I assumed they meant it was a closed adoption. I’d considered looking for them, but I didn’t want to hurt my mother. She was quiet when my father told me the truth. Her face filled with fear. At the time, I’d assumed she was afraid of losing me. Of being replaced by my biological mother.
She could never have been replaced. Even if I’d chosen to seek them out, they would never take the place of the two people who raised me, who loved me.
Now I understood her fear.
She was afraid I’d become like them. There was no doubt in my mind that my mother and father, the two people I trusted most in this world, had lied to my face.
They hadn’t trusted me. Hadn’t believed in the man they raised. Sure, I’d joined the family. I worked for Eamon, the same as my father. I was a criminal.
But I wasn’t a fucking monster.
I’d read the files. I knew what they’d done. The people they’d hurt. The children they’d stolen and tortured. The information we had was over twenty years old. How many more men, women, and children had the people responsible for my life hurt? How many more lives had they destroyed?
I was lost in my head. Lost in the countless names in the files. Faceless men, women, and children whose lives had been destroyed by the people who gave me life. Lost in the deception and betrayal from the two people I never thought would lie to me.
Two people I couldn’t confront because they were already gone.
Everyone with answers was fucking dead!
I walked around the city for hours before I finally made it back to the office. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, Sal was there. By the look on his face, he was ready to tear me a new asshole.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I shook my head at him, ignoring his question as I walked past. He gripped my arm and spun me around as he snarled, “Where the fuck have you been? My sister called me freaking the fuck out because you walked out on her.”
“I didn’t walk out on her,” I said, wrenching my arm free. Duncan stood in his doorway, watching the scene our boss was making. “I went for a fuckin’ walk.”
I marched into my office and sank down on the couch across the room from my desk. If I sat in front of my computer, I would look up their names. I would dig up every piece of dirt I could find on both of them.
Sal and Duncan followed me. Duncan went straight to the bar and poured a drink. He held it in front of me, shaking it slightly until I took it. As I knocked it back, Mac walked in. Looking from Sal to Duncan to me, he asked, “What happened?”
I handed my glass to Duncan, who refilled it and handed it back. I wasn’t opposed to drinking with the guys, but I didn’t usually drink at work. I needed my head clear and my eyes sharp for what I did.
I looked at Sal, one of my best friends. A man I trusted with my life, a man I would give my life for if it came to it.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Who my parents were?”
Duncan looked at Sal. “What the fuck is he talking about?”
Mac watched me, a look on his face I couldn’t quite decipher. Confusion, maybe, or a breach of trust.
“I wasn’t aware you knew you were adopted,” Sal confessed.
“Because it never mattered. I never said anything, so how did you know?”
“My father told me during one of his rants.”
“About me?” I asked with a chuckle. Sal looked at the floor, not wanting to answer. “I know the old man hated me; I just never knew why.” I shook my head. “Until now, anyway. So you knew?” I asked again.
“No, he never told me who your parents were.” He swallowed hard, and it was clear that he knew something.
“What?” I ground out.
“When he’d been drinking, he’d start ranting about you. Saying you couldn’t be trusted, and I was a fool for bringing youon. He never said why, but it pissed him off that I wouldn’t listen to him.”
