a daughter." I aim the gun more pointedly again. "How much pussy have you had since she's left? Just the other day you were drowning in two. And look at who she's with now." He nods over to Brooks who is slumped in the chair, coughing up a bit of blood. Fuck. I'd fucked him up even more than I'd intended. "Where does that leave you in this equation except for royally fucked?"