"Vera, not now," My father scolds me.

"What the hell is going on?" I demand, pretty much forgetting the issue that I had come in here to talk to him about. It's definitely on my mind but I sure would appreciate knowing why Sergei is being treated like a traitor right now. He's been with Pantera since I can remember, always my father's second in command, there's no way that he's done anything to deserve this from my father.

My father turns to me and then hands me a black leather wallet. I open it up and gasp a little bit when I see a police badge. There's no fucking way.

"He's a cop," He says, his face stone cold.

I look back at Sergei, waiting for him to tell me that it's not true. He doesn't deny it though, he just closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths, probably to deal with the pain of the beating.

If there's one thing my father hates more than Italians, it's cops. How dare they do the right thing? How dare they want a safe city for its inhabitants?

Even just seeing the badge, hearing the word 'cop', makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up because I'm immediately alert and feeling defensive.

After the initial shock of finding out that Sergei, the man who's been by my father's side for year and years, is actually an undercover cop, I remember why I came into the room in the first place.

"I need to talk to you," I tell my father.

"Does it look like I have time for you right now?" He hisses irritably, glaring at me now. Obviously, he's very angry right now in finding out that his second in command, his best friend (although he'd never admit to actually caring about the man), is a traitor. But I'm angrier at my father right now than I am at Sergei and I don't really care about his feelings because all I can think about now is that he was in charge of my mother's death.

"Make time," I snap at him. "I found something at Berardi that I need to talk to you about."

"I know what to do," My dad mutters to himself, completely ignoring me now because he's too preoccupied with this whole Sergei debacle. He lets his thoughts churn for a moment while he thinks and then he looks up at me. "You, stay here."

"I know that you-"

He interrupts me by pointing to the three other men in the room prepared to torture the life out of Sergei... or whatever his real name is. "Come with me. Vera, we'll be back in two hours, he will be dead by then."

"You want me to kill him?" I wonder with raised eyebrows. I figured that my father would want that honor but when I see him look back at Sergei tied to the chair and covered in his own blood, I realize that my father doesn't have it in him to murder Sergei. He cares too much, despite Sergei being a phony. He can order his death because it is what has to be done for the survival of Pantera but he does not have the strength to pull the trigger himself. Just like with my mother.

"Yes, we need to go clear this up before it gets out of hand," My father decides. "Two hours, Vera. He won't talk, just get his body out of here."

I nod in understanding. Too much is going on right now for me to focus on one thing but before I can get a hold on reality again, my father and the three men are out of the room and the door is shut between us, leaving me alone in the room with Sergei. I take a few deep breaths, ignoring the middle aged man in the chair.

Sergei is a cop.

My father killed my mother.

Coleman is dead.

Dante can't be forgotten.

Everything is spinning out of control and I just need a minute. I need to breathe. The world is spinning too quickly around me. Once I get a focus on the world again, I glance over at Sergei, who is looking back at me, and then I open up the badge again that I'm still holding.

"Walter Hancock," I read the name aloud and return my gaze to Sergei. His real name is Walter. Walter Hancock. He doesn't really look like Walter, probably because I had grown up knowing him as Sergei. Sergei with the deep frown lines, stress wrinkles, gray eyes, dark hair with a receding hairline. Large muscles from a lifetime of fighting. Or, I guess, his muscular build is from his police training. Because he's a cop named Walter.

"Vera," Sergei (Walter?) says my name, the first time that he's spoken since I've been in the room. His voice sounds cracked and tired. I'm not sure how much they'd beaten him before I got here but he does seem to be in some pain but not the most pain I've ever seen somebody in. "I'm not after you."

"Then why are you here?" I question him, staying far away from him but I pull the gun out of my waist band just to have it ready. I wish that my father hadn't given me this task because, while I was not that close to Sergei, he was like an uncle to me my entire life. When my father wasn't there, he had protected me, trained me, taken care of me sometimes.

"For your father," He explains.

I lean against the cold wall across from him and then slowly, I say, "I am an extension of my father."

"That's not true," He shakes his head at me. "You are more like your mother."

"You let him kill her," I realize once he mentions my mother. My father tells Sergei everything so if my father murdered my mom, Sergei knew about it. And he let it happen. Realizing this makes killing him much easier.

"What?" He looks at me in confusion.

I pull the picture out that I'd printed of my father and the man who shot my mom and I show it to him as proof so that he can't deny the facts. "I know that my father was the one who ordered my mother's death. You must have known, and you let it happen. My mother is dead because of you."

"I didn't know," He insists. "Not until after it happened. Your father was angry with her, I remember, but I didn't know that he would go to such lengths until after she was dead and he told me that he'd done it. I couldn't have stopped it though, Vera, I didn't know."

Hearing it confirmed, that my father really is responsible for this, makes me want to vomit. I had assumed that this was the case but there was a little part of me that wanted to believe that maybe this man was my father's friend but also a friend of Giovanni's who decided to shoot my mom or maybe the man knew my father but my father didn't actually order the man to kill my mom. I was hoping that there was another explanation but Sergei just killed my hopes for that and it makes me lose my mind just a little bit more.

"Well, it doesn't matter. My father ordered an execution," I decide, preparing my gun. "I don't have a choice."

But as my fingers start to wrap around the gun, I look down and I see myself with my finger hovering over the trigger. The monster inside of me feels so alive, its favorite time to come out is when I feel the cool metal of a gun in my hand. But I hate that monster, I wish that it wasn't inside of me because I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be cruel, heartless, unforgiving, blindly faithful to a monster even greater than myself.

I want to be the person that I was with Dante. I was kind, gentle, harmless, care free. I laughed and I smiled, I never hurt anybody with I was Elisa. I liked to sit by the water and admire the beauty, I liked to watch the snakes slithering through their habitats at the zoo.

Elisa would never be holding this gun, ready to kill a cop just for doing his job.

"Do you... do you have a family?" I find myself asking, my grip loosening a little bit on the weapon in my hand.

"I'm married," He confirms. "I have a wife and two beautiful little girls."

That wouldn't have bothered me a few months ago, I would eagerly pull the trigger to send a bullet into his brain but now, that makes me stop and reconsider. Because now, I have this gaping hole in my chest that aches for Coleman and I know what it feels like to lose somebody.

I picture his family and I see those two little girls growing up without a father like I had grown up without my mother. I see that woman in the picture, his wife, losing her soul mate. Having to raise their kids on her own and heart broken. That woman, those two kids, living with this ache in their body like I have in mine. I see a man who is just doing his job, trying to put food on the table for his family, doing the right thing. Which is something that I have never had the chance to do.

"You don't deserve to die," I decide out loud. "But it's what my father has ordered. And if I don't, you'll take us down."

"Not you," He insists. "You can run. You already have a fake ID, you can leave and be Elisa. I promise that you are not our main priority, we won't come looking for you."

"What about Berardi? Do you have cops in there too?" I ask him, realizing that if I don't kill him, he'll probably be able to take down Berardi too. Dante could get life in prison.

"You can take Dante with you," Sergei says quickly when he sees where I'm going with this. "We aren't looking for him either. The only person that you'd be protecting is your father and what has he done for you? He killed your mother, he turned you into a person that you hate, he thinks of you more as a weapon than he does a daughter. He does not deserve your loyalty."

That makes me think. I would like to go to the beach, to live my life there as Elisa without the guns, the blood, the death that surrounds me now. I would like to be there with Dante but after what I've done to him, I highly doubt that he'd ever want to be there with me. It could be worth a shot. I could at least warn him that the police are closing in on us, both Berardi and Pantera.

Or I could just shoot Sergei now and move on with my life like nothing ever happened. And two little girls will live with an ache in their body like I've lived since my mother died.

I don't know what to do. I've always just been unquestionably loyal to my father, going against him feels unforgivable to me. But now I'm realizing that he isn't the solid, strong and honest man that I've always thought of him to be. I had thought that he never lied to me. He didn't tell me everything but that was for my own good. But he did lie, he killed my mom and he used my rage against me, turning me into his perfect weapon.

Sergei was right—my father does not deserve my loyalty. What do I deserve? A happy life on the beach, a life in prison, or a life here where I will probably die soon but if I don't, I will live a life suffocated by my father's orders and I'll pretend like he never did anything wrong because that would be my only choice if I stayed here.

Or I can kill Sergei and then run so that I am not responsible for my father's downfall but I also don't stay here.

No, that plan sounds stupid.

"What do you want to do, Vera?" Sergei finally asks me when I've been quiet for too long.

"I want you to live," I decide out loud as I'm trying to decipher all of my running thoughts. "I want to live on the beach. I want to be with Dante. I want Coleman back. I want my father to burn in hell for what he's done."

"That's your answer right there," He tells me. "Let me go. You'll have all day to leave. I have to get a team together before we come back to seize the casinos and in the meantime, your father will think that I'm dead. You and Dante will be long gone by then."

I start thinking of a plan to see if this really is a plausible idea. I have all of my paperwork for Elisa, including a passport. I have a completely unused identity that I had made for Coleman just for emergencies but I can replace his picture with Dante and then he is ready too. I can't get my hopes up though, I know that Dante will probably want to stay here and go down with his father like the loyal son that he is.

Whether he goes with me or not, I can get a plane ticket to anywhere that I want to go, and I can just go. I can be Elisa forever, I'll never have to fire a gun or kill another person again. I like Elisa so much more than I like Vera. The last thorn on my rose will be for Coleman and then there will be no more.

This can happen.

I have technology on my side, I can take my father's money (what's he going to do with it in prison) and I can use it to start a new life. This can happen.

"Okay," I finally decide. "Okay. I'll have the whole day?"

"Yes," He confirms. "You'll have time. Maybe even tomorrow too just go as fast as you can."

"How are you going to get out of the building though?"

"I'll figure that out," Sergei assures me. "Just uncuff me and then go."

My hands are trembling. If I do this, if I free Sergei, that is it. There is no coming back from that, I can't back out from my decision. I can't change my mind and ask him to please not arrest my father. This will change my life, Pantera will be gone.

Before All Else is our motto but I'm tired of putting Pantera before all else. I'm tired of not putting myself before all else. I've always believed that Pantera was the only world that I could ever know but I've decided that I don't accept that anymore. Maybe it is the only world for Vera but not for Elisa, she will know better, bigger worlds outside of this one.

And so I make the decision, and I put the key in the handcuffs. Sergei is free and Vera is dead.