My eyes sprang open, and I took in the man standing at the threshold.
I didn’t know what to call him.
Father? Dad? Or by his name, Francisco Bianchi.
“Can I come in?” he asked quietly.
I shrugged. It was his house. I couldn’t tell him what to do.
He took that as my agreement and came inside the room. My eyes tracked his movements as he hesitated by the end of the couch I was sitting on before he chose the adjacent recliner.
He said nothing for a while.
We stared at each other, me taking in his familiar brown eyes.
He said I had his eyes.
And perhaps because he had said it, or maybe because it was true, but I could see that now.
“You remind me so much of your mother, sweetheart.”
I tilted my head to the side. I lost Mom when I was nine. Not too young that I didn’t remember her, but young enough that I only saw her in moments and not her as her own person.
I remembered my mom as my mom, and only my mom, not as a woman forced to marry the monster that was Angelo Agnello. Definitely not as a woman with desires—the one who acted upon those desires with this man in front of me.
He stood up and walked to the bookshelf set against the wall opposite me. I watched him, wondering what was taking Mikhail so long.
I didn’t exactly have the best social skills, and I didn’t want things to get awkward between us.
But then he returned to me, and in his hands was a notebook and a black pen. He handed both items to me, and I hesitated for a quick second before I took them.
He sat back down on the recliner, studying me. His hands were hooked together and placed on his lap. Unlike me, he seemed at ease with everything, though I knew that, like my men, he probably had years of practice hiding his emotions.
“Roberto told me you spoke to him,” Francisco said.
I looked up at him, then back at the notebook before looking at him again and nodding.
“So you can speak, you just … can’t?”
I turned my gaze down and shrugged.
“I know the Agnello bastard had something to do with that.”
It surprised me to hear the anger in his voice. It surprised me out of my thoughts, and I took him in. How would he react if I told him I had witnessed my mom’s murder?
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Catalina. But I hope, one of these days, you might be comfortable enough to tell me—even if you have to do it by writing it down.”
I nodded. Perhaps so.
It surprised me how gentle he was. Like King Triton, from my favorite princess movie when I was little,The Little Mermaid.
I could smile over the thought. As if a don to one of the rising criminal enterprises could be described as gentle.
It was still hard to come to terms with the fact that this man was my father, and that he might—I took a deep breath—love me.
The concept seemed so foreign to me that I had difficulty coming to terms with it.
“Did you know your mom named you?” he asked.