I swallow and nod. So, he knows. He knows what I have never told another living soul.
My head throbs as I roll over and slide out of bed. At some point after the shower, Fiero dressed me in one of his shirts which thankfully comes down to my thighs, but I still feel mentally naked.
I need space to process this. Squeezing my eyes shut, I rub my temples trying to soothe the climbing panic.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
Fiero gets out of the bed and walks around it toward me.
“He owed the Irish,” he explains, carefully. “That’s why he stole from us. But he gambled the money before he could pay them—or us—what he owed. I took you as payment but the Irish got nothing.”
I pace the room, still rubbing my temples.
“That’s what the Irish guy came to the club for. Callum went to him first, told him how important you are to me, so he tried to take you the night I was shot. Him and a sidekick who’d entered under a false ID.”
A long breath rolls from his lungs. “When that plan didn’t work, your uncle got desperate. Thought if he gave the photographs to the Irish they could blackmail me for money, knowing I… I wouldn’t want the scandal that naked photographs of my woman would bring.”
My gaze snaps to him and I’m suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “B-but… I’m not your woman. Why would you care?”
He stands and strides toward me, then cups my shoulders with his hands.
“Pfeiffer...” He opens his mouth to say something else, but then closes it again and swallows. Then his eyes skate over myfeatures, fast and urgent. “I can’t tell you how furious I was to come face to face with that bastard after seeing what he’d done.”
“Where is he?” The hatred in my voice scratches up my throat like sandpaper. “I want to see him.”
I hear him swallow in the dark.
“You can’t.”
I scramble backward, vibrating with hatred for my dad’s brother. “Yes I can. I need to see him, Fiero. Now.”
He reaches for me but I dart away. “Why? What can you say to him? Nothing is going to change what he did.”
“I don’t care!” My voice is climbing now, one decibel at a time, and I don’t mind if it shatters glass. I’ve kept his treacherous actions buried deep in my subconscious for all these years. Now that I know putting his hands on me wasn’t all he did, I want to hurt him. I want him to see that despite everything he did, he hasn’t broken me. If anything, I’m so much stronger than he is. He’s nothing but a petty, dirty pedophile with a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan.
“I want to ask him why? How? How could he do that to a young girl? Hisniece? How could he be so sick and twisted and disgusting? What made him think he could get away with that?”
I want to take those incriminating photographs to the police—get him locked up for good.
When Fiero doesn’t reply, I storm toward the bedroom door and yank it open.
In a beat, he’s in front of me, holding my arms. When I try to push him away, he grips my wrists tightly, holding them to his heart.
“Pfeiffer, stop. Listen to me.”
“Listen to what?” I cry. “You’re not saying anything!”
“You can’t see him.”
“Yes I can. I have to,” I hiss. “I just need to get to my car.”
“No!” His voice booms around the apartment, snapping my mouth shut. “You can’t see him Pfeiffer.”
All the hurt and anger and revulsion I’ve kept bottled up fornearly fifteen years explodes in a throat-curdling scream. “WHY?”
“Because he’s dead.”
Oxygen leaves my body limp for the second time in several hours and I stagger backward, his tight grip the only reason I stay upright.
