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“I’m sorry, Papa. I know I screwed up.” Nico rested his elbow on the arm of the couch and leaned closer to our dad. “But I—“
“I’m disappointed with you. We needed this marriage to unite our families, not start another war.”
Dante even helped Nico end the engagement. None of us wanted to be attached to the Vitale family for the rest of our lives. That would have meant holidays and meals together. The few times I had to see Carlo were enough.
I wanted to kill that motherfucker.
Not be his brother-in-law.
“I have another way for us to settle the score with the Vitales.” Dante removed a piece of paper from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and unfolded it. He handed it to our dad. “This will change Vincenzo’s mind about another war.”
We took turns reading the paternity results before we came over to our dad’s penthouse.
Dad read the paper in disbelief, his eyes widening as he scanned the lab results. “Giancarlo isn’t Ava’s father.” He looked at Dante. “How did you get this information?”
Dante set his glass on the coffee table and steepled his hands on his lap. “I found Ava’s birth certificate in Giancarlo’s safe. Someone crossed out his name and wrote Vincenzo Vitale. So Nico took one of Giancarlo’s toothbrushes.”
“And I got samples of her hair and saliva,” I chimed.
He didn’t want to know how I got the saliva, so I kept out that part, laughing on the inside. Stefan smirked as our eyes met. Nico shook his head and chuckled.
“I had the samples analyzed,” Dante said.
Dad leaned back in the chair, folding his hands on his lap as he stared out the patio doors. The sound of the Atlantic Ocean permeated every inch of the space. We grew up to that soothing sound that often comforted each of us.
“The marriage between Nico and Vittoria didn’t work out,” my dad said with a sly grin. “However, if this is true, Vincenzo has more than one daughter.” His eyes moved to Dante and stayed there. “Dante, as my oldest, it’s time for you to marry. And you will marry Ava.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed into slits. He looked frozen, as if he were unable to move.
Nico gasped. “But Dante doesn’t even like Ava. He treats her like shit.”
I begged to differ.
The special bracelet Dante had made for Ava’s birthday said otherwise. He could act like he hate fucked her, but that was far from the truth. My older brother had it just as bad for Ava as the rest of us.
Dante tapped his long fingers on his knee, his expression unreadable. As usual, you couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Even when Dante was angry, he hid his emotions well.
“I’ll marry Ava if Dante doesn’t want to,” Stefan offered.
My twin was so in love with Ava it was written on his face. I felt things for her I didn’t think I would ever feel for a woman. And Nico was obsessed with Ava and would have married her in a heartbeat.
But Dante?
“We don’t know Vincenzo is Ava’s father,” Dante said calmly as if my dad asked him about the weather, not proposed marriage. “The test only ruled out Giancarlo. Anyone could have written Vincenzo’s name on Ava’s birth certificate.”
“It will test positive for Vincenzo,” Dad said with certainty, shifting his drink to his left hand. “Before Ava was born, Giancarlo suspected she wasn’t his. He saw Francesca leaving the bathroom with Vincenzo at one of my parties. A month later, he told me Francesca was pregnant with Ava.”
“That doesn’t mean Vincenzo is her father,” Nico pointed out.
“Giancarlo has unusually low testosterone,” he told us between sips of his drink. “And an even lower sperm count. They tried to have children for years without success. Francesca was distraught, threatened to divorce Giancarlo because of it.”
“Is that why he sent Ava’s mother away?” Stefan asked.
Dad shrugged. “Francesca started drinking and popping pills after she had Ava. It only got worse as the years went by. Francesca gossiped about our family in public. Having her around was too much of a liability. So we locked her in an institution in California.”
Nico puffed his cigar, the smoke billowing around his head. “I thought she was in rehab?”
Our father shook his head. “No, it’s an asylum for the mentally ill. Giancarlo wanted Ava to believe her mom was someplace nicer. A spa for rich people.”
