That was all I needed to hear. I pushed off the bar and headed toward the door, needing to see Mia. Marco stood and stopped me at the doorway. I spoke before he could. “I don’t trust him.”
“I know.” Marco sighed. “None of us missed the times he’s left to conduct business out of earshot. We’ll get to the bottom of this before any final decisions are made.”
With a clipped nod, I acknowledged what he was saying. “He’s been very focused on Mia.”
Marco ran a hand through his hair. “He mentioned that he didn’t know about some of the things she’d endured. Not only that, but he called Stefano when she was missing. He was worried, and he demanded that the Five Families get involved in finding her and specifically not return her to Joey Tucci.”
Interesting. I hadn’t known that, and it changed things. “He’s still keeping something from us.”
“I agree.” He clapped me on the back. “We’ll get it figured out. Go see Mia and find out when we can travel with them.”
When I entered the temporary post-op room, it was to find Mia sitting up in an oversized chair with her leg bandaged and propped on an ottoman, an IV with a new bag of fluids hooked to her and a fleece blanket tucked under her arms. Her mom’s gold necklace was pooled in her lap.
I pulled a chair next to hers and took her hand in mine, running my thumb back and forth over her soft skin. “How are you feeling?” She looked tired, but some color had returned to her cheeks.
“Better. They’re both dead.”
I studied her, searching for any signs of emotional trauma or pain. She was pale but already looking better out of the bloody and wet clothes. “They are. Guido bled out from the artery you hit when you shot him. And I took care of Ricco.”
She nodded once. “Good. I wanted to make sure.” A second passed before she glanced at her necklace. “It got damaged.”
I knew how much it meant to her and picked it up to inspect the bottom of the bar near where the flower was engraved. “We’ll get it fixed.”
“No. I mean yes, but not until after.” She pulled her hand from mine then pointed to the small separation of what looked almost like a gold stopper at the bottom of the bar. “I couldn’t pull it out, but I think my mom wanted me to open it because of the flower. I don’t know. Everything else that had one of the flowers I associated with her has led to a secret she wanted me to know about.”
I pinched the tiny bit of gold between my fingers and wiggled it back and forth until it came loose. A rolled piece of paper was fitted into the hollowed-out portion of the bar. That, too, came out, and I unrolled the note, which was no bigger than the size of an insert from a fortune cookie. I held the paper so she could read it first.
After she did, her purplish-blue eyes jumped to mine, and the small amount of color she’d regained drained from her cheeks. “Oh my God.”
Alarmed, I flipped the note back so that I could read it. In what I assumed to be her mother’s flowy script, there was confirmation of who she’d had an affair with. It wasn’t new information, but what it revealed changed everything.
Joey Tucci wasn’t Mia’s biological father. Arturo Verretti was, and Dante, Cal, and Adriano were her half brothers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MIA
The slow, steady drip of the IV contrasted with the thundering of my pulse. I should have been calm, happy. What I’d learned was good, certainly better than being a spawn of the devil himself. But I didn’t know what to feel. Too many emotions surrounded Mom’s note, and I clung to Nico’s hand as more pieces of my life fell into place.
Joey Tucci was not my father.
The completely messed-up part was that I didn’t think he was entirely sure I was his blood in the first place. But doing a paternity test would have driven home how the wife he’d supposedly worshipped had betrayed him for far longer than he’d thought.
He was a psychopath. He’d sentenced me to death by Ricco’s hand without certainty that I wasn't his daughter. A shiver danced over me at how history had almost repeated itself, at least by the family line that had dealt a death blow to my mother.
The slow back and forth of Nico’s thumb over my hand kept me tethered to him, to the life I had chosen, the only reality that mattered.
“This changes things.” Nico’s deep voice pulled me away from my thoughts.
I tightly clutched his hand. “I guess it does.” He’d done so much for me already. I didn’t want to rock the boat. “We can wait. I know you’re not sure about Dante, and I don’t want to put you in a position where you have to deal with them because of me.”
“No. That’s not what I meant.” He cupped my face, the pad of his thumb caressing my cheek, and I leaned into his touch.
“We’ll tell everyone now, and Trey can get the testing started to prove they’re your half brothers. It’ll sever any ties that Joey thinks he has to you. And with Ricco dead, he’ll want to use you in any way he can.”
“But he ordered Ricco to kill me.” I frowned, reeling that he could think he had any rights where I was concerned. “I think it’s fair to say he’s washed his hands of me.”
“Not after I killed Ricco.”