My uncle had to know about this relationship. They were friends for such a long time. Tony wasn’t my blood uncle. I knew that. He was just someone that had been friends with my parents before they died. He was supposed to be their best friend. The one they trusted the most. If that was true, then there was no possible way he hadn’t known about this friendship.
He knew about it, and he’d kept it from me.
He’d hid it.
From the evidence in these photos, he’d lied about it.
There were only a few reasons he would do that. Something else was going on here that I didn’t know about, and it was possibly something that would change everything I ever thought I knew. Something that would change my relationship with him. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was something that needed to be addressed right fucking now.
My skin was tightening over my frame. I could feel the rapid beat of my heart, and it was giving me a dizzy feeling. My eyes were growing hot with unshed tears that I wasn’t even going to worry about checking and keeping trapped behind my lids.
None of this was right.
“Finish it.” I knew Jasper had more to tell me. From the look of devastation on his face, whatever he was holding back right now was going to put the final nail in the coffin of everything I thought I knew.
“There’s one last thing I have to show you, and then I’ll get into the informational part of this presentation.” Whenever he was feeling uncomfortable, he reverted to that educational profession tone he used when teaching someone about computers. It was very rare he used it with me. It was understandable why he was using it now. He wanted to get through all this as quickly as possible. He was the rip the Band-Aid off quickly kind of person.
He was showing me things that made the legitimacy of my revenge seem like it was nothing.
With a fast flurry of movement of his fingers over the keyboard he exited out of the slideshow and then opened one last photo.
My breath was trapped in my lung. I was suffocating. My eyes were looking at the screen, but I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. I’d never felt so lost when simply looking at a picture before.
My mother was standing next to Maria and their arms were wrapped around each other’s waist. My father stood next to Gio with one arm propped up onto his shoulder while my uncle Tony stood on the other side of Gio, his arm wrapped around the mob king’s waist. Nico was clinging to the full floral skirt of his mother’s dress. It all seemed picturesque and sweet.
What drew my attention the most was me. I was in the same yellow dress as before, but I had my little arms wrapped around Gio’s neck as he held me in his arms, and I was pressing a kiss to his cheek. His head was thrown back, a large smile showing all his teeth transformed his face.
I wasn’t sure what to make of what I was seeing. Words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. Thoughts wouldn’t form in my mind. Not while I sat there on the couch staring at that picture. Not only did it depict me embracing the man I’d been raised to believe was my one and only enemy in this world, but the man who taught me that fact stood next to him with his arm wrapped around his waist.
I’d been under the impression my uncle had gone out of his way and put himself in Gio’s life as a way to help me get information on him. I’d thought Tony hadn’t known too much about Gio from before my parent’s death. I figured he knew a little since he’d been such good friends with my mother and father, but I never thought he’d been so close with him. Not once had it entered my mind that they all would’ve been having family gatherings, and that my uncle would’ve been a part of it.
When I’d found the photo in the yearbook originally, I thought there was something strange there. My uncle had made it clear that my parents had gotten mixed up with Gio by chance. They weren’t the kind of people that would put up with all the mafia shit. They were honest and good and lawful people. Them getting mixed up with the Valentino crime family had been something that they couldn’t escape from, and they struggled with every day.
That’s why they wanted to turn state’s evidence. That’s why they took the risk they did and sought out an FBI agent to help them.
Tony had made it clear that he worried about them every moment after they told him what happened to them. Never had he said anything about knowing Gio from high school. He’d never mentioned my parents knowing the kingpin from their childhood.
Now all I could wonder was what else he was hiding from me. What other lies had he told me over the years. What possible reason could he have behind them?
“Where did you find these photos?” The sound of Milo’s question brought me out of my thoughts and back to the present where I needed to be.
“When Nico had that party at his condo, I’d made sure to get a camera in Gio’s office. He’d also been stupid enough to leave his computer and laptop unattended on his desk. I was watching some playback feed from the office camera the other day and saw him going through some old photos on his desktop. I hadn’t run a full-scale scan of that computer yet, because I honestly didn’t think he did much work on there. I focused on his laptop. I was right. He didn’t really work much on the desktop, but there were a bunch of old photos on there. Mostly of Maria and Nico when he was little, but I found these ones there too.”
I’d always appreciated Jasper’s attention to detail. While I’d been upstairs letting Dante and Cole do unmentionable things to my body, he’d been working. Doing what we’d gone to the party for in the first place.
“So, what does this mean?” Alicen’s voice was slow and steady. The kind of voice you would use to coax out a frightened child or skittish animal. She was directing her question to me, and for once I didn’t think I had a real answer for her.
“It would seem that Tony has lied about a few things over the years. I don’t know why, but it’s obvious he knows Gio. I’m working on finding a link between them two. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what it is. I also think that you should let me put some spyware on his computer and cell phone. I hate to say this, but we can no longer trust him. Not when he’s lied about something this big.”
Jasper knows that I’ve never fully trusted anyone, but him. I haven’t trusted my uncle one hundred percent ever. It wasn’t that he’d done anything that would seem untrustworthy to me, but it was one of the core fundamental things he’d taught me. Trusting someone puts you at risk. The things I was doing in my life were already dangerous enough, and I didn’t give anyone any kind of power over me.
Seeing all of this just made the distrust I felt for him all that much worse.
“Alright. You know he’s smart, so be fucking careful. If he catches you putting spyware on his shit, he’s going to flip the fuck out. I couldn’t tell you if he’d talk to us about it or if he’d fucking kill us. I just don’t know anymore.” I really didn’t know how he would react if he found us trying to spy on him or investigate him.
“Just let me know when he's due back into town. I’ll also make sure to load up the tracking software onto his phone. I want to make sure he’s going out of town for these business meetings like he says.” The more Jasper spoke the more I could feel a queasiness start to swirl around in the pit of my stomach.
What if it was all a lie?
What if everything he’d ever told me wasn’t true? All the things I’d done over the past eleven years had been directly because of the things he’d told me. The story he’d constructed to help me understand the reasoning behind my parent’s death had been what pushed me to get revenge.
How was I going to face it if it had all been for nothing?