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Boone rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t about to make it easy.
Keene took a breath, clearly running out of patience with me already. “I’m sorry we—I—didn’t take your feelings into account when we assigned you a tail while you were in town and pulled some strings to get Brody assigned as your permanent PSO.”
“Me, too,” Royce said quietly.
“And me.” Boone spoke a little more grudgingly, but I figured he was still mad about the liquor incident, so I let it slide.
I blamed the jetlag for not noticing immediately how Boone held himself, as if his ribs were hurting him, and Keene was sporting a red mark under his eye. Royce had a slightly swollen lip, and one of his cheeks looked a bit bruised, and Gideon’s knuckles were red.
I looked up at Gideon. My eldest brother was the last to get himself into a scuffle—even as kids, he took his role as eldest seriously and was enough of a lawyer even then to prefer to settle matters with his words instead of fists. But underneath that polished and poised façade was a beast of a fighter when he was riled. He was actually the best at hand-to-hand of all my brothers, and the boys had all learned from an early age not to push him too far. Gideon Accardi might never start a fight, but he sure as shit would finish one.
“Did you beat them up for me?” I blinked up at him adoringly, but he ignored the question.
Instead, he cleared his throat, adding, “And I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions at the office the other day. I knew you had good men watching you, and instead of asking you what I was looking at with that file, I made assumptions.”
I blew out a breath. “Since we’re all apologizing,” I started. Might as well get everything I could out while we were all there and in a reasonable mood. “I owe you one, too.”
“Just Gideon?” I heard Boone mutter under his breath, but I ignored him.
“The reason Matteo suggested one-on-one classes with Gia wasn’t so she could catch up with kids her own age. It’s because she already knows more than her class, and he wasn’t sure how to tell you.” I looked down at my hands, not ashamed of what I’d done, exactly, but ashamed that it had required Gia and me to keep secrets from him. “She often joins my classes with Matteo, and he’s been giving her instruction here and there over the last few years.”
Keene, Royce, and Boone all gave Gideon the side-eye, but other than tightening his jaw, he didn’t look that upset. I figured he’d started to think something was up over the last few days, at least. “Why wouldn’t you just ask me?” he finally forced out, running a hand through his hair.
I scoffed, and he corrected, “Or at least tell me. Jesus, how many years has this been going on?”
I shrugged, unsure what I should admit to and what to hold back. “Gia had been asking for a few months by that point,” I dodged. “And you outright denied even talking about it with me. I was afraid if we told you, you wouldn’t let me see her anymore.” The genuine fear in my voice stopped him short, and he picked up my feet to sit next to me, placing them on his lap.
“Alessia Alina Accardi, there is absolutely nothing you could ever do that would cause me to take Gia from you.” His voice was calm, confident, and so full of emotion that tears came to my eyes. “My little girl loves you just as much as you do her. We might sometimes fight as a family. Lord knows we don’t always see eye to eye, but at the end of the day, we will always be there for each other.”
I shook my head, unable to stop the words from spilling out. “I used to think that, too.”
The moment of stunned silence was deafening. “I—I made you think …” The harshness in Gideon’s words, the heartbreak in them, broke something in me, and I shook my head.
“Daddy,” I whispered the word as if I could hardly bear to put it out in the world.
They all blinked, frozen with shock, then Boone swore, running a hand over his face.
“When I was a kid, Daddy let me do anything. He showed me how to shoot, drive, fight. He didn’t care that I was a tomboy, that I wanted combat boots for my birthday. And all y’all let me tag along when you were home on leave, taking me with you when you went to work out with the men, or if you were going hiking or rock climbing. You taught me how to survive in the woods, how to throw a punch.” My smile was small but genuine. “And then Momma died,” I sniffed, “and everyone was gone after bereavement leave, and Boone a few months later—not that I blamed him. But Daddy, he wasn’t our daddy anymore. He didn’t eat, barely slept, he wasn’t … here.” My voice was thick with tears, though I desperately tried to keep them in check. “I was so scared that he wouldn’t … that he would—” I cut myself off. “I took all the weapons in the house and buried them in the backyard in the middle of the night,” I whispered that like a secret I was supposed to take to my grave, and in a way, I had planned on it to be.
Keene and Royce came closer, getting to their knees in front of me, resting their hands on my legs.
“You should have told us,” Boone snapped, clearly agitated.
“And said what? That I was afraid Daddy was going to blow his brains out?” Everyone flinched, but I didn’t stop. “What would that have accomplished? All y’all were enlisted. It’s not like you could quit your job and leave in the middle of your tours,” I pointed out. “Gideon was already starting his paperwork to muster out when he realized that A.T. wasn’t being looked after.”
Boone shook his head but knew there was nothing to say.
“Once Daddy heard Gideon was coming home, he snapped out of it a bit. Momma had been gone about a year by then, and I thought things were getting back to normal, or as normal as they could.” I looked down at my hands. “I asked Daddy if I could go with him to A.T. to go to the range. I hadn’t been in so long because I was afraid of what he would do. But instead of bringing me, he laughed and told me ladies don’t shoot guns.” I shook my head in bewilderment because even now, the phrase was foreign to me. “He’d brought me to that range since before I could remember, brought all of us, and suddenly I wasn’t allowed to handle a gun, let alone shoot it. He used to donate his time teaching women self-defense, but suddenly, it wasn’t acceptable for me to sign up for classes? Instead, he went with me to the mall and bought me dresses and skirts, even had the sales lady show me how to apply makeup. All my extracurricular activities had fallen to the wayside after Momma passed, and Daddy refused to let me rejoin anything but my riding lessons. Once Gideon got back, he eased up enough to let me sign up for karate, but Gia was born before they started, and I had to quit.”
I looked up at Gideon, wanting to make sure he could see the sincerity in my face. “I love that little girl like she’s mine—have from the first time you put her in my arms, but Daddy saw it as another opportunity. You were working full time, learning the ropes from him, and that left me at home with Gia. That summer, I did nothing but raise that girl. Daddy called it good practice for when I got married and had my own kids. But while he pulled back at A.T., and you and Keene took over more and more, he became more and more insistent about what I should or should not be interested in. It’s like, with Momma gone and A.T. in capable hands, he felt he owed it to her to mold me into this person, this image, he had of me. I wanted camping trips, and I got elaborate parties at fancy restaurants. I came home one day to find he’d cleaned out my closet of anything he deemed unsuitable, replacing it all with clothing I’d never pick out myself. He’s the one who invited the modeling scouts to the house, not me. And when he was taking me shopping or driving me to photo shoots, he looked so happy. I couldn’t figure out how to tell him how much I hated it.”
I was wringing my hands now, and I loathed that I was a ball of emotion, but it was as if it had been building in me for the last thirteen years, waiting for its chance to explode, and it would not be denied.
“Little girl.” Gideon lifted my chin, and I hiccupped. He hadn’t called me that in years. “If you had told him, I’m sure—”
I pulled away, hating that I was shattering their picture of our father the way mine had. “I told him on my eighteenth birthday.” Knowing I must look like a raccoon since I had to make up my face that morning, I wiped my eyes, hoping to get rid of the worst of it. “I told him I was going to enlist.”
They all froze. “You were going to join the military?” Keene asked.
