Page 134 of Savage Don

They never cared about me.

“Which guards? Do you mean the guards that your loving wife, the slut, is sleeping with?” I spit.

Even through all of the anger and sorrow erupting out of me, I feel an intense flash of satisfaction when I see Sonia’s reaction to that little bit of gossip.

But that satisfaction doesn’t last long. It’s quickly extinguished when Father charges forward, absolutely incensed at the disrespect.

“Do not ever talk about her like that,” he commands. “I swear to—”

A ripple of fear bursts through me at the intensity of his anger. But before he can get too close, Ray intercepts him. My father isn’t a small man, but he is completely outmatched by my Irish brute.

Taking him by the collar, Ray shoves Father against the nearest wall.

The whole house seems to shake.

“Your guards weren’t the only men Sonia has been fucking,” Ray growls. Keeping my father pinned against the wall, my Irish monster turns his glare onto Sonia. “Do you remember our friend Iskhak Artuzov?”

Father’s face is already beet red by now, but it gets even darker at the mention of the unfamiliar name.

Then, I follow Ray’s gaze over to Sonia.

She’s not red at all.

She’s white as a ghost.

For a moment, everyone freezes.

Whoever Iskhak Artuzov is, his name has caused an eerie silence to fall across the foyer.

“What does that Russian bastard have to do with anything?” Father finally grumbles.

“Ask your wife,” Ray sneers, pushing Father into the wall one last time before finally releasing him.

No matter how much anger I feel towards the man who raised me, my heart still drops with him as he falls to the floor.

This is not the almighty don I grew up fearing.

“This is absurd,” Father grumbles, his fists digging into the ground. His body is shaking, and I’m not sure whether it’s more from shame or anger.

Part of me almost wants to comfort him.

I could be better than he ever was. More kind and caring and compassionate.

But I could also be more ruthless.

“You wish that’s all this was,” Ray says, stepping back to cover me from any potential retaliation.

Sonia looks like she’s about to burst. If I wasn’t so sure that she’d already been searched by Ray’s guards outside, then I might be scared she was about to pull a gun on us.

Instead, she tries to retreat.

“We’re leaving,” Sonia says, shuffling over to Father to help him up. But he just shrugs her off.

“Not yet,” he grumbles, pulling himself back onto his shaky feet.

His bloodshot eyes dart to me, and I feel every nerve in my body tense as he picks the contract up from the floor, then takes a pen from his pocket.

“You’ve never been anything but trouble for me, Francesca,” Father says, his lips twitching as he signs on the dotted line. “If I was smart, I would have locked you up in the same asylum I sent your mother too. But I was too weak. Too stupid…”