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My father? Why would they be worried about my father hurting me? Sure, he was stern, and I’d had to learn a lesson or two over the years, but he had never raised a hand to me himself. My father was an exacting man. He’d spent years in the Marine Corps before becoming a politician. He required order and discipline.
That didn’t mean he would ever hurt me.
“My father is a good man,” I assured them earnestly. “He would never hurt me.”
It unnerved me to know that they had somehow discovered the link to my father. I was very careful not to use his name in any way outside of our social circles, which I was rarely invited to, anyway. We didn’t even share the same last name. When he’d “adopted” me at the age of three, he’d let me keep my mother’s surname, telling the media that he didn’t want to diminish the memory of my biological family.
I barely remember the media storm that had ensued after I was adopted. My father had told everyone that my stepmother couldn’t bear any more children and that she’d always wanted another daughter. They’d said that it had been love at first sight when they saw me.
As if. My cunt of a stepmother barely spent more than a few moments in the same room as me unless it was required. Over time, the media storm around my adoption died down and so did the family fanfare. They shoved me in the background. I’d been put away like fine china. Only to be glimpsed on special occasions before being packed back up again.
“He may never have laid a hand on you,” Liam told me, “but he is far from a good man. Trust me on that.”
Trust him? The mob boss who killed people and ran drugs and weapons through the city wanted me to trust him?
“You don’t know my father.”
Liam smiled sadly. “Adoptive father,” he reminded me. “And I know more than you think.”
“Still my father,” I bit out. “And if you’re expecting me to give you some inside information, you can forget it.”
That was a fine line between truth and a lie.
I knew little about his work or campaigns. He never involved me in his political career like he did my older sister. She was his legitimate daughter, and I was nothing more than his hidden indiscretion.
There was something I was aware of, however. I knew that he and the DA were launching an all-out attack on the criminal underground, and Dashkov and Kavanaugh were at the top of the list. Washington was crawling with mafioso types. You wouldn’t know it, mostly because everyone believed the mafia had been nearly eradicated in the 1970s when the RICO act had been passed.
That was a lie.
The American Mafia had simply slid beneath the radar, moving west, taking over old Yakuza and Chinese Triad territories. It was in the late 1980s that the underground had been established, spreading up from California like a cancerous disease, slowly making its way back toward the East Coast.
From what I’d been able to ascertain, the underground was run by one representative from each of the most powerful ruling families, but that was just a rumor.
Now, most mafia families were legitimate business owners. Casinos, hotels, resorts—anything that gave them an opportunity to funnel blood money through. It was genius, really.
If you didn’t get caught.
My father had been trying to topple the mafia empire for as long as I could remember. He was constantly cursing and complaining, murmuring about how they were an infestation. I wasn’t sure where the animosity came from. Crime wasn’t running rampant in Seattle, not like it used to, but nothing would deter my father. He was dead set against every mafia family in the city, even if it meant going against the mayor.
“Not really selling yourself, are you?” Seamus quirked a brow. “You’re supposed to be giving us a reason to keep you alive.”
My chest tightened and my eyes widened slightly at his statement. Did they really plan on killing me?
“Seamus,” Ava scolded.
Playing off my fear, I let out a derisive snort. “It wouldn’t matter what I told you, anyway.” I sniffed. “I’m well versed in how the mafia works. If you wanted to kill me, it wouldn’t matter what reason I gave you to keep me alive; you’d still eliminate me.”
“Well versed?” Kiernan asked.
I shot him a smug look. “Did you think I got into investigative reporting by accident?” I snarked. “My father has told me everything about how you mafioso types want to destroy the good he’s worked for.”
Chuckles of amusement rose up around the table. I didn’t see what was so amusing about what I’d said.
“Let me guess.” Dashkov eyed me from across the table. “Your father is the one who got you into reporting.”
“No,” I told him smugly. “He was against it.”
“But he was the one who nudged you to work on investigative reporting, wasn’t he?” Was it bad manners to punch a smirking mafia boss in the face? “And when you did, he no doubt pushed you into writing your little stories about the mafia. Telling you all the bad things we do and how we’re out to get him.”
