Sold by Clarissa Wild

Harper

When I try to breathe, the air is knocked from my lungs again and again. I clutch my neck and gasp for air as my brain struggles to cope with the reality of the situation.

My father is alive.

No, this doesn’t make sense. This can’t be.

But it’s his voice—it’s definitely him—the sound bringing tears to my eyes.

All these years, I thought he was dead. Gone. Taken from me.

I have to see him. I have to know if it’s true.

Because if he survived, maybe my mom did too.

I swallow hard and shove my nerves aside to stumble out from behind the crates and out of the van. The gunfire has ceased, and all that’s left is the smoke filling the air … and dead bodies scattered all across the floor.

My stomach almost flips over and empties its contents, but I swallow it back down and force myself to look away. All those people, slaughtered like their lives meant nothing even though they probably all had families of their own waiting for them to get back home.

All that’s left is dust and bones.

Blood is splattered all across the concrete ground leaving a trail of misery as I try to step between the puddles. I don’t dare to look, don’t dare to ask who did this and why.

Because if it was all Marcello’s doing, I don’t know if I can forgive him.

I knew he was a don, but seeing the killing firsthand isn’t something I can just forget easily. This moment will be etched into my mind forever.

My heart is racing, and my legs are practically shaking as I walk to the front of the car and hide behind the open door. I don’t know if it’s safe to come out yet. What if there’s an enemy waiting to strike? What if they spot me and use me as leverage, or worse … kill me?

I shiver in place and try to gather the courage to take a peek of the battlefield on the other side of the glass. My dad’s voice is still there in the background, although I can barely make out what he’s saying. Something a dinner and family … Some guy named Igor … and Marcello sounds completely distraught when he says something.

I have to know what’s going on.

So I lift my head and peer through the driver’s seat window, too curious to stop myself, even though it’s dangerous as hell.

Dangerous.

Just like my father … who’s holding a gun.

My eyes widen in shock. Of all the thoughts that swirled through my head, all the reasons I made up for him being here in the first place, as though he could’ve been kidnapped by the mob, this was the last thing I expected.

My father … is a mobster?

My jaw drops at the sight of the three of them together. Marcello grandstanding at a distance, Frank, my father, with his head raised high on the other end of the warehouse, and an old, whimpering man cowering next to him whom I can only describe as revolting.

Still, I can’t help but look at him because the look in his eyes is familiar to me. It’s that same sparkle that I always see when I look in the mirror.

I frown as the men squabble, and then I hear the words fire.

Images of that night flash before my eyes again, and I can feel the flames licking my skin all over again, making me want to scream for help.

I tell myself I’m here, and I’m safe.

But my brain and my body both know that’s a lie.

Nothing about this place or these people is safe.

“My wife got hurt. Did you know she couldn’t walk for nine months? And that’s not even the worst part. Her ability to have children … stolen from her like it meant nothing. It meant everything to us. And you took that from us.”

What is he talking about?

“You …” Marcello growls, clearly on edge.

My father laughs out loud in a way that’s almost obscene. “You think I’d let that fucker Igor get away with a hit? We went to his house in the middle of the night and ripped his daughter right from his arms. Igor’s precious daughter became my precious daughter. Isn’t that right?”

What?

Igor’s daughter?

Does he mean …

I’m not Frank’s daughter?

I gasp in shock, and I immediately cover my mouth with my hand in an attempt to stop them from hearing me. I don’t want to get caught even though what I’m hearing makes me want to scream.

My father isn’t my real father … All this time, I’ve believed something that was ultimately a lie.

A dirty, filthy trick by a mafia man.

A man I missed, a man I searched for, a man I vowed to avenge, a man I called my dad …

All of it gone within an instant.

Replaced by a sniveling, beaten-up old man standing next to my f—Frank.

Igor.

My whole body starts to quake.

No, that man can’t be my father. Can he?

“We kept that beautiful girl under our roof as collateral. And Igor became my eyes and ears—and muscle. I stayed in the background and let him weave a web for years and years. It looked like things were going to work for a while, didn’t it?” He pats Igor on the back again. “But then you got some foolish ideas. You thought you could rescue your girl, didn’t you? I’ll be honest, you almost pulled it off. But not quite.”

No, no, no!

This can’t be happening.

I shake my head, desperate to rid myself of the idea that my father would do this to me, to this man, to Marcello, to all of us, just because of some revenge plot for his poor family. And that I was nothing more than a tool to him.

Marcello seems taken aback by the information, and the air surrounding them shifts.

“No,” Marcello says.

Frank nods. “There was a fire, don’t you remember? Igor tried to burn my house down, to reclaim his daughter, to kill me and my wife, and finish what he started. But you just so happened to be in the neighborhood. You ran in like the big hero you’ve always wanted to be. And you dragged that little girl out of the fire. I watched you take my daughter away from me. I was stuck in there as the house burned. But I saw. I saw you. You took my daughter.”

All this time, my father knew about the fire. He was there, and he didn’t save me.

Marcello did.

Wait … what?

All this time, I was looking for the man who saved me from the fire … and it was him.

No wonder it always felt like I recognized him from somewhere.

Those tattoos … were they his?

Something’s different. Something isn’t right. I can’t feel it, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know why.

I should go to my father, Frank, ask him to explain, ask him—I don’t know, anything—why he survived and never came for me? Or more importantly, whether what he’s saying now is all a lie?

Because I need it to be in order to function. In order to breathe. And right now, it’s as if there are a thousand elephants squashing my chest.

Suddenly, the man cowering next to my father glances at me, and his face completely falls apart, shock filling his bones. I try to look away, but it’s impossible.

Igor.

The man my father stole me away from.

My real father.

I can see it in his eyes. He even looks like me.

I don’t need to hear the words come from his mouth. Even when his lips part, I already know what he’s about to say.

“I am sorry—the auction—I did not know—”

BANG!

The gunshot is so loud it goes through marrow and bone as it penetrates Igor’s skull.

I shriek in shock, the sound echoing through the warehouse like the last cry of a wounded soldier on the battlefield.

My real father is dead.

All of these people are dead.

And all of it is because of me.

Marcello fought to keep me by his side … my father fought to use me as a ploy for revenge … and my real father, the one lying dead on the concrete ground right now, blood pouring from his ears, fought to get me back to his home.

Tears trickle down my cheeks as I look at the two men left standing.

Both of them stare right back at me.

“Harper,” Marcello mutters as he looks at me, shock filling his eyes.

Fuck.