11. ~Joseph Stover~
11
~Joseph Stover~
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
I hadn’t wanted to encounter Caterina again in this manner.
Under these circumstances.
With this grief and pain she was now carrying with her.
It was tainted now.
Especially with what I had to tell her.
I should have already revealed what I’d planned to, the first night I’d brought her here.
The truth was, I’d wanted to do it much sooner.
From the get-go, actually.
But it would have risked far too much. It would have put her life in jeopardy. Her mother’s too.
Things had shifted, and they had now opened the way to me being able to do this at long last.
Just… other circumstances weren’t ideal.
She was suffering.
She was struggling.
The idea that this intel could complicate or possibly even worsen all of that for her didn’t sit well with me in the least.
Once this was done, once she no longer needed my assistance, though, I couldn’t stand the notion of disappearing back into the shadows without her knowing the truth.
Especially now that she was settling down and clearly looking to build a family with her boyfriends as well. She’d need to know, and she obviously deserved to know.
The bottom line was that it was now safe for her to know.
She and the boys had upended the system, and they were on the verge of casting out the detrimental elements entirely and cementing their power. Once we conquered this last obstacle together. A significant obstacle, yes, but conquerable, nonetheless.
It would be their reign going forward.
The old guard would truly be no more.
There was a place for this truth now to exist out in the open, to finally breathe freely.
“Well?” she pushed, that fiery aspect of her finally coming out after days of her recuperating in bed, grieving the loss of her child, and reeling from being kept from her boyfriends.
I pulled my phone from the pocket of my tactical jacket and unlocked the files I’d had prepared for this.
Files that I’d had for a long time.
Too long.
“Here,” I said, handing it over to her.
“What is this?” she demanded impatiently.
“Read and find out.” I gestured at the chair she’d vacated. “You might want to take a seat again.”
Uncertainty and wariness spread over her face and her demeanor as a whole.
She narrowed her eyes at me, but then actually took my advice, and sat back down in her chair.
I leaned against the counter, adrenaline thrumming through me, as I watched her start reading and going through the folder of documents that I’d opened for her.
“Data pulled from military databases, hospitals… for what?” she murmured to herself, as she continued reading away.
“These records no longer exist anywhere,” I told her. “I scrubbed every trace once I got the confirmation I’d been searching for.”
“Your DNA… mom’s… mine.” She choked then as she took in the undeniable proof I’d laid out before her.
Her gaze flicked to mine. “It can’t be.”
“You know it is. It’s right there. Incontrovertible.”
“You’re—”
“Santino wasn’t your father. I am.”
Caterina looked on dazedly as she followed me into my room, and watched as I unlocked a trunk I’d pulled out from underneath the sleigh bed.
She hadn’t said a word since I’d told her the truth of her paternity.
I rummaged inside for a moment before placing a scrapbook on the bedspread, along with several news clippings and investigative documentation.
I perched on the edge of the bed and opened the scrapbook, flipping through the pages and showing her all the photos and knickknacks that I’d put together of her childhood.
She stared for a moment, then sat down on the bed and started looking through the book herself. “You did all of this? Made this?”
“I did.”
“It’s a masterpiece.”
“Well, I might have taught myself how to scrapbook at some point.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, clearly seeing a new facet of me.
More so than just her trainer, her mother’s ex, and most recently, the person who’d manipulated her life.
She spent some quiet time with the book.
And then she moved to the news clippings that consisted of things like any time she’d been in the paper for her achievements over the years, including the award she’d recently won, as well as a few mentions during her college years.
I tensed when she picked up the thick document next. I’d debated on whether to actually include that amongst the rest. Because, to be honest, it was invasive.
“Jeez,” she uttered. “Doctors’ records, even hospital records of the time I’d been admitted for breaking my arm when I’d fallen out of the tree in the Leone Estate backyard when I was a kid, the recent… incident too.” She kept looking. “My high school and college transcripts, legal documents and contracts for my properties, assets, business deals. And a whole shitload of surveillance. You even got my numerous storage facilities.” She started. “Fuck, and the location of every go bag I have around the city.”
I braced myself for her to make her displeasure known in no uncertain terms.
But then she actually surprised me when she grinned, giving a shake of her head. “You’re certainly not a normal dad, by any definition, are you?”
“That I’m not, no.”
“All this, it makes so much sense. Especially in light of the strange dynamic between us. It was a father-daughter dynamic all along. I guess, I just couldn’t recognize it because of the twisted way Santino had always been with me.”
“I was also trying to keep an emotional distance, which would have made it very difficult for you to actually correctly identify it, anyway.”
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why have me believing all these years that the monster that was Santino Leone was my father?”
“You were conceived when I was on leave, and I came to Bianca one night when I’d found out she’d gotten engaged to Santino. She told me she’d built a life for herself and that the night we spent together was just a goodbye. I left, and we didn’t talk for years. When I discovered that she’d had a child, I did the math. So I had those tests done that I showed you. When I told Bianca that I’d discovered the truth, she begged me to leave it be, to stay away. I was halfway across the world and I was also involved in some dangerous shit at the time. That was no life for her or a child. I didn’t exactly take well to what she wanted, but I did it because it was what she needed. I delved deeper into a whole lot of high-risk black ops shit as a result, a way to cope with it. Of being without her and our child.”
“And later on?”
“He would have had you both killed, Caterina. To protect you, I would have needed to remove you from the city and everything you knew, and drag you into the shadows with me. That isn’t a life I would wish on anyone. You would have been stifled and you never would have come into your full potential or even had much of a life at all. You’ve built an empire now, and you’re successful and respected in the business world.”
“That empire came at a cost. A steep one.”
“I know, and I’m so very sorry.”
She shoved her hand through her hair. “This is a lot to process.”
“I have no doubt.” I shifted my weight. “For the record, I am actually happy, and also proud of you, for eliminating Santino. It’s just the fallout that concerned me with the timing of it all.”
“Yeah, definitely not a normal dad. Proud of me for murdering someone. Wow,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.
I lifted a shoulder. “Normal is highly overrated.”
That actually managed to get a little laugh out of her.
When it faded away all too quickly, she had me tensing as she said, “I don’t know how to do this… this thing between us… you being my biological father.”
“We do it how we approached your training. One step at a time.”
“What would the first step be, though?”
“How about you tell me about these boyfriends of yours?”
She screwed up her face. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“They’re clearly smitten with you. And you’re most definitely in love with them. They’re important to you and that’s important to me. I’d like to know.”
“Here, I thought you already knew everything,” she said, gesturing at the documentation.
“Touché. Although, as you know, there are many things you can’t obtain from distanced investigation. It lacks a personal touch.”
“All right,” she agreed.
“Yes?”
She rose from the bed. “Although, let’s do it while we’re eating. I was actually really hungry before we got into everything.”
“Certainly. Whatever you like.”
She smiled out at me. Although it was definitely restrained, it was a start.
A really good start.
Something I’d never thought I’d have with her.
Not as her father.
Yet now, here we were.
Here she was without the lies and fakery between us.
My daughter.