Redeeming Vow (Dashkov Crime Family #3)

Chapter 1

one

Sweat collects along the palms of my hands and I wipe them nervously on my pants as I walk toward the empty dock. We told each other to come alone. Not that either of us will. My men litter the area, blending in with the general population and I suspect Dante has his men doing the same.

What he won’t suspect is the secret weapons I have. If he tries anything he will be surprised where the attack comes from. My capacity for trust is a thin thread fraying in the middle as more tension is applied. It won’t take much for the thread to break under pressure.

“Hello, Ava.” Dante’s low voice comes up behind me. I turn to face him, the wind whipping at my hair.

“Hello, Dante,” I smile up at him, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. “Thank you for coming.”

He smirks. “I was surprised to get your call.”

“Now that I know,” I murmur, reaching my hand out slowly to trace my fingers along his face. “I can’t believe I ever missed their resemblance to you.”

Dante stiffens at my words, but he doesn’t make any move to remove my curious fingers.

“Kenzi inherited your nose,” I tell him with a small, authentic smile as I trace his furrowing features. “But Libby got your fire and that blazing look in your eyes.”

Removing my hand, I take a small step back, waiting for his next move.

His throat works, blue eyes brimming with tears he won’t dare to let fall.

There is more emotion playing across his face now than I have ever seen before.

He is always so stoic and put together. Even when he smiles, but now, that carefully erected barrier shifts beneath the moving sands.

“How did you find out?”

I swallow back my own lump of emotion. “Libby.”

Dante’s eyes widen at her name. “She knew?” he asks incredulously.

Nodding sadly, I hold out a large manilla envelope to him.

He takes it without question, peeling it open to reveal the contents.

It is everything Libby managed to acquire on Kenzi, my grandfather, and a few other shady deals that Mark managed to decrypt.

“She knew a lot more than just that,” I tell him, watching his expression closely. The further he digs into the files, the redder his face becomes, until anger is all he seems to know. Mark added in some special footage as well of the ‘fake’ wedding.

“Motherfucker,” he growls dangerously, his knuckles whitening as he grips the evidence tightly in front of him. The papers crinkle under his fierce grip, bending to his power. “You should have told me. The fucking traditore.”

“I tell you to look closer to home,” I remind him bitterly. “You just don’t want to listen.”

Dante lifts his head and sneers at me. “I don’t like games, Avaleigh. You should have been straight with me.”

“Sure,” I scoff, crossing my arms defensively.

“Blame the kidnapped victim for not spilling her guts to you in the middle of a funeral where my enemies surrounded me. Makes sense. Christian ordered Eduardo to rape me as punishment for our discussion already. What do you think he would have done if he found out that I outed him to you?”

Confusion tilts his face, making him look years older than his forty-five years.

“What do you mean, kidnapped you? Dashkov is the one who took you from Elias.”

Laughter spills from my lips, tainted with disbelief at his naivety. He honestly believes that? Had Elias told him nothing?

“Elias sold me to Matthias to save Christian,” I tell him, bitterness coating my tongue at the memory.

“I helped them take down Elias’s shipping port.

That was my idea. Then we staged the fake wedding to draw Elias out.

Libby was shot by a sniper. One who works for you, by the way.

Paid off by Christian. It’s all outlined in the file I gave you. ”

“You’re telling me Christian killed not only his sister, but his father?” he scoffs. “Come on, Ava. You really expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t need you to believe it when the proof is right before you,” I snap. “I’ve outlined everything to a T. These are all records you could scrounge up yourself, you don’t have to take my word for it.”

“Why?” he pushes. “Why would Christian kill them?”

“Elias got in the way.” A heavy weight lifts from my chest as I tell him about the puppeteer Elias had been working with all these years.

The man behind the curtain. I don’t care if he believes me.

That isn’t what will cleanse the bitterness that has clung to me since childhood.

No, all that matters is I am finally able to tell him.

The one man who was kind to me when no one else but my sisters were.

“And Libby?”

“She betrayed him,” I admit. “The fake wedding was her idea to draw them out. But he had plans to kill her long before that because he didn’t need her. Her final use to him was framing us for her murder.”

“Us,” Dante murmurs. “Wedding wasn’t so fake, huh?”

I chuckle. “I married Matthias weeks before the fake wedding. It’s why I am Pakhan now.”

“So, is this why you asked me here?” He gives the file a slight shake. “To air out all of Christian and Elias’s dirty laundry to me?”

“Part of the reason,” I admit with a shrug. “You deserve to know what happened to your daughters. You’ll find one marked for Kenzi as well.”

“Kendra tells me she is doing well at college.” He seems puzzled that I would have anything to hand over when it comes to the daughter who he believes is on the other side of the pond living a normal college student life.

“Kenzi never made it to college.”

Dante swears.

“Kendra either has her head buried in the sand or is complicit in her own daughter’s sale.”

“Sale?”

“Elias sold her to the Chameleon Agency.”

Dante’s face pales beneath his Italian coloring. It is apparent he knows who they are or at least has heard the name.

“You’re wrong,” he jeers. “He would never do that. Elias knew their reputation. Why would he...?”

“Get rid of the one daughter that is of no use to him?” I mock.

“Did you bother to even contemplate whether or not your brother suspected an affair? That maybe he knew that Kenzi and Libby weren’t his?

He kept Libby because she was useful. Kenzi wasn’t and Elias only kept around things that were useful. ”

“So why did he keep you around then?”

Well, that stings like a bitch. Rage thunders through me at his callousness. I almost walk away. Almost.

A new wave of anger sweeps over me as I think back to all the times he knew about my predicament and never once thought to help.

Nope.

This useless bitch is gone.

Sayonara, fucker.

“Wait,” Dante calls out as I turn on my heel to begin walking back toward the shore. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Turning, I raise a brow at him, incredulity written on my face easier to read than a neon stripper sign.

“You think?”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this, Ava,” he fumes.

Dante runs his hand angrily through his hair, stressing the roots, his jaw clenched.

“You’re telling me my own nephew not only murdered his sister but also committed patricide and my brother sold off one of my daughters. That’s a lot for anyone to take in.”

My lips curl into a snarl, gaze hardening as I think back to all the information I’ve been slammed with in the last few months.

“Oh?” I bare my teeth at him and let the bottled-up rage unleash itself.

“You mean like finding out the man who called himself my father since I was eleven, who beat me and tortured me, was in fact, not my father but the one who abducted, sold, and then bought my mother? That he raped her and used her. The man who sold me so that his precious son could live?”

Dante stands stunned before me, unable to form any words. His lips press into a thin line.

“How about how the man I thought was my brother brushed up against me time after time when I was growing up? Who threatened to rape me? You want to know what he did to me when he told you he rescued me?”

That fucking word gets air quotes and everything.

“He woke me up with a stun gun. Or a cattle prod. Sometimes with a whip. Hell, one day I woke up to him trying to drown me,” my voice has risen, silent tears tracking down my cheeks.

The look of horror on his face doesn’t help.

He honestly had no clue what Christian did to me.

“After the funeral, he told Eduardo to rape me so I would learn my place. You want to know what I did?” I don’t wait for him to answer.

“I smashed his skull in with a rock. I killed him, Dante. Ended him. And it wasn’t enough.

Because every person involved is going to bleed. ”

Might have left out that one of those people is going to be Kenzi.

I doubt Dante will take well to me wanting to kill his only remaining daughter.

“Is your mind scrambled yet, Dante?” I mock. “Hear enough? Because I’ve got more where that comes from.”

There are a lot of things running through my head in that moment about what he might do. Scoffing and brushing me off is one of them. Attempting to kill me is another. Maybe he will simply nod his head in acceptance and take it all in stride.

Stumbling into his chest as his arms wrap tightly around me, the soft scent of leather and smoke ensconcing me is not what I expect. One hand cradles the back of my head while another rubs soothingly down my back.

“I should have done more,” he croaks. Guilt and regret are choking him. Something wet hits the top of my head and I belatedly realize he is crying. Dante Romano, head of the Italian mafia, is crying. “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry, piccolina.”

Shit. Now I am crying even harder.

It is cathartic.

Cleansing.

Exactly what I have been needing. To know that someone I grew up with cared and it wasn’t all a carefully placed facade.

“What do you need from me?” He pulls back, his thumbs wiping at the tears along my cheeks. Fuck, have any of my men seen me crying? My gaze darts around the docks. “No one but Vas saw anything.” He assures me.

Oops.

Dante smiles proudly. “I know you didn’t come alone, Ava,” he says. “It is expected. I am not alone either.” I let out a nervous laugh that is wobbly and wet from crying.

“So,” he starts again. “What do you need? I am at your service.”

“This man.” I pull out a picture of my grandfather from the stack of papers I gave him. “His name is Seamus McDonough, he’s…”

“Your biological grandfather,” he finishes for me.

Nodding, I keep going. “In her journal Libby mentioned Elias talking to a man about me. She identified him as the ‘man with the silver cane’.”

“What does that have to do with Seamus McDonough?” he queries looking at the picture again.

“At the gala I saw him and my grandmother.” I take out another picture that Mark managed to obtain from the gala’s security cameras. “Look at what he is using.”

“Okay…” skepticism colors his voice. “There are plenty of canes out there that have a silver cross on them.”

“That’s true,” I admit. “But look at the emblem just beneath it carved into the wood.” Dante still doesn’t look convinced.

Not yet anyway.

“Now,” I flip to the photograph of Madam Therese. “Look at this cane.”

His forehead puckers, eyes darting between the pages as he takes in every detail he can.

“Do you recognize her?” I ask him. “Or the symbol?”

Dante shakes his head. “No,” he sighs. “But I’ve met Seamus McDonough before, and he never had a cane. Certainly never needed one, but, shit, it’s been nearly twenty-five years since I last saw him.”

That gets my attention.

“Where was this?”

Dante thinks about it for a moment, his eyes flickering up as he recalls the memory. “In Boston. My father was still alive and running la familgia at the time. He wanted to show me the ropes and help to secure a new merger.”

Merger?

“What year was this?”

“1996, I think.”

The year my mother went missing.

“Was your father looking at merging with McDonough Shipping Corp?” Part of me already knows the answer.

“Yes,” he answers slowly, curious to see where my train of thought is going. “Elias never found out, but my father had been underbidding him for years. Taking his clients and spreading rumors and planting evidence for the FBI to find.”

“And then you killed him.”

There is no regret on Dante’s face. Nothing. Not that I would judge him for that. Dante’s father was a horrible man.

“Did Seamus McDonough want the merger?”

“It was his idea.”

“I sense a but coming…”

Dante clicks his tongue and lets out a breath. “But when we arrived in Boston to negotiate with him, he had no clue what we were talking about. Told my father he would never align himself with anyone whose shipment involved human cargo.”

“Is that how the war started?”

He gives me a grim nod.

The Italian/Irish war is carved into Seattle’s history as the bloodiest gang war on the west coast. There were so many lives lost on both sides as hails of gunfire littered the streets day after day.

Nowhere was safe. The police were at a loss and gang violence rose until the day Dante put an end to it.

By putting a bullet through his father’s skull.

“Here’s the thing.” Dante rolls his shoulders back to ease the tension that is no doubt gathering there. “The initial conversation took place here in Seattle. In person.”

“Wait…” I blink rapidly several times, trying to process what he just tells me. “But you say…”

“That’s why my father was so upset,” Dante tells me with a small shake of his head. “He had a face-to-face encounter with him. Sat down and had coffee. Fucked a few whores.”

Well, I could have lived without that information.

Wait.

“No, it couldn’t have been him.”

“Trust me, Ava,” he assures me. “It was. I saw him myself several times over the two days he was here in June 1996.”

“You don’t understand,” I argue as I comb through my phone. One of the crime scene pictures Libby had of my mother’s trashed dorm room held a photo. It hadn’t meant anything before, but now that I am putting dates together, it couldn’t have been him.

“What were the exact dates?” I ask frantically as I pull up the photo.

“June 15th was the first day he arrived. He left two days later.” He frowns. “Why is that important?”

“Because—” I turn the phone around to show him the photo. “This is my mother’s graduation photo taken with my grandmother and grandfather.” I zoom the phone in so he can see the date on the bottom of the picture.

“It’s dated June 15th, 1996.”

Dante checks and rechecks, as if what he is seeing might disappear if he keeps looking away and back again. “That’s impossible,” he whispers. “If that’s him… who the fuck met with my father all those years ago?”

“That’s what I need you to find out.”