Page 97 of Pacino
“No, I really can’t,” I say. “The commission ordered this.”
“You don’t live the life anymore. You don’t have to listen to them.”
Bending forward, I stand just inches from his face and smile. “Yeah, I know. Because if they’d denied my request, I would’ve turned you fucking inside out for what you did to Joanna and now Phoebe.”
“I am your father!”
“Yeah, and I’m going to tell you the same thing you said to me as I held the love of my life in my arms after she died. At your hands.Life’s tough. Get tougher.”
“That was sanctioned!”
Snorting, I shake my head and stand up. “What the fuck could they have thought she was capable of?”
“Because she was only involved with you so John could kill you!”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. At least, it’s how it started,” John admits.
Whipping my head toward him, I glare. “What?”
“You were the strongest in the family, and your father was growing more and more unpredictable. I just needed to makeit look like an accident, and your father would unravel,” he says. “Then, when he lost it, we’d be given the order to take him out.”
Everything I’ve thought—everything I’ve become—was a lie?
No, this can’t be true. Joanna loved me. We planned to run away together. There’s no way it was just to get me alone to let her father kill me.
“No,” I say and back up. “Joanna… She wouldn’t…”
But his brothers all wear the same look. My entire life has been a lie.
“She did. I had men study your routine, and she knew where to cross paths with you. You weren’t like your father, and I knew your rebellion would allow Joanna to lure you in. Relax the guard that was nearly impenetrable.”
“She never loved me?”
He lets out a long breath. “She wasn’t supposed to, but she did. The plan was underway, and I had a date to kill you. Jo wanted me to call it off, but I said no.”
“That’s why she wanted to run away,” I say.
“She told me she’d sacrifice herself if I didn’t call it off. I went around her, changing the plans. I didn’t want to see you as the man my daughter loved. I needed you to be the son of my enemy.”
My head spins with this information. It all started as a plot to kill me, but she threatened to risk her life for mine. When did it stop being a lie?
“I bribed one of his guys when I found out about you and Jo, and he told me the plan,” Father says. “I wasn’t going to let you die, so I took it to the commission. They told me to take out his daughter. He needed to learn a lesson.”
“That’s why the revenge was denied,” I mutter. “And no one fucking said a goddamn word?”
Tannerclears his throat. “I told them not to tell you how it started. You were in a rough way as it was, but that would have destroyed you.”
I laugh and stare at him. Maybe he is cut out to be in charge after all. “Like I wasn’t already destroyed?”
“See, son? Everything I did was for you,” Father says.
“Yeah? How was kidnapping and drugging Phoebe for me?”
“It was a means to an end. We were never going to hurt her—”
“Bullshit. You forget that I fucking know you. I may have left, but you never changed. You’re not capable of it.”
