I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest.
“You knew!” she accused, her voice filled with hurt. Hurt that broke my fucking heart into pieces. This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. She looked around the room. “You all knew!”
“Maddie, honey.”
“No, Uncle Sal. Someone should have told me!”
“I didn’t know, Maddie. Not for sure.”
Maddie whipped around to face her mother. “But you suspected?”
When Caity nodded, her eyes teared. My anger warred with my compassion. She should have fucking told me.
“I didn’t know until a few weeks ago. None of us had any idea until Nolan told us,” I confessed.
Caity gasped, and her hands covered her mouth.
“He knew,” Maddie whispered. She turned to face her mother. “This is your fault! I lost everything because of you!”
“Maddie, please let me explain,” Caity pleaded.
“No. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to look at you!”
Maddie ran upstairs as I stood there, helpless. Caity didn’t move. She stood cemented to her spot as our daughter disappeared. Tears streamed down her face.
“Caity.”
She turned an angry glare in my direction and spat, “Fuck you!” before she turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
“We’re having a baby!” Duncan declared, and Freyja groaned.
“Timing, baby, timing,” Freyja chastised. “I’ll go talk to Maddie.”
“No, Freyja, let me.”
She was my daughter. I was the one who’d hurt her. I should have made Caity talk to me. Maddie should have heard the truth from us.
I knocked on the door of the guest room, surprised when I turned the doorknob and it opened.
“Maddie, honey, can we talk?”
“No. Go away.”
She lay sprawled out on the bed, her face in the pillow. Despite being mad at me, I knew she wouldn’t be as angry with me as she was with her mother, and the asshole in me fucking gloated.
I walked through the room and sat on the bed next to her. She was upset, and with good reason. She’d been lied to her whole damn life. I was upset too. I laid a hand on her back, and she turned her head away from me.
“Baby, I know you’re upset.”
She moved so fast, when she sat up, I almost fell off the bed.
“Upset?!” she shrieked. “Upset? I lost everything because she lied. I lost my husband and my son because the man I thought was my father wanted to get back at her.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” I asked quietly. “I would have helped you. I would have protected you.”
“There was nothing you could have done. It wasn’t just my da...” She stopped herself, and a part of my heart sealed back together that she could discard Kelley so quickly. I wanted to believe it was because she would easily accept my place in her life, but I knew it was because of what he’d cost her. “Uncle Sal would have killed Salvatore.”
“I would have fuckin’ killed him,” I mumbled.
