She saw her father’s arm shaking, his jaw tight as he looked up at something much worse than death. “I’m not lying. I gave the orders.”
“Where?”
“A cemetery behind the airport,” her father admitted. “My men have trailed her going there multiple times.”
Tristan straightened, throwing away the hand, turning to leave.
“Is she your weakness, Predator?” her father’s voice stopped him cold in his tracks. Her father, evidently the stupidest man on the planet, goaded Tristan instead of letting him go. “After so many years, I would’ve thought she would be the last person you would look for.”
Tristan turned, raising an eyebrow, his hands relaxed by his sides.
“You know you’re risking war, don’t you?”
Tristan chuckled, without mirth. “You don’t have the balls for war, old man. You didn’t have the balls to protect your daughter when she was defenseless with a gun pointed to her head back then. You don’t have the balls now.”
Her father stood up, offended for his masculinity. Seriously, how was she related to this pompous, egotistical douche of a man?
“I have always protected my daughter. You were stupid to come here,” her father uttered.
Tristan walked back to the desk, leaned forward with his palms flat on the desk. “If a hair on her head has been harmed, I will come back here again. Not quietly, no. This time, I will come to your house, and I will kill you, and I will take my sweet time doing it.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“I’m warning you. Post as many guards as you want,” Tristan said, in that soft, lethal way he had. “And pray she is okay.”
“Why do you care so much about her?” her father asked point-blank.
Morana felt her heart stop at the question, her hands shaking as she waited for his answer.
Tristan didn’t reply for a long moment. And then he did.
“That’s for me to know and her to find out,” he said in that menacing tone. "No one else."
Turning on his heel, he walked to the door again, then stopped, pinning her father with that brutal gaze of his.
“Stay away from her, old man,” he warned, his voice hard. “Come after her again, I’ll come after you.”
“Her pussy must be magical for you to…”
Before her father could finish that disgusting sentence, he was pinned back into his seat and Tristan punched him hard on his recently healed nose. Blood started to pour out of her father’s mouth, making her realize he’d probably broken a tooth too.
Tristan gripped his jaw tight in one hand, and leaned down, almost nose to nose.
“One more word,” he said in a tone that sent chills over her body. “Give me just one more reason to cut out your tongue.”
Her father stared at Tristan, speechless.
“One word,” Tristan urged, the mask fallen from his eyes.
Her father mutely shook his head.
“Now, listen to me and listen hard,” Tristan uttered, shaking her father’s jaw for emphasis. “She’s under my protection. Mine. Nobody hurts her. Nobody talks shit about her. Not me, not you, not anyone. Next time I hear you call her anything less than the woman she is, I will cut your tongue out and feed it to your dogs. Next time I see you anywhere close to her, I will kill you. Stay. The. Fuck. Away. From. Her. Do you understand?”
Her father nodded.
Tristan nodded. “Good. And anytime you forget that, just remember how I killed my father when I was a boy for her. And think on and think of the people I can kill now that I am a man to keep her safe.”
Her father nodded mutely again.