I blink a couple of times. “No, Frank, I—”
“You wanted to take everything,” he interrupts. “So I decided that when the time was right, I would take everything from you. And not just you. Igor here, too. You both would pay for what you did.”
Igor has fallen silent and is staring at the ground. He looks like a beaten dog. Broken, lost, defeated. How did I not see the signs in him before?
“My wife got hurt. Did you know she couldn’t walk for nine months? And that’s not even the worst part. Her ability to have children … stolen from her like it meant nothing,” he scoffs, a tear forming in his eye, but he blinks it away rapidly. “It meant everything to us. And you took that from us.” His fist balls.
My lips part. “I didn’t have anything to do—”
“SHUT UP!” Frank’s outburst makes me close them again. “As I fucking said, you both wronged us. So the first thing we did was take our revenge. Isn’t that right, Igor?”
Igor starts to cry now, a lone treacherous tear leaking down his bearded cheek. It astonishes me. This hardened Russian criminal, bawling like a baby? Everything is so fucked up.
“You …” I can’t even find the words. I know what’s coming, what he’s going to say—but it’s so fucking monstrous, even for men like us, that I don’t know how to speak it out loud.
Frank, however, has no such qualms. He laughs his loudest chuckle yet. “You think I’d let that fucker Igor get away with a hit? We went to his house in the middle of the night and ripped his daughter right from his arms. Igor’s precious daughter became my precious daughter. Isn’t that right?” He throws Igor a menacing glance.
Igor says nothing. Does nothing. I can see his heart breaking—what’s left of it, that is.
“We kept that beautiful girl under our roof as collateral. And Igor became my eyes and ears—and muscle. I stayed in the background and let him weave a web for years and years. It looked like things were going to work for a while, didn’t it?” He pats Igor on the back again. “But then you got some foolish ideas. You thought you could rescue your girl, didn’t you? I’ll be honest, you almost pulled it off. But not quite.”
Frank’s eyes flash up to me. “I think you know something about the night that happened, Marcello.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growl.
My head is still whirling with revelation after revelation.
Frank smiles thinly. “Think harder.”
Then it hits me like a fucking tsunami.
Harper isn’t Frank’s daughter. She’s Igor’s. Frank and Molly stole her from her father’s home to force Igor’s Bratva into submission and in retaliation for the attack on the restaurant.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Frank’s smile grows a notch wider. “There we go.” He chuckles as horror spreads across my face. “Now you’re starting to connect the dots. Bright boy.”
“No,” I rasp flatly.
Frank nods. “Igor tried to burn our house down, to reclaim his daughter, to kill me and my wife, and finish what he started. But you just so happened to be in the neighborhood. You ran in like the big hero you’ve always wanted to be. And you dragged that little girl out of the fire. I watched you take my daughter away from me. I was stuck in there as the house burned. But I saw. I saw you. You took my daughter.”
Holy fuck.
My mind races to process everything I’m learning. I remember that night as if it just happened. Pulling a screaming girl from the flaming wreckage where her home had once been. We’d been following a Bratva hit team into the night, but we lost their trail. Only when the smoke began to rise into the dark sky did we come upon what they’d done. I didn’t know who their target was or who that house belonged to.
Until now.
All the pieces finally click into place. Frank thinks I tried to betray him the night the restaurant was attacked. He survived, hid, and manipulated Igor as his mouthpiece for over five years, keeping the Russian’s daughter as a hostage and raising her like she was his own. And when Igor tried to reclaim her, his attempt failed. Harper would’ve died if I hadn’t happened to be there. I dragged her out of that burning home.
And then I left her with my aunt, who separated herself from the Mafia life and became a nun. I told her to raise Harper and left them, so the danger always nipping at my heels wouldn’t find them.
There is only one saving grace left. At least Harper is safe.
“What do you want?” I growl. I’m numb from head to toe, but I still have the upper hand here. I’m the one with armed men at my back. I’m still Marcello fucking Dellucci. This old Irish bastard’s hidden reign of terror is over.