Chapter 10
TEN
My father?
Why are they worried about my father hurting me? That doesn’t make any sense.
Sure, he can be stern and dismissive. Anyone who knows him would say that. Years in the Marine Corps had carved discipline into his bones before politics ever hardened the rest of him. Order. Structure. Accountability. Those are the things he believes in.
And sometimes lessons need to be… reinforced.
It isn’t as though he ever laid a hand on me himself. My father doesn’t operate that way. He has people for things like that—men who made sure the message landed when I stepped out of line.
But that wasn’t cruelty.
That was correction.
That was a father making sure his daughter understood consequences.
“My father is a good man,” I say, the words coming out steady even as something small and uneasy buzzes in the back of my mind. “He would never hurt me.”
It unnerves me to know that they somehow discovered the link to my father.
I’ve been careful not to use his name in any way outside our social circles, which I am rarely invited to, anyway.
We don’t even share the same last name. When he “adopted” me at the age of three, he let me keep my mother’s surname, telling the media that he didn’t want to diminish the memory of my biological family.
I barely remember the media storm that ensued after I was adopted. My father told everyone that my stepmother couldn’t bear any more children and that she always wanted another daughter. They said it had been love at first sight when they saw me.
As if. My cunt of a stepmother barely spent more than a few moments in the same room as me unless it was required. They shoved me into the background. I was put away like fine China. Only to be glimpsed on special occasions before being packed back up again.
“He may never have laid a hand on you,” Liam tells me. “But he is far from a good man. Trust me on that.”
Trust him? The mob boss who kills people and runs drugs and weapons through the city wants me to trust him?
“You don’t know my father.”
Liam smiles sadly. “Adoptive father,” he reminds me. “And I know more than you think.”
Adoptive father. So he doesn’t know the real truth. The dark truth.
“Still my father,” I bite out. “And if you’re expecting me to give you some inside information, you can forget it.”
There is a fine line between truth and lies.
I know little about his work or campaigns. He’s never involved me in his political career like he has my older sister. She’s the one who isn’t a stain on the Crowe name, and I am nothing more than his hidden indiscretion.
There is something I am aware of, however.
I know that he and the DA are launching an all-out attack on the criminal underground, and Dashkov and Kavanaugh are at the top of the list. Washington is crawling with mafioso types.
You wouldn’t know it. Mostly because everyone believes the mafia had been nearly eradicated in the 1970s when the RICO Act was passed.
That is a lie.
The American Mafia simply slid beneath the radar, moving west, taking over old Yakuza and Chinese Triad territories. It was in the late 1980s that the underground had been established, spreading up from California like a cancerous disease, slowly making its way back toward the East Coast.
From what I’ve been able to ascertain, the underground is run by one representative from each of the most powerful ruling families, but that is just a rumor.
Now, most mafia families are legitimate business owners. Casinos, hotels, resorts—anything that gave them an opportunity to funnel blood money through. Genius, really.
If you don’t get caught.
My father has been trying to topple the mafia empire for as long as I can remember.
He is constantly cursing and complaining, murmuring about how they are an infestation.
I’m unsure of where the animosity comes from.
Crime isn’t running rampant in Seattle, not like it used to, but nothing deters my father.
He is dead set against every mafia family in the city, even if it means going against the mayor.
“Not really selling yourself, are you?” Seamus quirks a brow. “You’re supposed to be giving us a reason to keep you alive.”
My chest tightens, eyes widening slightly at his statement. Do they really plan on killing me?
“Seamus,” Ava scolds.
Playing off my fear, I let out a derisive snort. “It wouldn’t matter what I told you, anyway.” I sniff. “I’m well-versed in how the mafia works. If you wanted to kill me, it wouldn’t matter what reason I gave you to keep me alive. You’d still eliminate me.”
“Well-versed?” Kiernan asks.
I shoot him a smug look. “Did you think I got into investigative reporting by accident?” I snark. “My father has told me everything about how you mafioso types want to destroy the good he’s worked for.”
Chuckles of amusement rise up around the table. I don’t see what is so amusing about what I’ve said.
“Let me guess.” Dashkov eyes me from across the table. “Your father is the one who got you into reporting.”
“No,” I tell him smugly. “He was, and still is, against it.”
“But he is the one who nudged you to work on investigative reporting, isn’t he?
” Is it bad manners to punch a smirking mafia boss in the face?
“And when you did, he no doubt pushed you into writing your little stories about the mafia. Telling you all the bad things we do and how we’re out to get him. ”
I huff. “They’re not just stories. They’re facts.”
Kiernan grunts. “Sure they are.” He smirks. “But we’ll come back to that later.”
Not if I have anything to do with it.
How and why I became an investigative reporter is inconsequential. What does it matter if my father strung me along the path? I am doing well. Helping to shed light on the criminal activity in the city.
My father never pushed me to write about the mafia or the Seattle underground. He tolerated it but did not support my career as a reporter. The only reason he allowed it was because Drew had supported it for his own personal gain.
Marriage and becoming a dutiful housewife were what my father had planned for me.
There were times when my father talked more openly about what the mafia was doing in the city. I chased some of the best leads with the information he let slip at the dinner table or at business meetings he had in his office.
“Why don’t you tell us about your father’s deal with Magnus Knight?”
Not gonna happen.
The twins exchange an unreadable look at my silence.
“Bailey.” Kiernan’s voice holds a darkened edge to it. A warning.
Good girls get rewarded. Bad girls get punished.
Yeah, fuck that shit. I won’t be telling them anything related to my father or his business. Not that I know much, but they don’t need to know that.
“What about your adoption records?” A smile spreads across Liam’s face at my sudden flinch. Shit. “No one can seem to find anything on your sudden adoption, Bailey. Not even a sealed record. I find that rather interesting.”
My hands clench around the mug in my hand. “You really shouldn’t.”
“It just piques my interest that there isn’t a single trace of you.” He leans back in his chair, eyes gleaming as his gaze challenges me. “Your birth certificate doesn’t list a father, and the woman listed is labeled as a missing person.”
“You’re a real Jack Taylor,” I drawl. “Got it all figured out.” My jaw ticks, and my teeth clench as I struggle not to give anything away.
I know it is too late. I might as well have just screamed that there is something wrong at the top of my lungs.
One thing I’ve never been good at is deception.
My father says I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Too open and na?ve, he’s told me.
“Answer the question, Bailey,” Seamus growls next to me, his hand coming to the back of my neck, applying just enough pressure to exert his dominance but not enough to hurt.
“Don’t pretend like you know anything about my family or me,” I hiss at them. “My father is a good man who’s made it his life’s mission to see men like you wiped out of business.”
“You want to know about your family?” Seamus sneers, tightening his hold on my neck.
“Your father is a murderer. A coward who hides behind his social standing and the men he sends to kill those who are in his way. And for what? Prestige? To get into office? He may be a pillar of the community to the people at your fancy country club, but down here, in the real world? He’s in bed with some of the city’s worst gangs.
He’s a killer, just like us. The only difference is that we do it to survive.
Your father does it for his own selfish reasons.
So before you laugh at how little we know, remember that you’re still the enemy’s daughter and show my father some respect. Hear me?”
I nod as much as I can with the harsh grip he has on the back of my neck.
“Good.”
He lets go of my neck. His mouth turns down slightly at the edges when I ease away from him, but his face remains hard.
“He’s not like that,” I whisper, my hand massaging where he gripped me.
Seamus hadn’t gripped me tight enough to bruise, but it still wasn’t pleasant.
It also didn’t stop my panties from being soaked through at his sudden display of dominance.
My thighs are clenched together beneath the table, and I am glad that no one seems to notice my body’s sudden arousal.
I really need that lobotomy after all.
Maybe electroshock therapy.
“He is,” Kiernan insists lowly.
No. My father is a good man. He’s never been my knight in shining armor, but he is still my father.
“I may not know a lot about his political career, but I know one thing for sure. He’s not a murderer. And he sure as hell isn’t in bed with any gangs. He’s been trying to run the gangs and mafia out of the city. That’s his whole political stance.”
“That is what he sells to the press, Bailey.” Kiernan’s tone is gentle. “Your family has been involved with local gangs since long before your father became a senator. Your own grandfather moved and manipulated many of the gangs in the city to do his dirty work.”
“No.”
“We’ve had proof of it for a very long time,” Seamus says. “We can show you everything. His deals run deep. From embezzlement of charity funds to gunrunning. Even human trafficking and drug distribution.”
Human trafficking and drug distribution.
My father would never be involved in any of that.
These people are tainting his name, trying to get me to turn against the man who took me in when my mother abandoned me.
The man who kept me when he could have easily given me to the system.
Even if he doesn’t want people to know about our true relation, he still adopted me. Claimed me.
“Tell us about his deal with Magnus Knight,” Kiernan urges. “Help us and we can help you.”
I lift my gaze from where it’s been focused on the table to his emerald gaze. He isn’t pleading. Isn’t begging. His eyes are hard, but there is something I don’t recognize behind that stern facade. Something that makes my gut churn with butterflies. Something I refuse to name.
Fuck this.
Two simple words I don’t realize I’ve uttered aloud until Ava chuckles and Kiernan’s gaze darkens murderously. He reaches for me, and in my panic, I do the only thing I can think of.
I hit him with my empty coffee mug and run.