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I snort a laugh. I doubt either of them would see it that way.
“Considering they saved your life and all.” He arches one thick eyebrow at me.
Dammit. I scuff the toe of my shoe against the marble floor.
“Besides, it will be hard to ride with your wrist still busted up.”
Glancing down at my bandaged arm, I grunt with frustration. He’s right. But I could wait until I’m fully healed. That would be better than spending even more time with two men who hate me. Two men I can’t be around because I don’t trust myself with them. I have never in my life been controlled by my emotions before, but Ace and Romeo bring out my vulnerability in a way that I can’t begin to wrap my head around.
“They’ll be accompanying you, Keres. Deal with it.”
I run my tongue over my bottom lip. “Fine.”
He rolls his eyes. “If I had any doubt you were a Moretti woman, your stubbornness and refusal to accept my help would convince me otherwise.”
“You don’t have any doubt though. I wanted to ask you before I left. How did you find out?”
He steps forward until he’s standing a few inches from me, towering over my much-shorter frame, but I’m not intimidated by him. Not anymore. Not now that I know who he truly is. “You know we have another half sister, Toni?”
I nod. “The MMA fighter? Yeah I knew that. She was home for your wedding a few weeks ago, but she doesn’t come around much.”
“You must have been watching us for a long time. She left for Europe three months ago.”
“A few months, yeah.” I’m worried the truth will renew his fury, but if Lorenzo is surprised by my admission, he doesn’t show it.
“When you took Mia, I had Nathan James and his hacker friend look into your mom’s past for me. Kendra Sideris was born right here in Chicago. She disappeared twenty-four years ago, after getting a job in a local Italian restaurant—one my family used to own. You were born nine months after her disappearance. Your birth mom’s name was recorded as Jane Smith, but the nurse who looked after you both described a woman who looked just like Kendra. A woman who was terrified for her life. She reported the situation to the authorities but was told in no uncertain terms to back off.”
My eyes widen with surprise. “She got all that in a few days? Nathan’s hacker is something else.”
“Nathan James is a good man to know.”
I pick at a stray piece of cotton on the seam of my jeans, avoiding Lorenzo’s gaze. His knowledge of my past makes me feel way too exposed. “It seems like everything is about who you know in this life. But that still doesn’t answer my question. How were you so sure I was a Moretti?”
“Probably for the same reasons you are. How old were you when you learned who your father was?”
The memory almost knocks me off my feet, and I suck in a deep breath and steady myself, planting my hand on the wall beside me. “Eleven. It was a few weeks before… before my mom was killed. I guess she knew they were planning on doing something bad… Planning to sell me. That’s when she told me my father was a powerful man. One of the most powerful there was. And that if ever I was in trouble, I should use his name and that would save me.” Tears sting my eyes again, but I bite down on the inside of my cheek and remember who the fuck I am. Remember that I’m a warrior. I look up, hardening my gaze as I stare into the face of my older brother. “But you know what, his name didn’t save me at all. It got her killed. And right then and there I vowed that one day I would make him suffer the way that she suffered. That I would make his children suffer the way that hers did.”
I watch his face for his reaction, but he remains annoyingly impassive and unreadable. “So after you killed Theo. You planned to come after us too?”
I ball my hands into fists and my nails dig into my palms. “Yes.”
His dark eyes narrow and the muscles in his jaw twitch. “Just Dante, Joey, and me? Or our children too?”
His question feels like an accusation, and the assumption that I would have hurt innocent children hurts more than a punch to the face. “Just the three of you. I would never hurt a child.”
He snarls. “But you’d hurt my sister. Someone who has never done anything to you?”
And I don’t know what the hell happens to me, but I sway on my feet. The jealousy and longing that rips through my soul is visceral and primal and raw, and it hurts so much that I gasp for breath. His loyalty to Joey and how fiercely he protects her—why didn’t I get to have any of that? “I-I thought all of you were involved.” I suck in a deep breath. “But now I know that I was wrong.”
“So, you’re no longer looking for vengeance against your half siblings, Keres?”
I shake my head. “No. Once I’ve found Theo, I’m done.”
He inches even closer, and I stare down at the floor. But he cups my chin and tilts my head until I’m looking into his eyes again, the same way he did with his daughter in the library. “You want to know how I knew for certain you were my sister?”
“How?”
“Your hatred for our father was about much more than his involvement in what happened to you and your mother. It was borne of a betrayal so profound that it leaves its fingerprints on your soul for eternity. That kind of betrayal, from a father against his child, is one that can’t be imagined by anyone other than those who have felt the same anguish.”
