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“Prospect,” Montana growled. “Getting really tired of you just barging in here. What now?”
“Sorry, Prez. I knocked.”
“Speak!” I shouted.
The kid gulped, glancing behind him, before muttering, “Um... Armando Guillermo is here to see you.”
“What?” Fury walked over to push the kid aside, only to come to a complete stop. “Prez. You need to come out here.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood as Montana stiffened beside me, reaching for his gun at his side. I did the same, not needing to look at the rest of my brothers, knowing they were all following our lead.
Taking the inititaive, I motioned for the kid to step inside, pointing him over to the corner where he would be out of the wayin case shit got real. Heading out of the boardroom, I entered the main room of the clubhouse to find a finely dressed elderly gentlemen sitting at one of the tables, in a wheelchair, with several men surrounding him as a woman who looked vaguely familiar hovered over him protectively. The man looked frail, weak, ready to keel over as he breathed into an oxygen mask.
This was Armando Guillermo?
The man everyone seemed to be afraid of.
Confused, I turned to Montana, “This isn’t right.”
Fury walked past us and approached the woman. “Mom? What are you doing here?”
The older woman cupped Fury’s face lovingly, kissing his cheek. “Your grandfather wanted to come.”
“But why?”
“Because, Christian, this lie has gone on long enough,” the ailing man rasped, coughing before he breathed deeply into his oxygen mask once more. After taking a few deep breaths, the old man said, “My name is Armando Guillermo. How may I help you, gentlemen?”
Before long, everyone was sitting around, waiting for the old man to begin. Even Renaldo and his brothers, who didn’t seem too keen on killing a man on death’s door.
“I came to this country with my bride because I refused to choose sides. The war between the families of Italy and Sicily had been going on for generations and I wanted no part of it. When I married my Valencia, we decided if we were ever going to have a family, we would not be able to do that in Italy, so we left. America was so different from Italy back then. Everything was new, vibrant, alive. I’d seen nothing like it before. We settled in what is now known as Little Italy, on the island of Manhattan, and in time I was able to save enough money to start a small bakery. My Valencia’s bread would make you cry, Renaldo.”
Renaldo smiled, nodding.
“After a few years, we began to worry, because Valencia wasn’t getting pregnant. I took her to a doctor and that is when we found out that my beloved could not have children. She wanted to leave me, but I would not hear of it. She was my world.”
“Mom isn’t my mom?” Fury’s mother gasped.
The old man turned to his daughter and solemnly whispered, “No, my beautiful daughter. She is not.”
“Then how?”
“Your mother and I wanted children. Back then, all we had to do was prove that we could provide a good life and a happy home.”
“Shit,” I cursed, the pieces of the puzzle were finally slotting together. “You adopted your girls from an orphanage. They were common back then. Especially after the war, where fathers died and mothers couldn’t provide for them, so they gave them up in the hopes of a better life.
“Yes. St. Augustine’s Home for Abandoned Children.”
“Father Dominic,” Malice whispered.
The old man nodded and smiled at Malice. “You must be Mr. Gideon Scott. Father Dominic speaks highly of you.”
Malice merely bowed his head.
“When Valencia and I went to the orphanage, we fell in love with two little girls. The oldest had the blondest hair I’d ever seen. Almost like a halo of spun gold with the bluest eyes of a summer sky. We named her Julianna. Her sister was still a baby. Barely three months old. We took them home that day and never looked back.”
“Mr. Guillermo, what happened to Julianna?” I asked, leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees, enthralled by his story.
“My Julianna never forgot her birth mother. She was four years old when we adopted her and her sister. While sheaccepted her new life, she always planned to find her birth mother and reconnect. However, that never happened. Julianna was a spirited girl, so full of life and energy. Everywhere she went, people gravitated towards her. Even the ones I tried to protect her from. Julianna was barely seventeen when she caught the eye of a young man who worked for your father, Mr. Romano. A man named Daniel Winters.”
