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I watch the city come alive as the beginnings of morning breaks outside the window. “It’s fine.”
“She seems lovely, brother,” Raphael adds.
Lovely is just one way to describe her.
Stubborn, sassy, and headstrong are a few others.
As is beautiful, sweet, and…a mom.
Fuck.
I probably shouldn’t have kissed her without talking first. But just like that night in the club, our passion is still there, burning hot and fierce. It’s worth exploring, but how can we if she continues to swear I’m the father of her baby? Of this Liam kid? What kind of future can we build from that disillusion? How can we even entertain the idea when the real father of her son is out there somewhere? It’s clear I have to find the father, as much as I hate the idea of seeing his bastard face. But only his identity will settle this argument between us before it festers into a wound that can’t be healed.
Dad levels Raphael and me with a stern yet tired look from his seat behind his office desk. Uncle Leo stands behind him, leaning against the wall beside the bay window, nursing a coffee between big yawns.
“Do either of you want to explain why the chief of police woke me up before dawn about three dead bodies found in a burning car outside of the warehouse district?”
Dad isn’t stupid. He knows we had something to do with it. I’m just annoyed that the police spoke to him before I could. “Do you want the short or the long version?”
Dad swings his eyes to me and narrows them. “I am in no mood for your sarcasm. I want the fucking truth, Michael.”
Fair enough. “I received an email last night with an invitation to a human auction happening at midnight. The email was sent anonymously with the subject line save her.”
“A human auction?” Dad frowns, sharing a look with his brother over his shoulder. “Let me see the email.”
I pull my phone out, load the email, and hand the device over. He studies it for a long minute before handing my phone back.
“And I assume the girl you have resting in your penthouse is the one the email instructed you to save?”
Of course, he knows about her. I shoot my brother an annoyed look, and the bastard has the nerve to shrug. “She is.”
“Did you buy her?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not, he says,” Dad mocks with a scoff. “No. Instead, you ambushed and killed a well-respected businessman and his guards.” His anger slips its leash an inch. “Do you honestly think his disappearance will go unnoticed?”
I glare at Dad, unable to believe what I’m hearing. Is he really defending a man who bought another human being? “Well-respected? The man bought her like he was ordering something off a fucking menu. What would you have done, Dad? Just let him get away with it?”
“I wouldn’t have gone to the fucking auction to begin with!” he shouts, swinging his arm out and sweeping a stack of folders off his desk. They hover before fluttering to the ground in a jumbled mess. “You rushed into this, half-cocked and unprepared.”
Perhaps it’s sleep deprivation or the lingering memory of my argument with Rose, but his accusations cause an uncomfortable irritation to crawl under my skin, triggering a reflexive need to defend myself. “I disagree, Dad. We had to act quickly, and we thought everything through. We wore masks and took a vehicle that couldn’t be traced back to us. We ambushed them under a bridge with no cameras and burned any evidence we may have left behind.”
“A dozen different things could have gone wrong,” Dad argues, sounding an awful lot like Enzo.
“But they didn’t.”
With a roar, Dad hurls his coffee cup at the wall. The porcelain shatters, filling the air with the heavy aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
“Do you feel any remorse at all, son? Do you not understand the gravity of how stupid your decision last night was? What could have happened if even one thing went wrong?”
“Yes, I do, but isn’t human trafficking in Miami cause for alarm?”
“Of course it is!” Dad yells. “But that’s not the point. It should have been an investigation approved by the High Table. The moment you received that email, you should have called me.”
“There was no time, Dad.”
“I doubt that.” Dad takes several deep breaths to calm his rising blood pressure. “You’re lucky. Absolutely fucking lucky that no one recognized your stupid, reckless asses. But that doesn’t excuse your behavior with the oilman. What were you thinking? You should have brought him in. He might have known something we could have used to find out who’s behind the entire thing.”
