“You haven’t answered me.”
He deadpans. “My connections are solid. I know you think I’m hiding up here, but I’m not. This place was my prize.” He spreads his arms out wide, a king standing in the middle of his kingdom.
“Prize for what? What did you do in order to deserve all of this?” I take a step toward him, my back tensing beneath the weight of the truth. What he threw away in order to have his bunker in the mountains. What he turned his back on so he could focus on the family that truly mattered to him.
“You think I gave up your mother for this?” He cocks his head. “Is that what you think? You idiot.”
He looks like he wants to smack me upside the head, the same way he did when I was a little boy. Before he walked out on us. Before he left my mother with the fallout of having been the woman of an Irish mobster.
“Then what? What did you do to earn all of this?” When I think of what it would take for me to turn my back on Elana, my stomach turns. The list is short, damn near empty.
Even when I knew I couldn’t have her, I stood in her shadow, protecting her. The gut twist every time I watched her climb into Tony’s car or walk into his house and then again when she reappeared in the morning is nothing compared to what it would be like to not have her in my life.
“If I had stayed, they would have used your mother and you against me. They were going to kill you and sell her.” He takes a step closer to me, his nostrils flaring. “The shit you’ve seen the DeAngelo crew do is nothing compared to what that bastard would have done to your mother if I hadn’t left her and you behind.”
“You’ve told me this before.” I grit my teeth. Our interactions have been limited over the years. He’d found me when word that I’d started working for the Volkov family reached him. It had been a brief and violent conversation.
“You don’t think you’d leave your woman behind if it meant she got to live in peace?”
“I wouldn’t just abandon her. I wouldn’t leave her with nothing.”
He stares at me a long moment. The air thickens between us.
“I didn’t leave her with nothing. Not at first.” He shoves his hand through his hair. It’s gray, but as thick as ever. “When I found out she’d taken up with another man?—”
“You left her. You abandoned us after she’d given up everything to be with you. Her family turned their backs on her for being with an Irishman. And then you pick up and leave her with a small kid. Do you know what it was like for her?”
He puts up a hand to stop my argument.
“I did what I could from a distance to protect you both, but when she started with Christian, I backed away more. When she became pregnant with the girls, I cut her off completely.” His eyes meet mine, emotion swimming in them. “I was a bastard to do it. I know it. The idea of another man touching her, havingher in a way I couldn’t...” His voice trails off, as if he finishes what he’s saying it might burn him.
It’s the first time I understand him. Every time I had to sit back as a spectator while Elana was being loved by a man not me, it took everything in me not to burn the world to ashes. But the torture was mine to bear.
I would never have left her unprotected and uncared for.
“Was it you that killed him, then?” A question that’s burned in my brain for years.
He sighs then shakes his head. “No. I didn’t kill him. I hated him for having what I couldn’t, but he took good care of your mom and you. His death had nothing to do with me.”
“So, what then. What did you do to earn this peaceful little hideout deep in the woods?”
“Cole wanted the throne. I gave it to him. He let me walk away.”
My brow snaps together. “You gave it to him? You were the one who took out his older brother?”
“I played my part, took my prize, and left the game.” He rolls his shoulders back. “I vowed to stay out of their shit, and he promised to leave me in peace.”
“Except you don’t fully believe it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be buried in the woods living in a bunker with flash bomb booby traps.”
He shrugs, like a little kid who’s been caught stealing the last cookie. “The only person I trust is me. So far, they’ve never come after me for anything, but if the wrong person finds out the part I played, who knows. Better to be safe.”
“Why are you telling me this? I could use this information to get the Volkovs clear of Cole’s anger.”
He nods. “You could, yes.”
A lifetime of believing him the most selfish bastard that walked the earth, and he’s sacrificing his peace to get Elana’s freedom.
He sucks in a breath. “But I could also make a call and collect that bounty.”
