I don’t even know how to talk to her about this. What I can share without risking her safety or mine.
“Don’t worry.” She offers a sad, knowing smile. “I’ve been brought up to speed on what happened.”
I’m sure she has details onsomeof it. She was there. Beside my cell. Minutes after Eliseo left the basement. But is she familiar with every manipulative detail? All the tiny intricacies that span multiple years full of secrets and lies?
I sit back on my ass and curl my legs to my chest. “I can’t get the police involved.”
“They can’t stop us if that’s what you want to do.”
Us.
Even after I dismissed her like an incompetent employee and gaslit her into ignoring her intuition, she’s still willing to fight for me.
“Did this all start because you found out about Lorenzo Cappelletti?” she asks. “Is that the real reason you tried to cut ties between CrossPoint and the Cavallo Group?”
“No.” I wince, wishing it were that simple. “This is about my dad and how he owes their family money.”
I might not have the details on how she became more embedded in this, but however it happened, she’s earned some transparency.
So I tell her about the agreement—everything except the soul-crushing blood debt I’m too ashamed to discuss. I outline what I understand of my father’s financial problems and how he hid them from me. Then I follow up with the explanation Raffael gave for pushing me away years ago.
True to form, Quinn doesn’t judge. She doesn’t even interrupt.
She absorbs every word, compassion softening her features. “That’s one messed-up situation. For everyone involved.”
“I guess. But my dad—” I choke on the words, the thought of him encouraging another swell of emotion. There’d been missed calls on my phone, but had he tried to come and see me after what happened on the yacht? Had he even noticed I was missing?
“He loves you, Isles. I get that it’s hard to imagine right now, but from what you’ve described of his high-price spending habits, I think we might need to acknowledge this is something more than mismanaged funds. He might have an addiction—to what degree or vice, I’m not sure—but you don’t accumulate that kind of debt without suffering from some sort of demons.”
I sigh, lacking compassion for anyone but myself right now. “Your empathy is making my brain hurt.”
She rolls her eyes. “For starters the brain issue is dehydration from the torrential waterworks.” She pushes to her feet, disappears into the kitchen, then returns moments later and hands over a bottle of water. “And secondly, it’s not empathy. It’s analysis.”
She retreats to my sofa and snuggles a cushion to her chest. “I’ve never seen your dad look at you with anything other than pride and admiration. So keeping the debt from you musthave killed him.And…” She drags out the word, her expression changing into an exaggerated cringe.
I groan. “What?”
“I kinda feel like I have to,begrudgingly, give props to Raffael for how he made you hate him to save your relationship with Philip. He took one for the team despite obviously having a hard-on for you.”
The blunt assessment packs a punch, the blow landing where I’m already bruised.
I battle my way through it by info-dumping. I tell her about my graceless stumble over the side of his yacht. How Raffael played the ogre act even though he had his chef serve my favorite meals. I also sprinkle a brief blow-by-blow about how he worked my body into a heated frenzy as if he had a direct line of communication with my libido.
Then, once my nervous system seems in some semblance of control, I finally relay the devastation of this morning. How he tried to keep the truth from me. The way he pretended to want to be together to save Eliseo.
“Are you sure that’s what it was?” she asks. “I’m definitely not team Raffael, but maybe you’re wrong about his motives.”
“I’ve never felt anything for a man like I did for him on the yacht—” And every day since. “I swear it was reciprocated, too. But he still cut ties. Now his brother’s incarceration is in my hands and all of a sudden things change?”
“Again, I want to explicitly outline my reluctance to stick up for that intimidating son of a bitch,buthe did beat the shit out of Eliseo for you.”
I hang my head. “Was it for me, though? Or was it retaliation for Eliseo’s actions bringing heat to their family?”
“All I can go off is what I witnessed before Michelo ushered me from the basement, and that was mindless rage centered aroundyou. Raffael demanded answers about your treatmentand what you were put through.Nothow the family would be under scrutiny if word got out. He was fucking crazed, Isles. It was next level.”
My heart aches.Yearns.
It’s the entirely wrong response, and although I can acknowledge that, I can’t quit being torn in two. “I think I like him too much to navigate this logically.”
