“He had his eye on the Mariani bitch for a while. He approached her several times and she rejected him. So he did what any man would do. He took what he wanted.”
My body goes cold. “He… he raped her?”
Drago shrugs, as though he feels the word is unnecessary. “He took what he wanted,” he repeats again. “Then she got pregnant with you and from what I’ve heard, she wanted to end it.”
End it. Such a simple phrase. And yet so ugly. The words pierce through me, but I’m too shocked to process them fully. Too numb.
“So why didn’t she?”
“Apparently, her old man refused to allow her,” Drago says, with a shrug. “She tried doing it by herself. Almost died in the process. That was when Papa approached the Mariani don and asked him to hand you over once you were born. Said it was ‘for your own good.’”
I close my eyes for a moment. I know enough now to know that my father didn’t make the suggestion because he was concerned for me. “He was just using me,” I whisper. “He knew I’d be useful in the future.”
“By the time you were five, Don Mariani had managed to convince the bitch to marry Papa.”
“She agreed to marry her rapist?”
Drago glares at me. “Papa was the most powerful man in New York City. She would have been a fool to keep rejecting him.”
“She was coerced into a marriage she didn’t want.”
No wonder she wanted nothing to do with me. I feel sick to my stomach, and it’s not from the tossing of the boat in the night’s rough waters. I was born out of a violent man’s act of control. I’ve spent my whole life suffering from the same fate.
“How did her father manage to convince her to marry Papa?” I croak.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know that?” he says. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Enough of this shit. None of it matters anyway.”
“It should matter,” I tell him. “The Marianis are still players in this game. And I’m part Mariani.”
He glowers at me fiercely. “Don’t go getting an ego now, little whore,” he snarls at me. “You’re nothing without me.”
“Don’t you have that backwards?” I ask, jerking my head up defiantly. “You’re nothing without me.”
“You’re just like her,” he says in a quiet voice full of malice. “An arrogant, proud bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone else.”
“You met her?” I can’t help asking.
“Only once,” Drago replies. “She was the kind of woman men liked to fuck. That’s the only nice thing I can say about her.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m my father’s son,” he snarls. “And you are your mother’s daughter.”
I get ready to tell precisely him what I am—but suddenly, an explosion bursts through the air. The yacht lurches to the side as though something has just rammed into us.
“What the—”
Drago and I rush outside of the cockpit, looking for our attacker. I’m expecting Kian and his men.
But instead, I see a nightmarish face that I’d hoped never to see again.
“Rokiades?” I gasp.
The Greek don is riding on a large boat cruising right alongside of the yacht. He’s surrounded by at least a dozen armed men, all of him have their weapons pointed at us.
The yacht is stalling fast, as if they’ve somehow jammed the motor. And as we lurch from side to side, I realize that we’re not just slowing down.
We’re sinking, too.