All Chapters of Daddy's Little Secret : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Jamal's POVThe storm never let up all night. Rain bashed at the windows of my penthouse, every thump echoes the war inside me as i leaned against the glass, the city falling far away below but my thoughts were anchored in one place, with one woman.... Melissa.The last words i had ever heard from Dante's sources echoed like a prayer "By midnight, it ends"He was baiting me. He always had been and Melissa was his pawn, his lure, his guarantee that I’d step right into his hands and God help me, i would.I paced, unable to halt, unable to shake the image of her shackled to some damp, isolated cell, her untamed eyes raking the darkness for me. She was too innocent for this world, too good and somehow, she'd been flung into its very heart and i was the one who drew her deeper.The bourbon on my desk called to me but i did not require another drink. I required a plan.Michael had called beforehand, his tone surprisingly flat "You're making a mistake chasing after her. Dante's been three st

Melissa's POVI don't even know how long i yelled his name. My throat was dry, my lungs burned but i couldn't remain silent. The walls closing in upon me crept closer and closer with each second, the cold stone creeping into my flesh like the room itself had to consume me alive."Jamal!" My voice broke again, the noise bouncing back off of me in twisted echoes.I tugged at the cuffs around my wrists until metal grazed deep, tearing the skin. Pain from blood only drove me to fight harder and panic pounded in my chest but underneath it was anger. Why did Dante ensnare me like this? Why did he utilize me as a lure to catch Jamal?" i asked myself.But the fear won every time Jamal failed to answer.Then a voices muffled like whispers through cracks. One of them made my heart leap—Jamal's but another halted me. A woman.Who was she?The words were unclear but the tones were not. Jamal was broken, irate, torn asunder and the woman voice was eerie. She had gravity, an intimacy but i couldn't

Jamal's POVThe knock was not casual, not polite and not someone walking by.It was deliberate measured. The kind of knock that tells you power before you have even seen the face behind it.Melissa went rigid and i saw her grip her fingers around the silk border of her dress as though she were holding onto a rope over an abyss and she opened her mouth but she did not say anything. Her eyes were wide open, drowning with fear and i had never seen her like that.A second knock was Louder still. Slower and whoever had stood behind that door wasn't rushing. They knew exactly what they were doing, drawing out the silence, inserting themselves into our nerves, goading us into cracking before they even opened the door."Melissa" I said my voice a low, even sound despite every muscle in me was sizzling with heat "Who the hell is it?" i askedShe shook her head walking to me with the hands trembling as they clamped on my arm "Don't, Jamal. Please don't open it."I twitched my face towards her,

Melissa's POVI never knew that silence could cut like a knife but the look in Jamal's eyes when i did not answer him hurt more than any wound that my father ever inflicted.His words kept echoing in my head "If you do not tell me the truth right now, we're through"I wanted to shout, to tear the words out of my mouth, to tell him all and beg him to believe me but terror gagged me. Terror of my father's fury, terror of Jamal's revulsion and terror of a truth too ridiculous to ever come together and so i was silent and that silence destroyed us.Jamal's chest convulsed, his fists bunched at his sides like he was fighting the urge to break something, maybe me the man standing over me, smiling triumphantly then my father's smirk burned at the base of my skull. He was relishing it, sustaining himself on it. He had a talent for breaking people without laying a finger on them and tonight, i was the instrument he was employing to break Jamal."Jamal" I reached for him, helpless but he pulled

Melissa's POVDarkness rolled in waves and sometimes it was thick and smothering, tugging at me to drag me down into its cold arms and sometimes it thinned so much that i could detect the lift of his Jamal's voice holding me fast to the world slipping away from me."Stay with me, baby. Don't you dare leave me"His voice was terrified, rough-edged. I ached to answer, to say i wouldn't but every time tried to speak, the darkness welled up, stealing my lungs' air.I could sense pressure on my shoulder, his hand, hard, desperate and attempting to stem the bleeding. I concentrated on that, on the heat of his palm and on the way he was trembling though Jamal never trembled."Was i dying?" i asked myself, maybe in trance and not in actual reality as i couldn't get myself yet.The thought slipped in unnoticed like smoke in a cracked window and a part of me knew it was true. The hurt came hard, then softened to nothing, which frightened me worse than the blood spreading on my dress."Don't cl