Merciless Union by Faith Summers

3

Aria

Present day

Voices filter in from outside.

I can hear them. My mother and father are arguing.

Mom called me here to talk to me. Here to the summer home.

She said it was important, and she sounded panicked, like she thought something would happen.

I didn’t think Dad was going to be here too.

I follow the sound of the voices and stop when I reach the wooden balcony of the second floor.

That’s where I see them. Mom with her hands drawn together and Dad is standing before her.

There’s someone else there at the corner of the house, but I can’t see their face properly. It’s a man, though. I can just make out the wide frame of powerful shoulders in a leather jacket and a faux hawk of spiky black hair.

“How could you be so evil?” Mom snaps at Dad as tears run down her cheeks. “How could you protect that man? I forgave you for so much, and now I find this out.”

“You stupid bitch. Business is business, and you keep making the mistake of forgetting who I am.”

When I hear that, I shy away and hide behind the beam.

What the hell is happening?

Dad can be violent, he’s hit me a few times, but he never speaks to Mom like that. Whatever has him worked up like this must be bad.

“You’re right; I am stupid. Stupid to believe a man like you could change. I should have left you after your affair with Gina.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“No. Gina Delatorre was the heads up I should have had that you were an evil bastard. This just proves you are.”

“So you thought you’d screw with me and sign Cervantes over to Aria instead? Big mistake, Theresa.”

I gasp and clasp a hand over my mouth. Mom signed Cervantes over to me?

Me?

Is that what she wanted to speak to me about?

Jesus.

“You won’t get your hands on my company,” Mom cries. “You will never have it, and I pray Aria finds out the truth about you and makes sure you rot in hell. I hate that I loved you.”

“I hate that I loved you too. I loved you with all my heart.”

“No, Raphael, you don’t know what love is.”

“That doesn’t matter now. All I wanted was that fucking company, and now you’ve done this. You knew how important it was to me, and even after what you did, I still married you.”

“Fuck you. He was a better man than you.”

“Shoot her!” Dad shouts back, and the man next to him steps forward with a gun and shoots Mom in her head.

She screams before she collapses on the ground, and my lips part to scream too from the horror I just witnessed. No sound leaves my lips, though, as shock slams into my chest and robs me of air.

I gaze at the nightmare below me as Dad grabs the container of oil we use for the bonfires and throws it over Mom’s body.

Shooting her wasn’t enough; he strikes a match and throws it onto her setting her body on fire.

The fire blazes instantly and consumes what was once my mother.

“Go, make sure everything is secured, and nothing leaked,” Dad says to the man.

When he turns and walks away, I try to see his face, but everything blurs before me from the shock, and I can barely see anything but the fire on my mother.

My head feels so light and my body weak that I sway and stumble right into the table beside me. The vase on top goes crashing to the floor.

That’s the moment Dad looks up at me.

As our eyes lock, I know he’s going to kill me too.

I bolt up out of the dream.

No, that wasn’t a dream.

That was a memory.

I remember it now, and that’s what happened.

The same dark, murderous eyes I left behind in the dream world stare back at me with the same vile threat of danger.

My father stands by the window watching me with those cruel eyes, and I don’t know what is going to happen next.

I steal a moment to look around the room. It’s a déjà vu moment because a day over a month ago, I was in this same situation.

I woke just like this after Lucca kidnapped me. I was lying on a bed in a strange room, and my father was standing by a window, the same way he is now.

But this is not that room. I am not in that house anymore. That was in Lucca’s home.

This place is different, and the other thing that’s different between then and now is my father no longer has that look of defeat on his face.

Instead, there’s triumph.

Triumph in every sense of the word.

Quickly, I run through the events that led me here. As my brain stops at the image of Lucca on the ground and Jon standing over him with the gun he just shot him with, I know why my father looks like that.

“Great news, Aria. You’ve been rescued. Both Lucca and that dreadful fake as fuck maid should be dead by now,” he beams with pride.

Shivers emanate from every nerve in my body, and all I can do is stare at him as I process the words he just spoke.

Dead.

Both Lucca and Marylin?

Oh my God, no.

I don’t want to cry in front of him, but my body betrays me, succumbing to grief. A tear drifts down my cheek, and he shakes his head when he sees it.

Another follows that I can’t control.

“How could you be so despicable?” I rasp out.

“God, what the fuck,” he hisses. “What are the tears for my dear daughter? The man or the maid?”

I don’t answer. My heart is full for both of them. But my heart is broken for the man I wasn’t supposed to fall for.

“Oh, dear, dear. It’s the man, isn’t it? I never know what to do with you. I never know. First, you beg me to fix the situation, then you go and fall for the enemy.”

“But he wasn’t the enemy, though, was he, Dad?” I shoot back.

At least he has the good sense to look like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Aria, what are you trying to say to me? You’re here, and that bastard is dead. Problem solved. We are free of him and his bullshit. Your marriage is over, and you’ll get over what you felt for him.”

“You killed his family,” I blurt before he can continue. “And you killed Mom too.”

“What are you talking about?” His brows pinch. “Your mother died in a fire.”

I slip off the bed onto legs that feel like jelly and shake my head. He’s not going to stand there and lie to me the way he has for the last two and a half years—no more of it.

“You’re lying. You were always lying to me. But I know why. It makes sense now that you’d keep such a close eye on me and why you were so adamant in your legal guardianship over me.” It all makes sense. Of course, it would. I watched the governor of California, my father, kill my mother then burn her body.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and neither do you.”

“I do. I don’t remember everything, but my memories are coming back. I remember what you did.”

“What I did?” He points to himself. “I didn’t do anything besides look after you and your mother all your lives. I loved your mother with all my heart.”

“But you got someone to kill her. I remember you arguing about the company. About Cervantes. You were arguing because she transferred the company to me.” That was the information I knew locked away in my mind.

“That’s absurd.”

“Stop it! Stop acting like I’m crazy and talking shit. I am neither. I know what memory feels like. When your mind is damaged the way mine is, you know the difference. So stop it. I remember we were at the summer home in Lake Tahoe. You were on the terrace with Mom, arguing. You told someone to shoot her, and they did. I don’t remember their face, but you gave the order, and they followed your command. Then you burned her. That’s when I saw you, and you saw me. What did you do next, push me off the balcony?”

He wouldn’t have been able to get up the stairs that quick. But I know I fell from somewhere because of the injuries I suffered. I was told a beam fell on my head, and that’s what dealt the damage to my brain. Not the fall. That was what left me in a coma for six months.

But did the beam really fall on me? Or, did he beat the memory out of my head?

“What did you do, Dad? Did you try and kill me too?”

“Why would I do that when keeping you alive was the only way I could get the company?” Something in his face shifts as he speaks. It’s like watching someone slip a mask off.

My stomach drops between my feet at the declaration, and as I look at him now, I could be staring at someone else, someone I don’t recognize.

The man I’m looking at now is the person Lucca tried to warn me about every time he said my father wasn’t what he appeared to be.

Who I’m looking at now is the devil.

Yes, it does make sense now, and no, his goal was not to kill me because he needed me alive for something else. I get the company on my twenty-fifth birthday. That’s in one month's time.

Up until Lucca stormed into our lives, Dad had legal guardianship over me. Lucca demanded that be transferred to him. That would mean access to the business I wasn’t fit to run because of my incapacity.

Dad was going to do the same thing to me. But so much worse.

“You kept me alive all that time because of the business?” I choke out.

He brings his hands together. “I did. Why else would I keep you alive when you witnessed me murder my wife? I might not have pulled the trigger, but I’m just as guilty in the eyes of the law. I would have gone down for murder if you spread the word about what you saw. I needed to keep you alive because, as I’m sure you’re aware, the terms of the trust state that if you die before you turn twenty-five, the board gets the company. I wasn’t going to allow those fuckers to have it.”

My heart hurts. I may have seemed brave just now, but hearing his words cut me deeply.

“So, you’ve stopped denying the truth. What I remember was real. You had Mom killed.”

He raises his shoulders into a nonchalant shrug and smirks. “Yes. Your bitch of a mother was a very clever woman. She just wasn’t clever where it mattered. She gridlocked me in a way that I was unable to change anything. She left you the company in an irrevocable living trust. So not even she could revoke it. It couldn’t be changed, and everything I worked for would fall apart.”

“What about me? What did you do to me? You must have done something to me.” Or I’d remember everything already.

“I didn’t do anything to you. What happened next is exactly as you were told. I saw you on the balcony, and I knew you saw what I did from how you looked. So, I went after you, not remembering the fuel container was too close to the fire. It exploded when the fire got to it, and that’s how the house caught fire. In your pursuit to get away from me, you fell over the balcony, and a wooden beam knocked you in your head. That’s what happened.”

I bite down hard on my back teeth willing the rage to calm so I can think straight. This was what he didn’t want me to remember. But there’s more. There has to be more.

“There’s more to that story you aren’t saying,” I state. I don’t know if I believe him or not about what happened to me, but I hope I remember for myself. “Mom transferred the company to me for a reason. What was it? You did something. She asked you how you could protect that man. Who was she talking about?”

“That does not concern you.”

I loathe when he tells me shit like that. “How could it not concern me? You killed my mother for a company.”

“That wasn’t the only reason she had to die.”

I was right. “Tell me the reason, Dad.”

“She was snooping around where she didn’t belong. Trying to see if I was cheating on her again. Instead, she saw something she shouldn’t have seen.”

“What was it?”

“I told you weeks ago; there are some things we can’t talk about. This is one of them.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“It’s for the best, my dear girl. That’s a secret I would have to kill you for, the same way I ordered Lucca’s family’s massacre.” He smiles, and I can’t believe this man is my father. It’s all true. “They were all pests. Every last one of them. From the father to the mother and their disgusting kids. Scum. They all deserved to die, and their mere existence was an abomination to me. It’s every human’s responsibility to rid the world of filth.”

“How can you say that?” I shake my head. “How can you be so evil? They were children. What did they do to you? His brother was a baby. A baby, Dad?” I feel like throwing up.

“Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. You don’t need to understand, and now that I have you back, you are no longer a threat to me.” He gives me a victorious smile. “With your husband’s death, my original guardianship will be reinstated, and everything will go as planned. I will get Cervantes when you turn twenty-five, then deal with you accordingly. ”

My stomach lurches. “Deal with me? You mean kill me?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he moves away from the wall and walks toward the door.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” I cry.

I run up to him and grab his arm to try and stop him. With a savage growl, he answers by whirling around with one heavy hand that connects with my jaw. The hard slap sends me to the ground, and I cry out from the pain while he laughs.

He hit me just like that weeks ago, and Lucca stopped him from doing more damage.

At the time, his cruelty felt familiar. It feels the same way now.

“No one to save you now. No Lucca to stop me from disciplining you however I see fit. You will stay inside this room, and yes, I will deal with you.”

Blood trickles from my nose as I watch the heavy wooden door close. The next thing I hear is the rattle of a key in the lock.

I’m trapped, and there is no one to save me.

The only person who could is dead.

Lucca.

Lucca’s face comes into my mind. His eyes, his strength, and the way he always looked at me.

He’s gone, but I can’t accept it; my heart won’t allow me to.