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“Bring ’em on in, Jake,” Cooper drawled, watching as Turk and Iron got ready.
The door swung open slowly and Jake moved in, ahead of the others. Hands held carefully to their sides, the other three men moved in behind him.
Government. The two in the front were feds, and when Cooper glimpsed the one in the back, he knew who he was dealing with. Giovanni Fredrico.
“Sarita.” Fredrico pulled off the ball cap, his eyes on Sair as she stood still and silent in the entrance to the escape stairs.
He didn’t look as old as Cooper knew he was. Giovanni Fredrico was fifty years old, but looked ten years younger. His black hair had only a sprinkling of white at the temples. His eyes were like Sair’s, a pale blue, his skin swarthy, and he was staring at his daughter the way another man might stare at an angel.
Sarah had to fight the need to run to him. Gio the Giant, he was called. He was her pa-pa. At least, he had been, until she had learned what he was, who he was. Until she had learned he had been just as brutal, as cruel as the men who had kidnapped her.
As Ethan lowered his gun, she moved hesitantly from Casey. Skirting around the crowd now in the front part of the room, she moved slowly to Ethan. She couldn’t explain the reasons why, couldn’t explain why she needed to hold on to him, but the need was overwhelming. She felt as though the floor were rocking beneath her, as though the world was spinning.
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nbsp; When his arm slid around her and he pulled her close to his side, it felt right. And as she stared back at Gio the Giant, she fought to find in him the man who had rocked her to sleep as a child, who had sung funny songs to her, who taught her to dance and how to play hopscotch.
“Sarita.” His face contorted painfully as the arms he had lifted out to her fell to his sides. “I have searched for you since you left Dallas. Two years I looked, after your cousin and aunt learned of Martin’s death. To bring you home.”
“I am home.” She held on to Ethan as though he were a lifeline.
She felt as though her heart were breaking in two. How she had loved her tall, strong pa-pa. Loved him so much that the news of his death, despite her anger at him, had nearly broken her. And now, to learn that that, too, was a lie …
He breathed in roughly, shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks in a move that was so very characteristic of him. He stared back at her, his face more lined than it had been, his eyes shadowed.
“Your brother, he is in California searching for you. He thought perhaps you had returned there.”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear about her brother, either. Beauregard, named for an American friend, was his father’s son. Not the brother she had imagined him to be.
“Go away,” she whispered, feeling Ethan’s arms tighten around her.
“Sair,” Ethan whispered against her hair. “Let’s see what he wants.”
She shook her head and cried. “He wants forgiveness. Atonement. Isn’t that right, Gio?” She blinked back her tears at the pain that filled his face. “It’s the same thing Beau wants as well.”
“I want to know my little Sarita, my angel, is safe and happy,” Gio said heavily. “Forgiveness or atonement is not what I seek.”
“You knew before you came here.” She could feel the pain ripping at her, digging merciless claws into her chest. “You checked me out and you followed me, and you sent Beau to California. Why? Shall I tell you why?”
“Sarita,” he whispered as a man stricken with grief would have whispered.
“Why, Gio?” She clenched her fists and faced him, years of anger and pain exploding inside her, cascading through her like an avalanche of sorrow and fury. “You sent Beau to California so he wouldn’t kill? So he wouldn’t do as he swore when I was sixteen and kill any man who dared touch me? Well, I’m no longer sixteen. And I’m no longer Sarita.”
“You’re still my daughter,” he said softly. “The child my heart beats for.”
She wanted to sneer, but it hurt. It hurt so bad.
“You killed,” she whispered. “Drugs, rape, murder. Ah God.” She wiped her face with her hands, shaking, shuddering with the horror of the information she had learned once her father had been arrested. “You, Uncle Martin, Beau, all of you. You were criminals. What Marco did to me when he kidnapped me was gentle compared to your crimes.”
“I never harmed a child,” Gio bellowed then, his hands pulling from his slacks, raking through his hair. “I never harmed an innocent, nor did I or Beau rape anyone. There were rules. Marco broke those rules when he took you.”
“You should have never lied to me,” she yelled back furiously. “Why didn’t you just tell me you were a murdering mafia lord and that was the reason I wasn’t allowed beyond the walls of our estate? My God in heaven, perhaps then I would have understood why they hurt me.”
Gio seemed to shudder. Her pa-pa. She saw her pa-pa in this man, no matter how hard she tried not to.
“Beau was not part of that business,” he finally said heavily. “It was the reason he was gone so often—he could not stomach the path I could not veer from.” He shook his head slowly. “When they took you, I died inside.”
“They had me six weeks,” she sneered. “Six cuts, Gio. Do you remember them?”
