Fierce Lies (Fierce Mafia #3)

Chapter 1

ELENA

M y father was dead.

I stared at the photo with the newspaper clipping in my hands, running my thumb over the face I barely recognized, my throat tight. Anthony Cassaro. The man who'd played a part in my being here. A man whose last name I'd never even known.

I'd always wondered what had become of him, why he'd never really been my father. And now, I finally knew where he'd disappeared to.

But despite a few memories of the man printed before me, he was essentially a stranger with my smile.

The last time I'd seen him, I was eleven years old, sitting on our porch steps as he promised to come back soon.

He'd given me a stuffed horse toy, saying all girls loved horses at my age, patted my head, and had said he'd be back in about a month, because work was busy.

Sixteen years later, I finally had my answer as to why he never did. And I didn't know how to feel. Sad? Angry? Relieved?

"I'm sorry, Elena." Trent pushed the manila folder across the coffee shop table. "I wish I had better news."

I set down the obituary clipping, my coffee growing cold beside it.

"How long?" I couldn't draw my gaze from the photo.

Trent was oddly old-school, not showing me screenshot or photo on his phone.

No, he was keeping everything on paper, but then again, it would be useful for clients in his line of work.

"Fourteen years ago." Trent Simpson, my old classmate's brother and the cheapest private investigator I could find, shifted uncomfortably. "Car accident."

Sixteen years since I'd seen him. Sixteen years I'd believed he'd turned his back on us, abandoned us as he worked abroad or on the road. Fourteen years since the monthly checks had stopped coming.

The possibility something had happened had crossed my mind, of course. When the monthly checks abruptly stopped, I'd feared the worst. But seeing it confirmed in black and white hollowed me out in ways I hadn't expected.

Fourteen years I'd been hating a dead man.

The thought made my stomach knot.

Why had he not come to see us in the two years before his death though? Why had he abandoned us during that time?

Who really was this man that had played a role into bringing me into this world? A man my mother had spoken rarely of, but had done her best to never paint him in a bad light.

"The whole thing seems… off." Trent lowered his voice, leaning forward.

His five o'clock shadow and the dark circles under his eyes suggested he'd put in more hours than I was paying him for.

"Something about the paperwork surrounding his death feels strange.

Nothing I can put my finger on yet. There are inconsistencies in the timeline and medical reports that raise questions.

" He shrugged. "Could be nothing, but I'll keep digging. "

I nodded, numb, not quite understanding what any of that meant to me anyway. The man I'd thought was my last hope was nothing more than a skeleton I'd had to dig up from my past. A man who'd walked away, who'd barely been there to begin with. A ghost of my past.

"Was there a will or anything?" My mind was a jumbled mess of guilt and unease, but I tried to focus on what could be a silver lining. Another way to fix this. Maybe there was a way he could still help me.

So I didn't lose both parents.

But if he'd died so long ago, why had we never been informed? Had we been too hard to find? No, we'd not moved, and it wasn't like we were trying to hide.

My stomach churned, already dreading the truth. Perhaps we'd not meant a thing to him overall, we were just throwaways.

But then, why the monthly checks?

Trent hesitated before pulling out another folder from his suitcase on the floor and sliding it over.

"That's the other part." He pursed his lips as he stared hard at me, keeping his hand on the folder so I couldn't immediately open it.

"Elena, you appear to have been conceived via an affair.

You told me you didn't know his last name, and I think there's a reason you were never made aware of it.

When I first told you it, you didn't know it. But I know why. He was a married man."

I stared at him, the words turning over in my mind as my stomach plummeted.

I was a bastard child?

I shook my head, not wanting to believe it.

But it also made sense now that I considered it.

My mother had always been secretive about my father, saying he worked abroad or on the road for months at a time, that they'd met when he'd stayed at the high-end motel she'd worked at.

That he'd been more than willing to provide for us, but his work had him traveling all over the world.

Had he lied to my mother? Hidden a whole other life from her? I doubted my mother was that blind, which made me feel even more sick.

Had she lied to me? Spun me stories since she'd known he was married? Or had she found out afterwards and twisted it?

If so, why'd he still even visit? Out of obligation?

None of it made any goddamn sense.

"Elena, I know this is a lot for you, but you wanted me to find out everything about your father…" Trent's face was full of sympathy and hurt for me, and I blinked away any possible tears, unwilling to break.

I didn't need him knowing how stupid I felt, how lost and confused this left me.

"Show me," I said through gritted teeth, the need to know now too high. Trent removed his hand, and I opened the folder.

The photos inside punched the air from my lungs.

The first showed a tall man in an impeccable suit exiting a sleek black car.

Trent had written notes under the photo for me.

Grayson Cassaro. My half-brother. He had the same dark hair and jawline as the father I barely remembered.

His smirk and confident posture screamed money and power.

The caption noted he was at some charity gala.

The second photo, labeled Meredith Cassaro, caught a beautiful woman leaving what appeared to be a high-end boutique with a friend, shopping bags dangling from both arms. She wore oversized sunglasses and a dress that probably cost more than my monthly rent.

The family resemblance made my chest tighten.

The woman, Meredith, had my hair exactly—the same shade of dark earthy brown that I liked to tie back in a high ponytail every day.

We even had the same upturn at the corner of our smiles—something we'd clearly both inherited from our father.

But where Meredith looked polished and pampered, her hair rolling over her shoulders in perfect waves, my own reflection showed the strain of two jobs and sleepless nights.

The third photo was of them together with a well-dressed man Trent had labeled as "Leo Donati" at some restaurant opening. They were laughing, champagne flutes raised in a toast.

I stared at the photos, at these strangers who were my blood.

But it was their eyes that held us apart. I'd inherited my mother's blue eyes, while they had deep green eyes. It appeared none of us had gotten the hazel mix of our father.

Something bitter and ugly coiled in my stomach. While I'd spent the past year watching my mother deteriorate, scraping together every penny for her treatments, my father's "real" children had been living in luxury off of his money.

Sure, his money had helped raise me and put a roof over my head, but when those checks had stopped coming, my mother had to go back to work full-time to cover the bills.

My mother had been smart with the money he'd sent us, putting it aside for college for me, getting a financial advisor to invest some of it.

By the time the checks had stopped, my mother had savings and the house almost half paid off, but continuing to work full-time had been her choice since she'd wanted me to have a good life and get a good education.

A choice she was now paying heavily for.

I shoved the photos back into the folder. I couldn't look at them anymore—their perfect clothes, their carefree smiles, their obvious wealth. The wealth that should have been shared. The wealth that I needed right now.

"Grayson and Meredith Cassaro, now both with the last name Donati." Derek tapped the top of the folder with his finger. "His legitimate children. They inherited everything. The house in Ironstone, which they sold, the business holdings, everything."

Everything except us. The bastard and her mother.

"Grayson runs several businesses in Ironstone, his main one being Lion Freight Services, whom he co-owns and operates with Leonardo Donati, a powerful, rich man, who also happened to marry Meredith.

Meredith works part-time at Donati Enterprises in the accounting department, though her role seems largely ceremonial.

Both live exceptionally comfortable lives, as you can see. "

"Yeah, I can see that," I muttered, trying to quell the not so pleasant emotions and feelings roiling within me.

Sure, I'd missed out on whatever life they'd had with their father, something that hurt me.

But now, they were living large with his money, while my mother was fighting for her life.

"But what about his will? Were we mentioned on there? "

"Honestly, that's not something I can access without going through more channels and getting the right authority and permissions," Trent said honestly, his brows drawing together.

"I know you're in a rough spot, Elena, but given you're the child of an affair, it's possible you weren't in the will.

And if you were, it's also possible they did try to track you down in regards to it. "

"The only way to know is if I talk to them." I stared at the closed manila folder housing the photos of family I'd not known existed.

"Just... be careful what you dig into. These people have resources." He leaned back. "And it's possible they don't know about you. Having a half-sibling rock up out of the blue, knowing that they have wealth…"

"It looks like someone trying to use them for money," I agreed.

"A blood test will prove your relation, but they may not agree to it. And if there is no mention of you in the will or your mother, then they'd have no reason to even want to do so."

I chewed my cheek as all this information settled over me. The deceit, the loss, the false hope.

"Look, Jessie asked me to help you as a favor, but I'm telling you as a friend—some doors are better left closed. The Donati name, it comes with some weight, it might not be something you want to get mixed up with."

"What kind of weight?" I pressed.

"I'm not sure yet, I only did the basics of looking into them, I was more focused on your father."

"And I'm out of money to spare," I admitted with a heavy sigh, the despair seeping into me.

Hiring Trent had been my last attempt to help my mother, and he'd been willing to do it cheaply due to my friendship in school with his sister.

But I couldn't expect any more from him.

He'd already done more than my payment should have covered, and I knew that.

"How is your mother?" he asked softly, and I gave him a forced, thin-lipped smile.

"She's managing."

His look told me he didn't believe me for a second. Word travelled fast in small towns like Shenton, where his parents and sister still lived. Where I'd returned to after college when my mom had started declining.

"You said there was inconsistencies with his death, right?" I opted to change the subject.

"Yes, although I doubt there's anything there. Big cities like Ironstone have lots of paperwork, so errors happen."

"Right." Had the slightest whisper of foul play niggled at the back of my mind? Maybe. I knew it was common when money was involved. But I was most likely looking for monsters where there likely weren't any. I was just upset and angry, especially with what Trent had just revealed to me.

I needed to wrap my head around it all, and then figure out where to go from here.

I gathered the folders, my fingers trembling slightly. "Thank you, Trent. I know you did more than you had to given how little I could give you, both information and money wise."

"Elena." He gave me a sad, sorrowful look. "What are you planning to do with this information?"

I pulled away gently. "I don't know yet. I still need to come to terms with it all."