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“Clara, are you trying to tell us you don’t know about Gio’s brother?” Clara, that’s her name! It’s such a beautiful name and fits her perfectly.
“Stu, the only brother Giovani Dario had is dead.” At her revelation, all the men in the room share loaded looks before they release their holds on Xander and Knox who creep in closer with Taylan.
“Mom, Gio has another brother?” I don’t know if Knox meant to voice it as a question but that’s the way it came out. Clara turns back and the remorseful look on her face stumps me.
“The papers you hold, my sweet girl, explain everything.” I reel back feeling like a dog in a show ring with all the men’s eyes on me.
“What?” I squeak.
“Those papers are about her, Mom,” Knox says but Clara shakes her head.
“No, Son, there is some information in there that is for you.” Knox and I stare at each other. I see untrust and worry in his gaze as my own emotions begin to spiral, did she see it before I could tuck it away in my pocket?
“What is she talking about, Lakeland?” The cold tone which he uses to address me has worry coiling inside me as I prepare myself for him to resort back to the old habits of hurting me.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. The space between us is eaten up in three strides as he gets right in my face. I back up, only for him to follow until I am pressed flat against the wall with his arms caging me in on either side of my head. A whimper escapes me.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” His quietly spoken words have the same effect as if he had shouted them.
“I didn’t know,” I choke out. His face contorts into a mask of fury.
“Knox, she doesn’t?—”
“Stay out of this, Mom,” he growls without taking his eyes off me. He grabs the back of my neck in a punishing hold and forces me to my tiptoes. “Tell me what the fuck she is talking about.”
“Roberto is alive.”
“I was pregnant,” Clara and I both say at the same time.
Knox
Three words.
Three-fucking-words.
That’s all it takes for me to drop my hold on her, snatch the papers out of her grasp and ignore everyone in the fucking room as I escape. I hear Xan and Tay shouting for me to come back but I don’t listen, I want to get in my car and get as fucking far away from here as I can but I can’t. Not with all the fucking pigs on the lookout for me. I head for my bedroom, slamming the door closed behind me. I pace the length of my room until I can calm myself enough—well, enough that I don’t shred the papers in my hands. I rest my back against the far wall and slide down until my ass meets the hardwood floor. Ignoring the sounds of shouting from outside my room, I sift through the papers. The top ones are all Lakeland’s medical records. I exhale sharply at the sight of the word amnesia.
She was telling the truth!
I comb through the rest of her records seeing that the doctors strongly urged for her to see a therapist to help with gaining her memories back but there are no records here of her ever seeing one. Her discharge papers state Percy signed her out against doctors recommendations that she needed to remain in the hospital. He used her amnesia against her but why? What the fuck did her father get out of keeping her away from me? The next one is a report on medication for Lake. None of the medication listed is what she said Percy had been giving her for years. I scan over the next couple of reports to find a receipt from a pharmacy for a script under her father’s name for all five of the medications she mentioned to me at Central Park. The fucker was drugging her to keep her memories suppressed.
I place those papers to the side and will myself to remain calm as I see Roberto’s on the next set of papers, I scan over the report and still at the last paragraph that is addressed to me.
Knox,
You owe me nothing, you owe no one a thing except for your mother and sister.
There is a key attached to the back of this letter, find the safety deposit box and everything you need to take over will be there. It’s in your hometown, your mother will know which bank.
You hate me and I understand that, I wanted your hate, I wanted you as far away from me as possible. You owe it to yourself to know the truth. That girl was nothing but a pawn in a battle of men wanting more money.
Find the truth.
I turn the page over trying to see who it’s from but it’s stapled together with the medical records that show Roberto didn’t fucking die. I thought I managed to shoot him in the back of the head but by the looks of these reports, I grazed the side of his neck with the bullet. If this shit is true, why the fuck did he pretend to stay dead all this time? I stand and grab the manila envelope from the bed and turn it upside down, a single gold key falls to the bed. I stare at the fucking thing like it’s going to attack me. Grinding my teeth, I snatch the key and shove it in my pocket, then scan through the rest of the documents Knight gathered for me. Anger courses through me at the still shot image of Percy, Karl and Giovani. There is a fourth person with them but their face is obscured by a mask. It’s not the fact that I can’t see that has my blood boiling, it’s the fact that I can tell from the body shape that it’s a woman who has a leash clasped to a collar around her neck. Karl holds the leash in his fat stubby hands.
I flick to the next photo to see it’s a picture of a man's back as he stands next to a white Honda. I flick to the next image which gives me a side-on view of his face and everything inside me stills, my heart rate slows at the sight of my father’s face. Too lost in the sight of Roberto Da Luca’s face, I don’t hear the door open.
“Knox?” Tearing my gaze from the picture I turn to see Lakeland and my mom standing in the doorway with Tay and Xan behind them. Lakeland nibbles on her bottom lip for a second before pulling a piece of folded paper from her back pocket and crossing the room to hand it to me. I stare at it for a second before finally standing and taking it from her. The moment I read over the contents it slips through my fingers. As I stare down at her, tears cloud her eyes. “I lost our baby,” she chokes out. Without thinking, I toss the other papers to the bed and wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair as she cries for the loss of the child we will never know.
