When I looked up, I saw how disheveled he looked, his tie askew, his shirt and suit splattered with what I assumed to be my blood. I laughed as one of his men kicked me again and again until I couldn’t see straight.
“Get him out of here,” Moriarty finally said. I heard his chair creak under his weight.
“I have a buyer,” I said as I was hauled upright. “You’re not getting her house, you disgusting prick.” I spat blood as I spoke, and I wasn’t sure he could even understand my words. “You will never have any part of her. I’ll kill you before that happens.”
Damon drove me home, and Eric followed in Damon’s car. My head was spinning, my body hurt. I think I passed out once or twice. I glanced at Damon, remembering that look in his eyes, that resignation. Remembering his insistence that we leave.
“Are you okay?” Damon asked.
“Is it true?” I ignored his question.
“Does it matter?”
Fuck.
My mother? With him? To pay off my father’s debt?
“Did you know?” I asked.
He ignored my question. “She’s dead,” he said. “He can say whatever he wants, and she can’t defend herself.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
“He was trying to get a reaction out of you,” Damon continued.
No. No fucking way.
“Is it fucking true? Tell me. Say it.”
But he didn’t have to say anything. All he had to do was look at me.
“God. Fuck.” I pounded my fist against the dash, and pain shot up my arm. “You knew?”
Damon returned his gaze to the road. “I found a diary she kept. In the chapel. I shouldn’t have read it. I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why? Why did she—” I choked on the words, swallowing blood.
“She felt like she had no choice. She knew he always resented her for choosing our father. Used that to get him out of debt. Dad didn’t deserve her.”
“Is that why he beat her? He didn’t start with her until later.”
“I think so. The timing fits. He must have found out.”
“I thought it was because I fought back.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Raphael. They’re both gone.”
“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill the bastard.”
“Maybe we have to think about the buyer. We may have no choice. I don’t want him to have the property even if it means we have to give it up to someone else.”
I couldn’t respond. Instead, I opened the visor and flinched at my reflection. “Sofia’s going to freak.”
“That’s why I’m taking you to the seminary first to get you cleaned up. We can’t cover up the bruises, but I can at least clean up the blood and get you a change of clothes.”
We rode in silence, each of us lost in our thoughts, me trying to make sense of this. Him, well, I didn’t know.
“Where’s the diary?” I asked him when we reached the seminary.
He studied me.
“Give it some time. If you want to see it after, I’ll give it to you. Not yet. Let’s deal with this first.” He opened the car door. “We’ll get you cleaned up and home. Sofia’s probably anxious.”
Damon didn’t quite look at me after that. I suffered through a shower, wondering if they’d broken ribs when they’d kicked me, feeling bruised inside and out. He was right. I was anxious to get back to Sofia. It took all I had to sit still as he treated cuts and bruises before handing me a mirror.
“Fuck. I look good.”
“Yeah.”
He helped me out to the car. “Don’t they wonder what the hell you’re up to?” I asked, gesturing to the brothers who stood watching from a distance. “You come home beat up. Then you bring me here beat up.”
“Oh yeah. I keep things interesting around here.”
Damon drove us home. I knew he’d called Sofia to warn her. When we pulled up to the house later that evening, she was waiting for me at the door. The minute she saw me, she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes filling with tears.
“I know, I’ve looked better.” I said, flinching as she tentatively touched me. “I wish I could say you should see the other guy.”
“Take him upstairs,” Sofia said.
“Bring me some whiskey,” I said as I headed to the stairs, offering Maria, who stood with her hands on her cheeks, tears streaking her face, a weak smile.
I let them take care of me for one full week. Damon stayed at the house, and Sofia never left my side. And all the while, all that kept going through my head was my mother, my mother with that man.
I wanted to kill him. I would fucking kill him.
He called her a whore, but if what he said was true, he was a rapist. He extorted those humiliations from her. She was no whore. Her only sin was loving her family.