Goddamnit. I was right. A sick feeling soured my stomach and bile rose in my throat.
“Tris? What is it?”
Without looking at him, I asked, “Do you remember the woman your father had me kill seventeen years ago? Right before I was officially placed in your service?” I remembered her. How could I not? She was the first life I’d ever taken. And she’d put up one hell of a fight. Added some interesting scars to my collection.
He thought about it for a second. “She was Gino’s wife. And a rat. My father found out she was working with the feds. What about her?”
“She and Gino had two children together. A boy and a girl. Did you never wonder what happened to those children?”
I saw the pieces clicking together in his mind. He knew. He fucking knew.
“What happened to those children, Luca?”
“They were given up for adoption,” he responded. His voice sounded far away, caught in the past with me. “Gino gave them up, I assumed, in a gesture of loyalty to my father when he told him to get rid of them because they had their mother’s dishonest blood. I remember him bragging about it at dinner that night, how his capos would do anything for him, even give up their own flesh and blood.”
“I saw those children when I killed their mother.”
That had his attention. “What? You never told me that.”
“I never told anyone. They were witnesses. If I had, Luigi would’ve had them killed.” Going back to my computer, I found what I was looking for. Two photos. One of Luna and the other of her brother, Logan. The caption told me she was nine at the time, her brother five. Slowly, I stood, my eyes never leaving the large blue eyes of the girl.
Luca came around my desk and pointed at the screen. “It’s not the same children. Their surname is Wilde, not Ricci.”
No. It was them. I knew it was the same children all the way down to my bones. Walking over to the generic painting hanging on the wall to my left, I moved it out of the way and opened the safe hidden behind it. This was my decoy safe. I didn’t keep anything of much importance in there. At least, nothing that couldn’t be replaced. The real safe was in my bedroom, hidden underneath the floorboards in my closet.
Inside, there was nothing but a stack of photos and a few other odds and ends. I removed the photos, pulling out the one on the very bottom and returning the rest to the safe. I took it to Luca and handed it to him.
“What is this?” he asked.
He knew what it was, but I answered him anyway. “It’s a photo of my first kill. Your father gave me this to make sure there would be no mistakes, and I kept it. I kept all of them.” I pointed at the woman in the photo. She was outside, standing beside a black car, wearing a nice pair of jeans and a blouse. Her long, dark hair—so dark it was nearly black—was pulled back from her face, and her blue eyes squinted against the sun. And she was smiling. “That’s Gino’s wife. And that,”—I moved my finger to the young girl standing beside her—“is Luna. The same girl in that report who was put into foster care with her brother. This one.” I pointed to a five-year-old Logan. “Their last name was changed and they were lost in the system, like so many other kids.”
“What you’re implying is impossible,” he told me as he stared between the two photos. “If Gino is her father, how does she not remember him? She was old enough to know him.”
With an impatient shrug, I said, “She saw her dead mother lying on the ground and then her father gave her away. Maybe she blocked it out.” When he continued to keep looking back and forth between the photos, I walked away. I was done waiting.
“Tristan, where are you going?”
“To get more guns. I’m taking her out of there.”
“Tristan. Stop.”
My body reacted to the command despite the panic in my blood. Spinning on my heel, I turned to face him. “What?” I bit out.
He narrowed his eyes at my tone, but didn’t call me out on it. Sliding his hands into his front pockets, he began to pace the length of my office. “We can’t remove her right now, T. Not now.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because he’s her father. And she’s not a child. Whatever their relationship, it’s none of our business.”
I’d like to say I was surprised by the words coming out of Luca’s mouth, but honestly, I wasn’t. He’d always been able to push aside his emotions and do what had to be done to advance himself in the organization and to protect those he cared about. Except when it came to Veda. He lost his shit when it came to her. “This isn’t just my suspicion here, Luca. I saw himfuckingher with my own eyes. His own fucking daughter!”
At my outburst, his eyes flew to mine. “Perhaps he doesn’t realize she’s his daughter. Just like you didn’t remember who she was until tonight.”
But I shook my head. “He knows.” It all made sense now. The way he’d been treating her. How he’d locked her in her room. Starved her. It was his own guilt eating him alive.
Luca looked away, and his eyes narrowed on some point in the distance. “Why would he bring her out to family functions? Parading her around on his arm that way. Surely, he had to know that someone would recognize her, eventually.”
“Because everyone who knew her mother is now dead. Who is left to accuse him of incest? Yourpadreand yourfratellowere perhaps the last ones, as they were both there when Luigi gave me the order to kill her. The younger ones in the family were kept out of it. Once Mario was dead and Enzo took out yourpadre, there was no one to stop Gino from doing what he wanted.”
