“What the fuck are you saying?” I roar.
Visions of my father—my swarthy, very Greek father—filter through my brain. My mother was a brunette as well. I always assumed I took after her more than him, but my looks never raised suspicion.
“Don’t you get it, Crey? The only reason you weren’t born a fucking bastard is because your mother seduced my brother into marrying her before you were born. She got knocked up by a married man, and her family threw her out. My brother was a sucker. A good kid. A fucking junior in college. He was going to do great things—join me in the business. But he met her, and he wouldn’t listen. They got married six weeks later without telling anyone. When we found out and tried to talk him into annulling it, he dug in his heels. Joined that damn church and moved out of the city. Five years later, they ended up in Papua fucking New Guinea, and we all know how that ended. She as good as killed him herself. He never would’ve been there if not for her.”
His words twist in a riot in my head, and I’m trying to make sense of them, but it sounds like complete fiction. It can’t be true.
“You’re telling me that David Karas was not my biological father.”
Damon is stone-faced. “No. He wasn’t.”
My father was not my father. The realization pounds into my brain over and over. I turn and pace toward the door. Several beats later, I gather myself and face him again.
“But he’s Greer’s father, because she was born in Papua New Guinea.”
“Unless your whore mother—”
I bolt across the room and my hand is at his throat, slamming him against the wall. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
“Get your hands off me,” he forces out through the chokehold.
“Tell me who my father is.”
“Let me go.”
“I said—” I wrap my fingers tighter around his throat. “Tell me who my fucking father is. You have to know.”
Damon’s face is turning purple, but he snarls out, “A capo in La Casa Nostra.”
I release him, and he stumbles back into the wall.
What the fuck? The Mafia?
“You’re lying.”
“No reason to lie.”
I lift my hand to my face as I try to let it sink in. “You have proof?”
He nods. “DNA test. Pulled strings when you were a kid.”
The man either has bigger balls than I could have ever suspected—or he’s stupid. “How did you not end up dead?”
Damon tries to chuckle, but it comes out as a grunt. He rubs his throat. “I know people.”
“Well, you can go fuck yourself. This stays between us. I’m not changing my name. You take that request and shove it up your ass.”
“Then get ready to lose your entire company. I will drag you through court and destroy your reputation by dissecting every move you’ve ever made. I’ll be so far up your ass, you’ll taste me with every breath.”
I have no doubt that he will attempt everything he’s saying. The crazy light in his eyes has settled over the expression on his face, and it’s clear that logic has fled his mind completely.
“You’re going to cost yourself everything. You won’t walk away clean from this.”
“I don’t care,” he roars. “I’m going to be a thorn in your side for the rest of your fucking life, like you’ve been a thorn in mine!”
My hands curl into fists, and I ask the question burning within me. “Why? And if all you want from me is to change my name, why wait until now? Why not earlier?”
Damon’s face twists into a sneer. “Every time I miss my brother—his birthday, our annual fishing trip, the World fucking Series, every time I see your goddamn picture in the paper, it makes me sick. If you didn’t exist, I’d still have him. It would be a fair trade, in my mind. And since I can’t have him back, it gives me some small measure of satisfaction to know that I can make you even a fraction as miserable as I am for losing him.”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a beat as a wave of grief hits me. Because the man that my uncle still mourns is one I miss just as much, and had even fewer years with.
“There’s something so fucked up about that, I don’t even know where to begin. You need help.”
He chuckles humorlessly. “No one can bring him back. And now you’ve proven that blood will always tell. Your mother was trash, and now you’ve married trash. You’ve tarnished the family name with your stunt, and I’m done sharing it with you. I won’t stop until I win.”
His last statement is a vow, and I know that all the words in the world won’t change his mind. The man has been buried in the grief of his loss for so many years, it seems to have twisted his mind.
So I don’t respond to his dig as I cross the room and rip the door open. My time will be better spent developing a new strategy now that I know what I’m facing. My eyes have reduced to tunnel vision, and I barely notice Elisabetta wringing her hands as I stride for the entrance.