Adopted to Biological? Keep Your Golden Child Scapegoat Out novel Chapter 78

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Fake.

Every goddamn thing was fake.

Sienna’s waterworks, that helpless little girl routine-fake.

The PTSD that made him bend over backward for her, that he used to excuse every shitty thing he did-fake.

Even Vesper being dead-just another lie they’d spun up.

These hands had ended lives. Made calls on who lived and died. He thought he was smart. Thought he saw every angle.

And some scheming bitch had played him like a mark.

Worse-he’d been the one who broke Vesper. The woman who’d bled with him for a decade. Who knew him better than anyone.

He’d turned on her. Tortured her. Pushed her out.

Rage and regret detonated inside his chest.

Killing intent poured off him like heat off asphalt.

BANG.

He kicked the door clean off its hinges. Stepped through looking like the Reaper himself.

Room went dead silent.

Sienna’s victory smile turned to stone. Then crumbled into raw fear. Face went white as a sheet.

Lana fumbled the jewelry box Sienna had just handed her. Thing hit the floor. Diamonds and pearls rolled everywhere.

She didn’t even glance at Dante. Just bolted-crawling over herself to get out the door.

Left Sienna alone. Slumped on the couch.

She tried steadying herself. Forced her mouth into something that might’ve been a smile on a corpse. Started to get up. “Dante, sweetheart, just

listen-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Three steps and he had her. Hand locked around her throat. Drove her into the wall so hard the drywall cracked.

Impact knocked the wind out of her. Everything went black at the edges. Lungs screaming.

Dante got in her face. Eyes shot through with red. Something wild and ruined burning behind them.

“The PTSD was horseshit, wasn’t it?

“Vesper being dead? You made that up?

“Everything from day one-every tear, every setup-you fucking orchestrated all of it?”

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Adopted to Biological? Keen Your Golden Child-Scapegoat Out

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Chapter 8

Each word came out like a blade.

Sienna went slack in his grip. That look in his eyes-pure murder-turned her insides to liquid.

Teeth rattling. Couldn’t get a single word out.

Her pulse knocked against Dante’s thumb. One more ounce of pressure and the vein would flatten.

She had never been this close to dying.

In the red map of his eyes she saw herself-small, warped, expendable.

Something inside her snapped.

Words came out in a wet, jagged rush.

She told him how she’d joined Red Spider Lily and clocked his clout the first week.

How she’d rehearsed the orphan story until it sounded like memory.

How she’d studied Vesper the way a forger studies a signature-copy the tilt, steal the flourish, take the credit, take the crew, take the warmth that used to be Vesper’s.

“She had to disappear… or you’d never see me.”

Her knees hit concrete.

She grabbed his cuff, snot and tears slicking her chin.

“Hit me. Kill me. Just don’t walk away.”

Dante stared down as if she were roadkill.

“Not worth the dry-cleaning,” he muttered.

He thumbed his encrypted comm.

“Enforcement. I got a rat.”

They arrived in black, chain-links rattling like spare change,

Dante didn’t wait.

“Sienna Graves. Framed family. Evidence locked. Max-sec, Drowning Cells. No daylight without my signature.”

The Cells were underground wells-neck-deep rainwater, electrified cuffs, food slung once a day like feed to carp,

You don’t serve time; you rot until the water claims you.

They dragged her out screaming.

Curses bounced off the corridor walls, fading to gurgles, then to nothing.

Afterwards Dante burned every contact-dark-web brokers, dockyard snitches, even the night-shift janitor who vacuumed the server room.

Chapter 8

He knelt in front of the Boss, forehead to hardwood.

The old man lit a cigarette, exhaled the answer through his nose.

“Gave her enough cash to vanish. Where she vanished to? Not my story anymore.”

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