Sold by Clarissa Wild

Marcello

“Perfect!” Frank crows. “You know, I had some men on the way to your home to bring Harper to us. But it seems she was one step ahead of me. A pleasant surprise.” He turns back to face me and grins. “You seem so fond of my daughter, Marcello.

“She’s not your daughter, you sick fuck.”

He ignores me. “Your man Giovanni told me how close the two of you seemed. How many nights you spent with her. You’ve proven yourself to be weaker than I ever thought you were, Marcello. I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t also so damn funny. The irony, you know?”

He shakes his head and laughs under his breath. Then as if catching himself, he straightens up and looks me in the eye once more. The red laser sights are still swarming me. I grit my teeth and clench my fists.

“So, finish what I started? Yeah, I think I will. But not until you watch me put the love of your life in a car and drive off. I want you to die knowing she’s back in my clutches. And there’s not a single fucking thing you can do about that.”

He lets out a chuckle as he glances around at the destruction that’s been sown here tonight. “Now, that’s all,” Frank announces. “You stay right there.”

He turns and saunters away toward where Harper stands. She hasn’t moved. Her eyes meet mine, and my heart clenches at the sight of her.

Her whole world has just shattered. Secrets beneath secrets, betrayals beneath betrayals—all of it crumbling to pieces. She learned who her true father was and watched him die in the span of a single breath. The fake father she thought she lost reappears from the grave and reveals himself as a psychopathic killer.

Everything she thought she knew is a lie.

I want to comfort her. To tell her that doesn’t matter anymore.

But I can’t move without getting thirty bullet holes through my chest.

So I just have to stand still and watch as an Irish soldier emerges from the darkness, points a gun at Harper, and makes her walk forward.

As Frank approaches her, seizes her by the upper arm with a vicious grin, and drags her into the back seat of his sedan.

As the door shuts and the car speeds away.

As Harper—my one hope for redemption, the only woman I’ve ever loved—disappears into the night.

But just before the car passes back through the entrance, there is a tinkling sound, metal on metal. A flashbang rolls past my feet.

In three…

Two…

One…

Everything explodes.

Smoke. Light. The biggest booming roar.

Claudio, the soldiers, and I immediately scatter in search of cover as a hailstorm of bullets descends on us. More grenades, more return fire, more explosions on every side. My men and I unload everything we have.

It’s complete fucking chaos.

This is it. The real firefight. It makes the first one look like a fucking Fourth of July show. Irish and Russian soldiers are pouring in from an entire armada of boats that had been stationed just out of sight. Dozens and dozens of men armed to the teeth, each of them adding to the gunfire already hurtling toward me from the soldiers stationed on every roof within firing distance.

I roar orders while running and killing. I become the fucking angel of death.

I don’t know how long I’m drowning in an ocean of explosions and ricocheting bullets, the screams of dying men piercing my ears at every turn.

A man comes up to me, holding a gleaming knife in his hand. I hit him with the butt of my gun and he slices a chunk out of my shoulder in response. We fall to the ground and wrestle for control until I manage to get enough space between us to fire two shots at his head. He slumps back, lifeless.

There are ten men for every one of us, and they came ready to fight to the death.

Unfortunately for them … so did we.

I stand and sprint to the first Irishman I can reach. Whipping a knife from my boot, I shove it through his throat. He falls to the ground, screaming and bloody, but I’m already on to the next.

Another stab. Another victim.

Two men pop up from the backside of a stack of crates. They each go down with a squeeze of my trigger, a new hole in their forehead blooming blood.

I fight my way to the van. The keys are still in the ignition, thank fucking god. I jump in the driver’s seat, crank the engine, and slam my foot on the accelerator. Harper and Frank were only a minute or two ahead of me. I can catch them—if I hurry. The van shrieks as bullets puncture the metal, but I keep driving. I can’t stop. If I stop, I lose her.

So I stay low, pray that I don’t get hit, and drive out into the night. The engine roars as I push it as fast as it will go.

Harper needs me.

And then I see it, ahead in the distance. A black sedan with tinted windows.

I floor the gas, and the distance between us quickly shrinks. The only thing I care about is in that car ahead of me.

“I’m coming, Harper,” I growl under my breath. “I won’t let him take you from me.”

Harper

A few minutes before

I’m frozen to the ground as the man I thought was my father approaches me.

“You’re coming with me,” he growls, taking a firm hold on my arm.

He drags me away, straight to his car, his fingers digging into my skin. My brain can’t process what’s happening as he shoves me head down inside, slamming the door shut behind me. I lie on the back seat, completely shaken, heart palpitating, my mind reeling with all the information I just learned.

Loud bangs are audible.

I shriek in panic.

I don’t dare look out the window, afraid of what I’m gonna find.

Smoke and more gunshots fill the area.

Suddenly, the door on the driver’s side opens, and my father climbs inside, quickly shutting the door before starting the engine. The wheels start to rev, and now my father is going to take me away.

No, I can’t let this happen.

Without thinking, I get on my knees and jerk the door handle, but it’s already locked. I refuse to give up. I bang on the windows as hard as I can.

“Harper! Stop that!” my father shouts, swooping in behind with a hand, trying to strike me.

He’s never tried to hit me, but now it doesn’t even seem to faze him.

Who is this man, and what did he do to the man I once loved?

All this time, I fought for him, and now he’s come to claim me back like I’m some kind of prize …?

“Stay quiet!” he growls as we drive off in a hurry.

His voice rings in my ears as though my brain is still trying to process the very fact he’s here.

“How are you even alive?” I ask, still trying to find a way out, but the windows won’t budge either.

“Doesn’t matter,” he growls, still fishing around the back seat as though he’s trying to get me to calm down, but it only makes my nerves worse. “Now stop fighting.”

I want to believe him, but I can’t. He’s so much more violent than I remember. This isn’t the dad I grew up with. Or maybe I never knew who he was.

“Who was that man, that Igor? And why did you kill him if he was my real father?”

He looks at me, rage filling his eyes with dread, just like mine.

“I did what I had to do.”

No. I don’t believe that. I shake my head. My father would never do these things. Not to me.

“What about Marcello? Where is he? What did you do to him?” My voice sounds like that of a beggar, but I have no choice. I need to know what happened to him. It can’t end like this.

He can’t be … dead.

My father jerks the wheel so hard I’m thrown to the other side of the car, bumping head-first into the door. I groan and rub my head, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. When I’ve gathered myself again, I narrow my eyes at him through the rearview mirror.

“You’re a monster,” I say through gritted teeth, hoping—no, praying—Marcello is still alive and coming after me.

While driving away from the scene of the crime, my father growls back, “Don’t speak to me like that. I am your father.”

I shake my head vehemently. “All this time, I thought you were dead. I even went looking for you and Mom.”

“I’m alive, and that’s all that matters,” he says.

My eyes flutter back and forth between my shaking hands and the eyes of the man in the rearview mirror, which appear soulless and void of any conscience. “No. That man you killed, he was my real father. All this time, you made me believe I was your daughter, that you loved me …”

“I did it to protect you and your mother.” He glares right back at me through the rearview mirror. “We are your family now.”

“What?” I cry out, unable to stop the emotion from bleeding into my voice. “No! You shot my actual family! My real father is gone now, thanks to you!”

“I AM YOUR FATHER!”

The booming voice that emanates from his throat scares me back into a corner. He never used to talk like this. Even though I know this man … he is not my father. Not anymore.

“No,” I spit back.

“I don’t care what you say or think, that is the truth, whether you want it to be or not,” he retorts, and he turns his head back again and focuses on driving.

“You are not my fucking father.” I refuse to back down. “And I will not let you do this to me.”

“Do what? Bring you home?” he retorts. “Don’t you wanna see your mother?”

Mother?

The mere mention of her makes my eyes widen, and my jaw drop.

No, it can’t be real. He’s trying to get to you, Harper. Andrea is the only mother you have now, the only one who matters. The rest is all a farce, a tale spun by a deranged man set to destroy your life.

“Take me back there,” I say with an unyielding voice. “Take me back to Marcello!”

“Marcello? That useless fool?” Frank snorts. “I don’t think you really want that, baby girl.”

“Don’t fucking call me that!” I yell. “And the only useless fool here is you!”

In the heat of the moment, I do the only thing I can think of to get myself out of this mess. Throwing myself at him, I wrap my arms around his neck just as I was taught in self-defense class. I clamp him against his seat and choke him alive. Tears spring into my eyes as the sound of his gasps and gulps fills the swerving car, but I push them back with relentless courage. I cannot let this man do whatever it is he wants to me, my real parents, my life … to Marcello.

All of it was caused by this man, this man who pretended to be my father just so he could force his twisted fantasy onto everyone.

No more.

“Let go!” he squeaks as I squeeze harder and harder. “We’re gonna crash!”

“I don’t care!” I shout, and I close my eyes as the car heads straight for the river banks.

Please Marcello, come find me.

Please, I need you to save me once again.

“HARPER!”

His voice is the last thing I hear before the car plunges off, flipping around, before it hits the water, the blow so hard that I’m thrown back against the backside of the car, and everything in front of my eyes turns black instantly.