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Did I still after all this time?
Matteo took my hands in his. “Do you really understand how valuable you are Carter? Do you understand how fucking superior you are to them? They don’t deserve to be anywhere near you.”
“They probably don’t deserve to live.”
“True. Do you know who your biological father is?”
“No. My mother never had a chance to tell me, and I never sought him out. If he didn’t want to come for me, then I didn’t need him. There’s also a damn good chance my father had him killed. If so, I don’t want to know that.”
“Did they hurt you?” he asked.
“Physically? No. My brother liked to beat on me when we were teenagers, but no worse than what other brothers do.”
I could tell from the way Matteo studied my expression that he didn’t believe me. Landon had beaten me up, but only when he had his friends to help. “That doesn’t matter now.”
“Yes, it fucking does. I will take that son of a bitch out. I don’t care what it means. I don’t care what the consequences are. I will not let him live knowing he’s hurt you.”
“He hurt me far more with words and actions. By the time I graduated high school, I knew I didn’t want anything to do with either of them anymore. I was supposed to go to an Ivy League school, then law school afterward. Instead, I joined the navy. My father cut me off financially, but I had money from my grandmother. She was the one loving person I had in my life as a child.”
“Is she still alive?”
I shook my head. “I lost her my senior year of high school.”
“Is that part of what made you leave?”
I nodded.
“What else Carter? I can feel you holding something back.”
How did he read me so well? “She told me a secret. I wasn’t the only illegitimate son. My father wasn’t able to have children.”
Matteo’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God. Did your father know Landon wasn’t his?”
I nodded.
“You said your father resented that you didn’t look like him. How does Landon?”
“He looks like my father because his real father was my uncle. My grandmother felt certain he’d made a deal with his younger brother. Most likely, my mother wasn’t a consenting party.”
Matteo fisted his hands at his sides. “He needs to fucking die. Does Landon know?”
“I think he does, but he’d never admit it. I didn’t tell him outright, but I did tell him that if he ever came for me, I had a secret that would turn his world upside down.”
“I’m shocked it took him this long to come after you.”
“He likes to pretend he’s tough, but he’s weak as shit, and he never makes a move without my father’s permission. I did tell my father exactly what I knew, and I warned him that if anything happened to me, it would leak. He didn’t want this scandal to come out for obvious reasons, but also because my uncle tragically drowned when Landon was a toddler.”
“Holy fucking shit. This is all so twisted.”
“Yeah, it is. My guess is that Landon came after me the way he did because he needed to make it look like I was a criminal. If he made me look like a traitor, nothing I said would be trusted. It would look like I was trying to get back at him for exposing me.”
23
MATTEO
“Jesus Christ, Carter. I thought my family sucked, but my parents were just casually mean. How did you survive all those years like that?”
“My grandma mostly, then my friends. Before I met them, I was used to being alone.”
