Joseph

"I will not let this go unpunished prime minister, I hope that you realize that." I said sternly to the elderly man in front of me. "Everyone living is this house is family to me, and I do not take lightly to people harming my family." The man in front of me nodded sorrowfully.

"I don't know what came over him." He said burying his head in his hands. "He's normally so polite. So good to people." I would have felt bad for the man if I wasn't so furious about his son hurting Jessica, and calling her his right in front of me. That angered me to no end.

"Yes he will not be going home with you this evening either." I stated leaving no room for any argument.

"Even if I were to argue with you it wouldn't do any good would it?" He asked?

"No." I didn't want to give the man any false hope.

He nodded and left with his older son who didn't look happy, but didn't quite look sad about his brother having to stay here to surely be tortured.

As soon as they were gone I left to head to the cell Daniel was being kept in. I decided to postpone going to my room to see Jessica knowing full well that if I did I wouldn't be leaving any time soon.

"Daniel." I said opening the heavy wood door. Daniel was strapped to a metal chair in the middle of the room. His face was already slightly bruised, his lip dripping blood. I pulled a chair over to him and sat down crossing my legs. "Would you care to explain your actions?" I asked. "Because what I'm coming up with in my head is probably worse than what actually happened."

"He wants her." Daniel said with his head hanging down by his chest. "He thinks that if you want her so bad there must be something special about her." He kept mumbling incoherently to himself.

"Daniel who?" I tried to keep the worry out of my voice but. "Who wants her?" I asked getting the sinking feeling that I already knew who it was. He didn't answer. He just shook his head. I growled and kicked his chair over, not feeling like dealing with his bullshit today. I bent over the chair and wrapped my hand around his neck squeezing just hard enough to make Daniel start to cough. "I'm not going to play games today, you bastard. I have places to be." I squeezed a bit harder around his neck just to emphasize my point.

"He's ," he stopped to cough. "He, is Ramono." I released his neck and stepped back. I pinched the bridge of my nose and internally cringed. Ramono. Well shit.

"Ramono huh. What are you doing associating yourself with a little bitch like him, and Red Edge." I masked my voice to conceal the real emotion I was feeling.

Daniel smirked up at me. "I would've come to work for you, but I like to be on the winning side."

I glared down at him. I walked around so I was kneeling down on the side of him. I got my face close to him. "Well I hope you realize your mistake now. We don't take well to espionage here." I finished my statement with a forceful punch into his stomach. He gasped and began to cough up blood. I stood the chair up. I walked around before landing another blow to Daniels jaw sending him flying sideways to the floor again. I popped all my knuckles before walking out of the room satisfied with the answers I had been given.

"Kill him." I said to the men standing outside the room as I exited.

I stopped at a bathroom to wash the blood off my hands before going up to see how Jessica was doing.

I twisted the knob of the door leading into my room, I smiled when I saw it was locked just as I told her. I pulled the key out of my pocket and stuck it in the hole twisting it until the locked clicked open.

I slowly opened the door not wanting to startle the already scared girl inside. I carefully walked over to the bed my eyes locked on her body the whole time.

Jessica lay on her side on my bed hugging her knees to her chest. The skin under her eyes was red and puffy leading me to believe she had been crying. The fact that someone made her cry made the anger inside me bubble back up the the surface. I thought about going back to the basement and killing Daniel myself, but reluctantly decided against it knowing my men were more than capable of handling the situation.

I sat next to her and pulled her body over to mine gently as to not wake her. She was snoring softly and her breath came out in short puffs. I traced along her face and stroked her silky brown hair with my other hand. I stilled when she started to move afraid I had woken her. She gripped the front of my shirt in her hand tightly wrinkling the fabric.

I smiled as I carefully pried fingers open to release my shirt. I laid her back down and grabbed a blanket from a nearby chair draping it over her body.

I headed down the stairs to the dining hall where everyone was waiting for me to start dinner. As I walked into the room all the talking stilled. I took my seat and the chatter began to start up again. I sighed and tried to ignore everyone's laughing. I felt like there was currently nothing to smile about. Granted most of the people here didn't know about the threat the Red Edge had sent us today through that idiot Daniel.

Matthias came and told the woman sitting on my right to move politely. She looked to me and opened her mouth to protest, normally I would have told Matthias to speak to me later in my office but I didn't really enjoy the woman's presence as much as I did a couple of months ago. I raised an eyebrow at her, basically telling her without using any words she should probably just move. She huffed and picked up her plate and moved down a couple of seats sitting next to some other girls that were all watching with wide eyes.

"Matthias what do you need?" I said before placing a mouth full of potatoes in my mouth.

"Joseph you had the prime ministers youngest son killed this afternoon." He said looking at me with a duh expression. "How were you planning on telling the prime minister about it? Because I can guarantee that he won't take it well."

"Honestly Matthias I don't really care what you tell him. Tell him he was a spy, tell him he tried to kill some of my people, or maybe that he was working for the Red Edge. All of those are valid reasons to kill the guy." I whispered slightly angry.

"Joseph you just ordered his son killed. It doesn't matter how much he deserved to die, to him you just killed his son and that's all he is going to see." Matthias explained in his usual oddly calm voice.

"Then don't tell him. We have a lot to deal with right now anyway. Daniel worked for Ramono. You know what he told me? He said that Ramono wants Jessica Matthias." I said lowly so no one around would be able to hear. "He wants my girl." I said in a bit of a softer tone.

For the first time in awhile Matthias looked surprised. "Why does he want her? She's nothing special." He said more to himself than to me.

I sent him an icy glare, but decided to put his comment aside for the moment. "Matthias don't be stupid. They don't want her because of looks or personality. They want her because she means a great deal to me." I leaned back in my chair the meal in front of me long since had been forgotten. "The question is how do they know I care for her." I rubbed a hand over my face.

"Maybe everyone in this room is not as loyal as they claim to be." Matthias said and glanced to the man to the right of him.

"Well in that case we should continue this conversation in my office." I said before standing up and leaving without saying anything to the rest of the crowd.

***

Jessica

I woke up in Joseph's bedroom. It was 5 o'clock in the morning. I groaned and sat up stretching my muscles. I had officially slept 15 of the 24 hours of the day. Well I guess that's one way to do it.

I was unsure if Joseph had come up to see me yet but I figured that he had considering the blanket and the tray of food sitting on the night stand next to the bed.

I picked up the note laying next to the food.

Sorry I am not there, I had some important things to discuss with my men. I hope you are feeling well and like the food. If not you can have the cooks make you something different.

~Joseph

I smiled and placed the card to the side. I looked at the plate and rolled my eyes. There was pretty much everything you could thing to ask for somewhere on the trey.

After I had eaten I decided to go and find Ruben and find out what had happened after the escapade with Daniel.

I wandered the halls slowly/groggily making my way up to Rubens room. The halls were all strangely deserted. Not a soul was roaming the halls. Actually I had seen a couple of broken vases and pictures along the way. I got to Rubens room only to find it empty. "What the heck?" I whispered to myself.

I made my way over to Joseph's office seeing as how that was where he spend most of his time. I knocked on the wooden door. I waited a moment before just going in, not receiving an answer.

I walked in and was relieved to see people. The relief was short lived though as I saw what all the men had their eyes trained on.

A tv screen was on and had a man strapped to a chair. His face was bloody, bruised, and swollen. His clothes were torn and splattered with blood as well.

I wouldn't have recognized him if I hadn't knowing him my entire life. A loud gasp escaped my lips as he lifted his head and I was staring straight into the eyes of my father.

(For those of you that don't remember, Red Edge is the 'rival' gang/mob that killed Joseph's mother.)