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Chapter Twenty-Two
-Dante-
WORDS MATTERED, BUTthis time they stuck in my throat. I would rather have choked to death on the syllable of a one-word answer than ever see that much pain in Noemi’s eyes again.
I wanted to stop there. She didn’t need to hear the sordid details. I could skip over all of that now that she knew the relationship between her father and Phillip McKenzie. Her father, unfortunately, was as much a victim of McKenzie’s depravity as Lydia was. Lydia was an innocent and didn’t deserve to have her name be part of the story any longer.
With what little I’d explained, Noemi was completely focused on her father’s infidelity. Perhaps she should have been because it was that infidelity that led to his death, but the person who killed Gerald Petrafuso wasn’t the only person who wanted him dead.
“I know this won’t be easy to do, but don’t get hung up on Lydia.”
“Really?” she snorted angrily. “My father was cheating on my mother with an eighteen-year-old and I’m supposed to brush it off?”
The man I was would have taken her comment with pride. She believed in me and believed the story I told her. She had questions, but she was seeking more facts, not questioning my credibility.
The man I had become found no satisfaction in telling her about her father’s past and in doing so, ruining the memory of a man who had been a loving father and up until the very end, a good husband.
But I didn’t have time to coddle her. I needed to get Noemi past those details and move her on to the truths that would ruin everything she believed.
As if I hadn’t done enough to her already.
“I understand how you feel—”
“No, you don’t,” she exclaimed.
“I do,” I insisted. “Noemi, your father was a good man—”
“He was,” she agreed angrily. “Until he cheated on my mother.”
I moved around the desk to pull her into my arms. “You can’t measure the value of an entire lifetime by one mistake. Your father has already paid the price for his indiscretion.”
“Indiscretion? That’s putting it mildly.”
She was stiff with anger, but Noemi let me wrap my arms around her. We were close enough that I felt the strength of her heartbeat.
I wrapped my fist in her hair, not to control her as I’d done in the past, but to soothe myself. Selfish bastard that I still was. It was another way of getting close to her, of becoming a part of her, to have the strands of silk wrapped between my fingers link us together. I wanted her to take from me. She already had courage. I wanted to bolster that toughness with my own resolve.
“Try not to focus on those details.”
“Because there’s more,” she guessed, tilting her head to look up at me.
Once again, I was unable to answer her. Her eyes narrowed.
“Tell me. Was my father murdered because of what he knew about McKenzie and his disgusting parties?”
I had to think about how to answer her.
“The answer to that is yes... and no.”
When her shoulders fell, I knew she was reaching her limit.
“Yes, someone wanted your father out of the way. I don’t know the details, but I suspect that he felt guilty.”
“He should have!”
“I absolutely agree. But that guilt made people nervous. McKenzie could never let this information get out and people in power like Bailey and Rubinstein couldn’t afford it either.”
“So, McKenzie killed my father to keep him quiet?”
