Page 59 of Dirty Pool

“But?”

“I snuck out the back, and met up with Michel.”

Peeking up, she saw her father nod. “Where you were with him this morning, aye.”

Oh, God.

“Yeah.”

People were wrong.

The truth was not easier than a lie.

“I knew,” her father said, dragging in a heavy breath as he spoke, “that you were seeing the young Italian man for a while now. I hoped you might come to me with it, but when you didn’t … I knew that I had to make a choice. I had to send a message to them—to him—that this was unacceptable to me.”

Gabbie’s brow furrowed. “But why? Why can’t I—”

Her father grabbed her arms, then, both of his hands circling around her hard enough to hurt. His fingers dug into her skin until her muscles wanted to protest from the ache. He shook her hard, forcing her to glance up at him so she could see the sheer terror staring back at her.

“I made a choice,” he said, “because I believed you even though you’d lied to me again and again. Do you understand me? I made a choice this morning that would make it clear to that young man where I stood about what was happening when my back was turned. And because you lied to me—”

Gabbie blinked. “You ordered the drive-by?”

Charles let her go, and took a step back, his hands shaking again. She understood, then, why her father was so entirely set off balance. She got it—really feckin’ felt it in her bones like nothing else in her life before this moment. Her own father had almost killed her. Oh, sure, she understood that her lies and his trust in her had caused it, but his choice was still made.

He could have been burying her.

He understood it, too.

More than anyone.

It hurt her in a visceral way to stare at her father in those seconds. For more reasons than just the obvious. She wanted to be mad at him because didn’t she have every right to feel that way over his mistake? And yet, she felt most mad at herself because she, too, was at fault here for this mess.

In a way …

There were parts of her that still didn’t want to feel the hints of emotions teasing at the very fringes of her senses. The betrayal that clung to the echoing beats of her heart, and the disappointment that ached in her bones with every breath she took. If she truly felt those things, then she would be bitter.

She loved her father.

Loved him so much.

Gabbie never said he was perfect, and she was the first to point out his flaws. Yet, he was still her father first before anything else, and she was not willing to let something like bitterness or contempt stain that love she felt for him.

But it was still there.

Taunting her.

She was disgusted that this was where it had finally brought them. To this moment of her almost dying. And for what? Because of a feud she had never really understood? Because her father and his men couldn’t play nice with others, and didn’t care to try? She was well aware that she didn’t have a great understanding of the mafia and the world her father lived in every day of his life, but was it worth this?

Was she worth that?

Gabbie didn’t know.

She didn’t think her father did, either.

“It was you that ordered the drive-by this morning,” she said again.

It needed to be said again.