That’s right,mija. I’m your father.
His words detonate around me, the blast ringing in my ears as I shake my head. Disbelief surges through my veins as I blink furiously against tears, trying to understand.
“Myfatheris dead. I watched him get shot. I watched him die. You arenothim.”
I study him. The world called him the faceless, nameless man, but he’s been in plain sight this entire time. The face and owner of Emerson’s Barrel and Sons. I take in his tanned skin, uneven stubble, and crooked nose. The stranger who claims a part of me I never asked for.
His hand reaches out to swipe a tear from my cheek. I recoil immediately.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
His hand freezes midair. A smirk tugs at his lips, and he draws back.
“Like you, I once believed Carlos Alvarez was your father. Your mother lied to me, Lucia. And so did my brother,” he says in quiet anger.
“B-Brother?” The word slips out in a whisper, my mind unable to process it.
“That’s right, mija.”
“S-Stop saying t-that,” I bite out. My words shake out of me. “My name is Erin.”
“You should have been Lucia Emerson,” he continues. “If your mother had told me the truth years ago, instead of over a decade later, you would have been raised by me. Not byCarlos.”
Bile crawls at the back of my mouth.
Sebastian steps forward. “I’m going to untie you so we can talk. There’s nowhere for you to run. If you disrespect me, Iwillpunish you. Understand?”
“I stopped running a long time ago.”
Once my wrists are freed, I stretch, allowing my muscles to breathe before lowering back into the chair. Satisfied with my choice, Sebastian continues. “Carlos and I were raised together but away from our father’s cartel business. We each took our mother’s last names as a way to stay hidden from the world and our father’s enemies. It was rumored he had children, though no one knew who they were or where they lived. We were raised by my mother. Carlos’s mother died after he was born.”
The story spills out in pieces, his words laced with recollection and regret. I can hear the strain in his voice as he continues.
“At sixteen, we were introduced to the drug world. However, after learning about Carlos’s seizures, our father couldn’t see him as anything but a liability.”
I shift in the chair. “Publishing still beats drug trafficking.”
Sebastian doesn’t react.
“I never knew of my brother’s love for Clarissa Rose,” Sebastian continues, eyes clouded with memories as he reminisces. A brief, aching expression passes before his gaze turns hard again. “Only Carlos knew we were together. It had to be a secret. My father would never have allowed an outsider in.”
The tension in the room swells, thickening like a storm cloud, his voice gritty with the bitterness of betrayal.
“A few weeks before I turned twenty-five, my father wanted me to run my first operation outside Cincinnati. I was ready, but I couldn’t find a way to tell Clarissa Rose I had to go.”
He pauses.
“I left a letter, telling her I’d come back. That I wouldn’t leave her again.”
“How romantic,” I mutter dryly. “I’m guessing she never got it?”
“I asked my brother to give it to her. Carlos promised me he would. He promised to help me find a way out of the brotherhood. But he lied. He wanted me out of the picture.Permanently.”
Resentment fills his eyes, years of hurt reflecting in his irises. “I was gone for years. I communicated with Carlos, who told me he was working on finding my freedom, but I began losing hope. I married Gina because my father demanded it. There was no love there.” He shrugs casually as if to say it is what it is. “I took over her father’s distillery, still operating for my father in the shadows.”
“Emerson’s Barrel and Sons,” I murmur, the heaviness of the story weighing down on me.
Sebastian’s nod is slow.
