Blood could talk about blood, do to blood, but let anyone else talk or do?
It was fucking on.
He had that going for him, but nothing else.
“I was sorry to hear about Emilia,” he said. “My condolences.”
I narrowed my eyes. “She knew that you knew about me.”
“She and I had a talk years ago. Emilia is the reason I never said anything to you or Mariposa about each other. She knew if you found out who your father was, you would go looking for trouble. You’d find it in the form of the Scarpones. Once they found out who you were, it would cause a war.” He shrugged. “Then there was the issue of who Corrado Palermo was. She didn’t want you trying to fill the shadow he left.”
“We don’t fit.” I grinned. “His legacy is too small.”
“We were not made to fill other people’s shadows,” he said. “We were made to leave solid marks. Shadows fade.”
“Emilia knew about my sister,” I said.
“No one knew about my wife but me, and certain people I trusted with my life. Once the Scarpones had been wiped out, it was safe enough for you to know who she was. If I felt in any way you could cause her, meaning me, trouble, she would still only be a woman named Mari to you. Nothing else.”
There was no mistaking the possessive tone he used when he said,“No one knew about my wife but me.”He was letting me know that she was my sister, but she belonged to him.
“What’s the fucking deal?” I said. “You let her live and then you fall in love with her?”
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he said, sitting back, settling in more comfortably. “Wipe it fucking clean. Unless you consider falling in love with your wife something dirty. It happened the same way for us—between two adults.”
He was fucking reading between the lines—it seemed far-fetched that he had left her alone all of those years, but my gut told me he was telling me the truth. At least on that.
It still didn’t change who he was and who I was.
“I appreciate you taking care of her,” I said. “Not killing her after hermamma.”
His eyes seemed to grow darker when the light flickered, and then they were ice-cold. “She was a child,” he said. Like that meant anything to his people.
I shrugged. “I knew your father and your brother.”
He gave a short laugh, almost cocky. It was rough, gritty. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” I said.
“I know everything,” he said. “I even knew your father, when you’d never laid eyes on him before a picture I let you have.”
Our eyes connected from across the table. In less than a second, we were both standing, our guns pointed at each other.
“I’ve been here before,” he said. “It didn’t end well for the other side of the table.”
“That other side of the table wasn’t me,” I said.
He moved. I moved.
I moved. He moved.
We circled.
“You think killing me is going to kill the ghost. You’re fucking wrong. You can’t kill a ghost,” he said. “You exorcise them out. And even then, from experience, you wrestle with them time and time again. Nothing ends here.”
“It has to,” I said. “There is no other way. Our blood can’t exist together in harmony.”
“It does,” he said. “Through my son.”
