“A few days after I found you. He called me while Ammo and I were chasing down leads for Carl.”
“But that was weeks ago,” she cried. “You didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I could tell you that I forgot. But that’s not the full truth. I think deep down I knew that my reasons for keeping you here were shaky at best. As long as you thought Bartolli was alive, I could justify keeping you here. But with the threat of him gone, well, my reasons just became selfish and morally gray.”
“Morally gray?” she cried. “Let’s say completely black! Zander, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Do you have any idea of how important that information was?”
He narrowed his gaze, studying her. “I understand it’s important because it means he is no longer a threat to you. But why does it seem like there is something else?”
“Because there is . . . do you know what happened to his wife?”
“His wife? Why would I know that? Why would I care?” he asked, looking bewildered.
“Because she’s my sister,” she whispered. “Fergus Bartolli’s wife, Angie, is my sister.”
He moved forward, sitting on the coffee table facing her. She ran a shaky hand over her face. What the hell was going on? Would Angie be free now that Bartolli was dead? Or had something bad happened to her?
“Did she die as well?” she whispered her greatest fear.
“I don’t know. How did Miles miss the fact that you had a sister in his background check?”
Miles had done a background check on her? Well, of course he would have. She was kind of horrified by the idea of what he might have found out.
“And Kent didn’t say anything about you having a sister or her being Bartolli’s wife.”
“He wouldn’t have known. No one did.”
“What do you mean, no one knew?”
“Angie isn’t actually related to me by blood. My father moved us around a lot. He'd get into trouble for something then he’d just take off. We were living in Chicago when he met this woman, Betty. We ended up moving into an apartment with her and her daughter.”
She rubbed a hand over her face. “I was fifteen, and Angie was thirteen. Betty didn’t take any interest in me. She and my dad would get drunk every night, go out and party, take drugs. When they’d come home and start fighting, Angie would climb into bed with me. When we ran out of food, I’d go find some. Well, steal some. I didn’t have much choice. I had to look out for her. We lived in a bad neighborhood. There was no one to help us.”
“Your father was a fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, that and more. Because it gets worse. We’d been living there for close to two years when Betty overdosed. I thought that maybe Angie would be able to still live with us. But someone tracked down her father and took her with him. Unfortunately, her father was like mine. Abusive and mean. He was also a gambler. I kept in touch with her as best I could when my dad was moving us all over the place. I promised her I would help her. I had this plan. I’d get a job, find somewhere for us to live and then, when she turned eighteen, she could come live with me.”
She made a scoffing noise. “It amazes me how I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t, of course. I got a job, but I wasn’t on the books and when the economy took a downturn, I was the first one they got rid of. And I couldn’t get unemployment. I was barely surviving. By the time I got back on my feet, Angie had already turned eighteen. I hadn’t heard from her for a while. I thought she was upset with me. When I managed to finally track her dad down, I discovered that that bastard had given her to Bartolli.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, he owed a lot of money, but instead of paying the debt, he gave that bastard his daughter. How could he do that? I didn’t know how to get her away from him. I went off the rails a bit. Got into trouble. Hung around the wrong sort of people. There were months where I can’t remember anything. Finally, it took me hitting rock bottom before I could work my way back up. I woke up at some guy’s house and had no idea where I was or what I’d even done the night before. That’s when I knew I had to get my shit together. I was becoming my father. I sobered up. It wasn’t easy, and I had setbacks. Eventually, I got another cash job. Then I came up with this plan.”
“What was it?”
She knew that she was putting the nail in the coffin of any feelings he might have for her. Who would want someone who’d just admitted that she used to get so drunk that she’d lost large patches of memory?
“I managed to find out where some of Bartolli’s lower level guys sold drugs. I started buying some off this guy. I didn’t use them. Flushed them down the toilet. But I could tell he liked me. Max was, well, to me he seemed nice. We started dating. For a while, things were good. Eventually, I told him about Angie. And he said he would help me. I thought . . . I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Even though he was very low level, he was working his way up. Took him a while, but he got a phone to Angie and I finally had a way of getting in touch with her. Fuck, I was so naïve to trust him.”
“What did he do?”
“He started acting strange. He would lash out, get mad over small things. Accuse me of cheating on him. The first time he hit me, I walked out. I wasn’t going to put up with that. I’d had it from my father all my life. There was no way I was taking it from him. But then he chased me down, promised never to do it again. Said it was the stress. Several months passed, he started taking more drugs. And he hit me several more times.”
She took in a shuddering breath. “I should have left him, but he was my connection to Angie and I had no one else. Then, I saw Eden’s profile pop up on social media. I messaged her. I know it was wrong to use her like this, but I figured if I could just get some money, I could leave him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“She gave me the money. She was really kind to me. But I made the mistake of going back to get my stuff. At that stage, we were staying in a cheap motel. Max didn’t really have any friends, just Carl.”