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“Oh, Bruno.” The man sounded peevish. “I tested your intelligence when you were a child. I don’t how much of that potential you’ve realized in adulthood—probably a fraction—but I know you’re capable of answering that question unassisted.” He released Bruno’s cheek, his thumbnail smeared with blood. “If you need a name, call me King. Now put it together. What do you see?” He gestured at Julian. “Add that to what you learned from Petrie, about the genetic makeup of my lost operatives.” He clucked his tongue. “Terrible waste. You can’t imagine the time, training and money I invested in those young people.”
But Bruno had still fixated on Julian. “How old is that kid?”
King turned to the boy. “Tell him, Julian.”
“I’ll be nineteen in two weeks,” the young man announced.
Mamma had been cold in her grave a year before this kid was born. Bruno shook his head again. It was data he was afraid to crunch. Conclusions he didn’t want to face. But the mental process ground along without his conscious volition. He fidgeted against his bonds, and felt the crackle of paper in his jacket pocket. The autopsy report.
It popped out at him, like a funhouse goblin in the dark. “The ovary,” he blurted. “You stole my mamma’s eggs! You pervert!”
“Ah!” King began to clap. “Here’s a glimpse of the Bruno I saw twenty-four years ago. All that potential. Like a nuclear furnace. It broke my heart to see how you turned out. All that potential down the sewer. All that was left of my pride and joy was a foul-mouthed punk with no aspirations that I could see other than seducing as many women as possible. No guidance, no discipline, no vision! It broke my heart!”
Bruno listened to the guy’s bitching, searching frantically for connections. “What the fuck?”
King cut himself off. “Excuse my rant,” he said. “It’s been a sore subject for me for decades, and I—”
“Oh, God.” The realization burst painfully in his head, like popping flashbulbs. “Lily’s dad. That’s the connection! He was an IVF researcher, right? He made embryos for you. Out of mamma’s eggs!”
“Excellent, excellent!” The man beamed. “Yes, that’s what Howard did for me. He harvested the ovum, and made me dozens of viable embryos. I paid him very well for the service. He was brilliant, you know. He’d developed preservation techniques ahead of his time. Those embryos would still be viable to this day. Amazing.”
Bruno stared at Julian. This boy was his brother, his mother’s son, with that blank stare. Born after she died, twisted and deformed. Never knowing Magda Ranieri’s love, her warmth, her protection.
“You bastard. You cut open my mamma, and stole her children,” Bruno said, his voice strangled. “How did you get away with that?”
“It was easy. At the time, your mother was too busy worrying about you to worry about her ovary. But she got worried, at the end, when he figured out what I wanted with it. She even convinced Howard to be worried. She was so worried, she had to be, well. Taken care of.”
“You son of a bitch. I’ll kill you for that,” Bruno said.
The guy was unperturbed. He folded his arms, and waited, lips twisted in a half-smile. Tapping his foot.
“What?” Bruno exploded. “What do you want?”
“Go on,” King said. “And the rest?”
“With what?” Bruno snarled. “Stealing her organs, kidnapping her potential children, that’s not enough? Aside from murdering her?”
“You’re not tracking,” King scolded. “Don’t tell me you skipped so many eighth grade biology classes that you have no real grasp of the mechanics of human reproduction.”
Bruno grunted. “Haven’t gotten any complaints so far.”
Smack.The slaps rocked his head back. “Focus.” King’s voice cracked like a whip. “I do not appreciate crude sexual humor.”
Bruno struggled to fathom what the guy wanted from him. Some trail of reasoning he was supposed to follow? About those embryos, but he couldn’t…oh. Oh, shit. It started again. That drum roll. Another horrible truth he already knew but didn’t want to know.
“You’re talking about the sperm,” Bruno said. “You’re talking about…no. No fucking way. That’s not possible.”
King smiled, delighted, gave his head a pat. “It is.”
“You?” Bruno’s voice cracked. “You’re not…not my…”
“Your father?” King’s teeth gleamed, unnaturally white, as he finished the phrase for him. “Of course I am, Bruno. Who else?”
CHAPTER30
Zia Rosa didn’t see Kev when she stepped out of the exit gate at Newark. She marched along, staring straight ahead, with the stiff, rocking gait she affected when her edema was flaring up.
He stepped out into her path. “Hey, Zia.”
