He takes another sip, his eyes never leaving mine.
"I did what I had to do. That's what a leader does."
My jaw tightens.
"You had her kidnapped. You had her drugged. You had her sold to the fucking Volkovs."
My father shrugs, the gesture so casual it makes my blood boil.
"She was a distraction," he says simply. "She made you useless to this family. It cost a lot of money to watch your little pity party but I knew if you kept being the way you were, we'd lose a lot more over time.”
"Jesus, Father," Lucian says from behind me. His voice is sharp. "I told you. We all told you. Adrian was fine. He was doing good work for the family."
Nicolae scoffs, waving a dismissive hand.
"Bullshit," he says and slams the glass down so hard I think it had to have cracked.
"You think I don't know what's been happening?" he says, his voice rising now. "You think I don't know about the Irish? The Greeks? The Italians?"
He looks at Lucian, then Victor, then Matei.
"You've been building your own empires in the US behind my back. All of you. Thinking I'm too old, too out of touch to notice."
He turns his gaze back to me.
"And you," he says, his voice dripping with venom. "You were the worst of them. Running around like a lovesick fool, forgetting who you are. Forgetting what this family is."
He walks around the table, standing across from me now.
"I had to do something. I had to save this family."
"Save it?" I say. "You destroyed it."
"I saved it!" he roars. "The fifty million wasn't a loss. It was an investment. An investment in the family legacy. I needed you broken, Adrian, from your soft ways. I needed you to remember what it means to be a killer. What it means to be ruthless."
He steps toward me, his eyes blazing.
"She," he says, pointing at Elena, "was holding you back. Making you soft. Making you weak."
He stops a few feet away from me.
"I did what needed to be done. I took her out of the equation so you could be what this family needs you to be."
The room is silent.
I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, and I can feel Elena behind me, her breathing ragged and uneven.
And then I hear her voice.
"How could you do that to your own grandchild?"
My father's head snaps toward her, his expression shifting to one of pure disgust.
Elena steps out from behind me, her eyes watery.
"I was pregnant," she says. "I was carrying your grandchild. And because of what you did, I lost it."
The words feel like they take all the air out of the room.