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I knew I needed to open it sooner rather than later. There could be anything in there.
An apology letter. Surveillance photos of my family. Whatever she’d risked my wrath to deliver.
I lifted the folder in my hand, judging its weight. Thick. Probably not an apology letter. Possibly surveillance photos.
“You won’t know what’s in it until you open it, Einstein.” Hallucination Vince ambled to the piano and laid on top of it, sprawled on top like Roxie Hart in Chicago.
I flicked my gaze away from him and flipped open the folder. A note sat on top. The writing was messy. Like the note had been written in haste.
Vince left this for me after he died.
He said, if I lov
He said to get it to you.
ARI
Setting aside her note, I sifted through the photos and documents in the file. Hundreds of them.
Pictures of Everett. Of Elsa. Of a man whose face resembled Everett’s.
A copy of his Alabama driver’s license told me his name was Waylon Smith.
The background check showed he’d lived in Alabama all his life. Born at his family home with a midwife. Homeschooled until fourteen. Local high school football hero until a knee injury stopped his career senior year. Not that he had a career. He’d been small-town Alabama good. Not national-level.
He worked at a factory just shy of the town’s borders, and eight years ago, his high school sweetheart returned to town for a three-day affair spent entirely on a motel bed—as documented by high-quality surveillance photos Vince’s private eye had taken.
That high school sweetheart? Elsa Johnson.
Buck-toothed and ass-faced, she stared at me from her high school year book photo, looking less like the future bane of my existence and more like a High School Musical extra.
“What did I leave you?” Hallucination Vince peeked over my shoulder, and I swore I could feel his breath on my cheek.
“You dug into Elsa for me.”
The words slipped past my lips in a whisper. Reverent. Disbelieving. Not because he’d done this for me—I’d never once questioned his love of me—but because he’d succeeded and done something about it.
I couldn’t stomach his sacrifice, so I swallowed the thought down until I finished looking through the file.
Three years of payments from Elsa to Waylon had been delivered through cash apps and untraceable cryptocurrency. These print outs had been dated just days before Vince had gone missing.
I scanned the list for the first payment. The month Everett had been born.
Digging through the photos again, I checked all the dates and reeled at the timeline. Gio paid Elsa off. Elsa flew to Alabama and spent three days locked in a motel room with Waylon Smith.
Two weeks later, she returned to New York with a pregnancy test in hand. I welcomed her in, set up a bedroom for her, and built a nursery for Everett in a portion of my room because I’d thought he was mine.
Five years after Everett was born, she fled with him to Alabama, deep into Andretti territory, where I couldn’t get him.
She didn’t know about the Andretti-Romano feud. She didn’t know anything about my mafia ties.
She thought I stayed away because I wouldn’t kidnap my son—I’d do anything for him—and started extorting money from me with threats I’d never see him again.
I just wanted her to keep his identity a secret. She assumed I was ashamed of him, but in reality, the Andretti would have used Everett as a pawn in the war.
So, I paid her off, and it turned out, she passed part of that money to Waylon.
The payments started when she left New York. I never figured out why she’d fled, but now I knew. Waylon was Everett’s biological dad.
