Chapter 30
RAPH
The business Michael had to take care of yesterday had everything to do with getting Elsie back. No one is happier that he succeeded than Sophia. That girl has barely left Elsie’s side. And she’s completely forgiven Michael. Thank God for that.
She’s every bit as nice as my niece had said. I can see why my brother is fond of her.
Now if my fucking father would tell us something useful, we could toss him in the river and all move on with our lives.
The Quinns wait upstairs while my brothers and I take turns on my father. Michael asked them to give us one more shot alone with him, and Patrick obliged.
Rushing past Gio, I snatch up the collar of his shirt. “I’m done playing games. Talk, or I kill you!”
“I can talk all day, son.” He grins cruelly, and it takes everything in me not to snap him in half.
I’ve done everything I can to find Nicolette. I’ve tapped into every resource, but it’s like she’s fucking vanished. Where the hell could he be hiding her? I clench my teeth and tighten my fist around his shirt.
He’s able to look at me through his one good eye, the other one swollen. “Your wife was some piece of ass.” He makes a groaning noise under his breath. “And all this time, you couldn’t put a baby in her…so I did the job for you.”
What did he just say?
My heart pounds.
She…she was pregnant? With his… With my…
My chest heaves, and nausea swirls in my gut.
“What baby?” I manage to choke out, hoping I imagined it.
“Don’t,” Michael threatens him, and I instantly snap my eyes to his.
He knew? He knew my wife was pregnant and didn’t tell me?
My head spins, and I drop my hand off my father and try to keep my legs from collapsing beneath me.
“I’m sorry,” he says cooly. “I must’ve forgotten to tell you the best part.”
“What is he talking about, Michael?” My pulse fills my ears with a deafening sound, and I palm my hand on the wall to keep from falling.
“Just tell him, Michael. Take him out of his misery.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Michael slams a fist into his mouth, but I’m barely able to focus.
How can this be happening?
It was bad enough to know he slept with her, but worse now when I know he got her pregnant. The realization that the lack of a child had been my fault hurts the most.
Fuck.
I fist my mouth to keep from heaving.
“Why should I? I met her first,” that asshole says.
I can’t even call him a father any longer. Not after this.
“She was more mine than she was his.” He glares angrily at me while confusion settles in my chest.
What does he mean by that?
“And that was my baby she was carrying. Your baby brother.” His upper lip curls. “Or sister.”
Discomfort pulls at Michael’s face.
“I didn’t want this to hurt you,” he explains.
But all I feel in this moment is tired. I just need my Nicolette back and in my arms.
With a quick breath, I tell Michael, “Fuck Bianca. I just need to find her.”
That gets my father amused, and I swear I’m about to slice his arteries.
“Her?” he asks. “Which one, exactly?”
My icy glare zeroes in on him once more.
What did he just say?
The air in the room grows thin, my lungs heavy and burning. I take a step forward.
“What the hell do you mean, which one?” I lower my face right up against his, my breathing churning in my lungs. “Nicolette! Where is she?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, son.” His mouth thins. “I thought you meant Bianca.”
My breaths lock in my throat.
What?
The entire room grows silent, other than my father’s cruel laughter as he registers the shock on my face.
“I know,” he says. “Can you believe that little bitch?”
Every single inch of me grows ice cold. I heard wrong. That has to be it. He’s playing mind games. It would be like him to fuck with me.
It wouldn’t be possible. They brought her to the hospital. We saw her there. She was dead.
I force a fist into his jaw. “Bianca is gone, you son of a bitch!”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, son.”
On instinct, I land another hit into his nose this time. “I’m not your goddamn son.”
“You’re right. You’re not.” He continues to laugh. To bait me. “There’s so much about your wife you didn’t know. Not like I did.”
I force myself back as far away from him as I can. I need out of this fucking room before I burn this house and all the lies it carries. Did she fuck him here in our home? If she’s still alive, she’s going to wish she wasn’t.
“Tell me where the hell she is, then.”
“She’s with Nicolette right now. Some sisterly bonding to help the girls get over their differences.” His mouth thins in a serpent-like grin.
“I’m gonna kill you!” I roar, my knuckles pounding into his face, unable to contain it all, unable to hold back. Everything he’s done to me since I was a child, explodes onto the surface.
Arms grip me, holding me back. I feel them tighten around me. Multiple voices reverberate through my ears, but I can’t make out who it is anymore. It’s all white noise. My chest lurches, throbbing, as I’m forced back until I’m too far to hurt him.
“You’re all right,” Michael says, but I barely hear him through the buzzing in my ears. “Relax. Don’t let him get to you.”
But as I stare at the man who was supposed to protect me, I wonder how someone can be this cruel to their own child?
“Aren’t you ashamed?”
I realize it’s Patrick who just said that. I turn my head back to find him there with the rest of the Quinns.
“Oh, Patrick, old friend.” My father yanks at his arms, forgetting they’re bound behind him. “How nice of you to come. I’m sorry I’m indisposed right now. Hope you’re getting a proper welcome.”
“Yer face looks a wee bit battered there, friend.” The vein at his neck pops. “Could maybe use some ice.”
Suddenly, Iseult’s walking up to him, her high-heeled boots clacking as she approaches our father. There’s a steel bucket in her hands, and when she’s near, she forces his head back, planting a palm on his forehead.
“Got ladies doing the work for you now?” Our father chuckles, even as fear clouds his voice.
“I wouldn’t go around insulting my daughter if I were you.” Patrick folds his arms over his chest and leans against the wall.
Iseult stares down at him with icy restraint. Our father tries to fight her, but she only scoffs.
“Pathetic,” she mutters, right before she flips her other hand and pours what appears to be iced water right over his face.
He grunts, the liquid gushing down into his nose, his throat. Fucking hope he suffocates.
“I gather that was refreshing,” Patrick taunts.
When she’s done, she drops the bucket on the floor, wipes her palms on her jean-clad thighs, and removes a flip knife from her pocket. She edges it against his throat, a menacing tilt of her mouth made to provoke him.
My father pants, his head lolling, water dripping down from his entire body.
“You rat bastard,” he groans at Patrick. “Why’d you come? Huh? To gloat?”
“No.” Patrick marches up to him until he’s inches away. “I wanted to see this for myself. To know how you can do what you did to your own bloody son.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” A clear challenge paints over his words.
“How’s that?” Patrick stares him down. “Facts are facts, Gian.”
Iseult remains where she is, and I can see from her face she really wants to end him.
“How about the fact that now you’re free to fuck my wife whenever you want,” my father goes on.
Patrick shakes his head with contempt spilling through his glare. “We both know Fernanda was always too good for you. But circumstances and bloodlines prevented me from being her husband the way I was always meant to be.”
Iseult’s face goes white, the knife slipping from her grasp. She backs away until I no longer see her.
“What?” Michael’s incredulous baritone slips out while my own eyes widen.
What the hell is going on? Mom and Patrick?
Ignoring Michael, Patrick continues. “I loved her the way you never did, you feckin’ bastard.”
There’s a slice of longing and aching there. I can’t see his face, but I can register his body going rigid.
“And unlike you, I’d never disrespect your marriage like you disrespected her over and over. You don’t know how many times I wanted to cut your damn dick off for what you were doing to her.”
“If it makes you feel any better, friend, I’m sure it was you she was thinking about each time I was fucking her.”
Patrick growls, grabbing his shirt with both hands and slamming his forehead against our father’s. Patrick’s body shudders, raging like an animal ready to taste the blood of its enemy.
We knew they never genuinely liked each other, but I never thought it had anything to do with my mother.
And in that moment, I remember what she told me. The man she was in love with, but couldn’t marry…
Was it him? Was it Patrick?
My grandparents were old-fashioned. They’d never have allowed her to marry someone who wasn’t Italian.
“You still fucking love that whore, don’t you?” My father asks with disbelief.
The punch to his face comes so fast, I don’t think he even realizes what Patrick did.
“You call that woman a whore again, and I will kill you with my bare hands. You got it?”
My father chuckles. “I bet you wouldn’t be defending her if you knew what she did to you. To the both of us.”
My pulse drums faster.
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Patrick implores. “You better have somethin’ good to tell me, or else I’m gonna kill you right now.”
From the corner of his one eye, the man who spent his life tormenting me stares in my direction.
“You ever wondered why the fuck I hated you so much?” he asks me. “Why I couldn’t stand the sight of you? Why I would never allow you to take my seat in the famiglia?”
The air completely evaporates from my lungs.
Patrick grabs a fistful of his shirt. “You’d better talk, Gian, or I will do far worse than what your sons have.”
“Sons? Well, my old friend, I only ever had two.”
A shiver drowns my body, so cold I feel it in the marrow of my bones. I hear the rough exhales coming out of me, and I can’t seem to utter a single word because nothing makes sense right now.
Patrick backs away, his green gaze landing on me, then my father. Shock treads over his features as he inquisitively looks at me again, as though picking me apart at the root.
“I can’t blame you, Pat,” my father continues. “He never looked like you. He took after her. All the boys did.”
“What?” Patrick’s voice drops. “Are you saying…” He searches my face, taking a step forward. “No…” He quickly glances at my father.
“That he’s yours? Yeah, Pat, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Fuck…” Gio mutters, and I hear Michael choke out a curse.
I don’t understand. Patrick is my father? Mom lied?
My head spins, panic enveloping me.
“You knocked her up right before she married me, and the bitch passed him off as mine after we were married. Can you believe it? But I had a DNA test done. Then she admitted it.”
I grow lightheaded. But Michael and Gio are suddenly there, palms on my shoulder.
“If this is true…” Michael whispers. “It doesn’t change a fucking thing, you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Gio adds. “If anything, you’re lucky. You’re not related to that fucking animal.”
But this doesn’t feel like luck. My whole life, I’ve been lied to. I could’ve had a real father. Someone who gave a shit about me.
She could’ve told me.
“Come on,” Patrick calls to his kids, anger lacing through his tone. “We’re leaving. I need to talk to Fernanda. Now.”